Review

A practical discovery approach that’ll help you develop a value proposition and define your bullseye customer.

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Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

Your Bullseye Customer is the specific subset of your target market who initially is most likely to adopt your new product.

‘The Bullseye Customer Sprint’ helps validate and refine a hypothesis about who will be your Bullseye Customer AND identifies the features and unique value propositions those customers will value most.

• Recruit 5 bullseye customers: After 5 well recruited customers you get diminishing returns - the big takeaways should already be evident. After 5 you’ll get more value from iterating on the prototype vs hearing from customers.
• Interview them about 3 prototypes (e.g. pros & cons of mock landing pages): Taking forward 3 designs stops you falling in love with one. Taking forward 3 increases the chances you’ll be surprised by what you learn. Taking forward 3 and customers speak of the pros and cons of each (with 2 they tend to pick a favourite). Customers can keep track of 3 examples, but more would be a struggle.
• Do it 1 day: Doing all the interviews in a day makes it easier to agree on takeaways and next steps by reducing admin of reporting and communication.

Conduct Bullseye Customer Sprints early - before the team invests time, money or reputation into building, launching and marketing an MVP. The ROI of research is greatest when and cost of building the wrong product is high - BUT even when you can build an MVP quickly, you should test 3 concepts first so you don’t fall in love with one. Run a Bullseye Customer Sprint before doing other research as it will help inform, streamline and reduce the cost of follow on efforts.

Break research into bite-sized chunks → so you can take onboard feedback and iterate.

Don’t try to answer all your questions at once → focus on the highest priority learning objectives

Qualitative one-on-one interviews provide the best value → you can draw on customers stories, ask follow-up questions and dig into the why behind their answers AND leave room to discover the unexpected.

Comparisons reveal more - you’ll get richer feedback if you get customers to compare and contrast multiple prototypes. Meet your customers where they are - they don’t experience your product in a vacuum.

For best results get the whole team involved in research - it’s more impactful first hand.

Keep prototypes simple - don’t mock up more than necessary, and take advantage of competitor products.

Get the team to prioritise goals and key questions:

If you’ve launched a product, do you have questions about disappointing metrics?

Keep your list up to date.

Define Your Bullseye Customer

It’s difficult and rare to build a new product that works well for everyone from the start. Defining and aligning around a bullseye customer will help you streamline your approach and accelerate growth.

When defining your bullseye customer write specific, unambiguous, measurable criteria you can use later on to sort responses when you recruit:

Revisit and update the description of your bullseye customer after each sprint

Recruit Five Bullseye Customers

Defining a bullseye customer should make recruitment easier. If you can’t recruit 5 bullseye customers for research - how are you going to sell to them?

The quality of your recruiting is the biggest determinant of the insights you’ll gain from your Bullseye Customer Sprint.

Five is a good number because: You can get it done in a day, it’s enough that you’ll start to hear the same thing again - and takeaways will be clear. Additional sessions have diminishing returns. Your team will want to start iterating after 5 - they’ll want to get back to work.

If UserInterviews or Respondent doesn’t work you have to do recruitment yourself. Leverage your network, tap up participants to find more, use LinkedIn, contact professional associations, go to where they are, hir a professional recruiter or expert.

To avoid no shows: make the incentive meaningful, don’t recruit too far in advance, give them specific instructions (make it easy), make sure comms are professional, send reminders, make sure they’re engaged beforehand.

Choose your Value Props and Three Prototypes

Use 3 prototypes with distinct combinations of product features, benefits and messaging. Mock up select front pages or app store pages - this mimics the shopping experience. They should look like or actually be real sites. Bringing 3 prototypes to customer interviews allows for a richer discussion, offering variety without overwhelming the participants.

Think about what prototypes will help you elicit the feedback you need from you customers to help answer some of your prioritised questions. Sources:

• Use what you have
• Use your competition
• Mock up landing pages

Make sure your prototypes have three distinct value propositions. Make the mockups visually distinguishable. The pages should speak for themselves, make copy clear, headlines should capture the essence of each version. Make them look realistic.

Split your interviews into 2 parts:

1. Compare Prototypes: Introduce them sequentially, compare pros and cons. Is there an ideal combo? Cool down.
• Use the second half of the interview to have a structured conversation about the three prototypes.
• Make sure the customers understand the prototypes - you’re not usability testing you want feedback on the value propositions.
• Get customers to provide feebdack on each of the value propositions, and choose the elements they like most and least from each example.
• Finish the interview with each customer describing their ideal combination of features and positioning - get them to take aspects of each value proposition and build their own.
• Structure:
1. Set the stage for the prototypes.
2. Prompt interviewee to give me a guided tour of prototype #1.
3. Get initial reactions, personal likes and dislikes.
4. Repeat for prototypes #2 and #3. (I mix up the order in which I introduce the examples for each participant.)
5. Ask them to compare the pros and cons of all three prototypes.
6. How would they combine their favourite parts from all the prototypes into a version that would be ideal for them?
7. What’s missing? What would make their ideal version even better?

Interview tips

• Smile and maintain eye contact, be genuinely curious and focus on the person in front of you.
• Get ready to shut up and listen - be fascinated in your customers.
• Don’t judge or dismiss their feedback - your goal is to elicit as much information as possible.
• Ask WWWWWH questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How. Ask follow up questions: What’s an example of that? Tell me more?
• Get them to speak in concrete specifics not about their identity.
• Don’t pitch or explain - instead focus on what they’re thinking: What do you think it means? What questions or concerns do you have? How would you want that to work?

Plan a Watch Party

Watch parties save time and help streamline communication (you don’t have to spend anytime on summarisation, documentation or reports).

Watch Party Format:

• Schedule an entire day. Teams prefer dedicated a single day - allowing them to focus on the interviews without getting distracted. It makes it easier for everyone to spot patterns and build consensus.
• Watch each interview one at a time and debrief after each
• Session Debriefs: Capture the key info and observations from the session. Celebrate the interviewer and give them any feedback. The decider leads the discussion - resist the urge to discuss big takeaways until you’ve fully debriefed each interview
• Get everyone to take notes
• Make sure folks know: research objectives, who you’re interviewing, the schedule, their jobs
• Assign everyone a slightly different note taking job and have them rotate:
• Primary note taker: Captures detailed notes and quotes.
• Secondary note taker: fleshes out notes, highlights important observations and captures noteworthy quotes. Add timestamps so they can be located later.
• Facilitator: facilitates the back room
• Debriefer: the decider (product manager) should lead the discussions about key observations after each interview
• Get everyone to predict what they’ll learn from the watch party -
• Get everyone to independently capture big takeaways at the end of the day:
• Name
• 3 biggest takeaways
• How would you refine or adjust the description of your bullseye customer?
• If any, what open questions or concerns do you have?
• What should be the next steps?

Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.

Focus on the user and all else will follow Larry and Sergey: 10 Things We Know to be True

Chapter 1: You Could Be Learning More Faster

• Through experimentation we figured out how to maximise the impact of user research for early-stage startups - while making it easy for them to try it, participate in it, and learn how to practice it themselves. The answer → Bullseye Customer Sprints
• Steve Blank wrote the seminal works on customer discovery:
• Your Bullseye Customer = the specific subset of your target market who initially is most likely to adopt your new product
• The Bullseye Customer Sprint:
• Goals of a Bullseye Customer Sprint:
1. Validate and refine a hypothesis about who will be your company’s Bullseye Customer
2. Identify the features and unique value propositions those customers will value most
• Recruit 5 bullseye customers: After 5 well recruited customers you get diminishing returns - the big takeaways should already be evident. After 5 you’ll get more value from iterating on the prototype vs hearing from customers.
• Interview them about 3 prototypes (e.g. pros & cons of mock landing pages): Taking forward 3 designs stops you falling in love with one. Taking forward 3 increases the chances you’ll be surprised by what you learn. Taking forward 3 and customers speak of the pros and cons of each (with 2 they tend to pick a favourite). Customers can keep track of 3 examples, but more would be a struggle.
• Do it 1 day: Doing all the interviews in a day makes it easier to agree on takeaways and next steps by reducing admin of reporting and communication.
• Conduct Bullseye Customer Sprints early - before the team invests time, money or reputational risk into building, launching and marketing an MVP.
• The ROI of research is greatest when and cost of building the wrong product are high
• BUT even when you can build an MVP quickly, you should test 3 concepts first so you don’t fall in love with one (sunk cost fallacy) before you’ve learnt something
• Run a Bullseye Customer Sprint before doing other research as it will help inform, streamline and reduce the cost of follow on efforts
• The earlier you can provide insights the better - else you risk wasting time, money and energy building the wrong products and marketing them to the wrong people.
• Break research into bite-sized chunks → so you can take onboard feedback and iterate.
• Don’t try to answer all your questions at once → focus on the highest priority learning objectives
• Qualitative one-on-one interviews provide the best value - you can draw on customers stories, ask follow-up questions and dig into the why behind their answers AND leave room to discover the unexpected.
• Comparisons reveal more - you’ll get richer feedback if you get customers to compare and contrast multiple prototypes.
• Meet your customers where they are - they don’t experience your product in a vacuum
• For best results get the whole team involved in research - it’s more impactful first hand.
• Keep prototypes simple - don’t mock up more than necessary, and take advantage of competitor products

Chapter 2: Agree on Goals and Key Questions

• Prioritise a list of key questions about your target customers and the product you’re building → get specific about what you want to learn. Well defined learning objectives allow you to plan and execute.
• Get some of the team together and gather a list of candidates. These questions can help:
• What keeps you up at night?
• What are your hypotheses about your ideal customer and their problems?
• What are your hypotheses about your unique solution?
• If you had a crystal ball, what would you want to know about your ideal customers?
• What are the nagging debates on your team?
• What must be true for your product to be adopted and to succeed?
• What would increase your confidence in your prioritization and sequencing of what you’re building?
• If you’ve launched a product, do you have questions about disappointing metrics?
• Then prioritise your questions. These prompts can help you find the high priority questinos:
• How relevant are the questions to your product roadmap?
• Imagine the possible outcome of your research. What decisions or actions will you take based on the results? If it “would just be interesting to know,” then it’s low priority.
• What’s the risk of not answering this question now? Is it a one-way door, or a reversible two-way door?
• General questions might have already been studied - do desk research to check.
• Does the answer already exist somewhere in your organisation?
• When is the last date the results would still be useful?
• Keep your list up to date.

Chapter 3: Define Your Bullseye Customer

• It’s difficult and rare to build a new product that works well for everyone from the start.
• Defining and aligning around a bullseye customer will help you streamline your approach and accelerate growth.
• Knowing who is and isn’t your customer helps you make tough decisions.
• By defining your bullseye customer as those that are easiest-to-win it’ll make your marketing and sales efforts more effective.
• Make sure you recruit customers who match your bullseye customer for your sprint.

• To define your bullseye customer - interview stakeholders about the distinguishing traits, behaviours and past experiences that identify the subset of customers who’ll be most likely to adopt their product.
• Triggers: recent events that prime people with a desire for your product.
• E.g. Getting married is a trigger for life insurance.
• Exclusion criteria: past experiences or attitudes that don’t represent your target customer and can help you avoid wasting time
• E.g. Those without a phone might be excluded from a new mobile banking app discovery
• Prompt: What might you hear in the first minute of an interview that would make you realise you’re talking to the wrong person?
• When defining your bullseye customer write specific, unambiguous, measurable criteria you can use later on to sort responses when you recruit:
• Prioritise criteria and customer segments based on importance
• If you have an existing product - use existing customer data and analytics to help identify the most important high value customers
• If distinct and equally important bullseye groups emerge → record them separately and run a Bullseye Customer Sprint with each distinct group
‣
Example questions to zoom in on your bullseye customer
• Revisit and update the description of your bullseye customer after each sprint

Chapter 4: Recruit Five Bullseye Customers

• Defining a bullseye customer should make recruitment easier.
• If you can’t recruit 5 bullseye customers for research - how are you going to sell to them?
• Screener questionnaires on services like ‘User Interviews and Respondent’ help.
• The quality of your recruiting is the biggest determinant of the insights you’ll gain from your Bullseye Customer Sprint → So invest energy into writing a great screener and be picky about selecting participants.
• Five is a good number because:
• You can get it done in a day
• It’s enough that you’ll start to hear the same thing again - and takeaways will be clear
• Additional sessions have diminishing returns
• Your team will want to start iterating after 5 - they’ll want to get back to work
• Steps to recruit:
1. Write a screener questionnaire: a question for each criteria. Write questions that don’t reveal the right answer, focus on past behaviour. Aim for about 15 questions.
2. Get people to fill it out: get as many people to fill it out as possible (user interviews / respondent). Offer an incentive that’s big enough to get people to reliably turn up.
3. Select 5 customers: Select those that best match your criteria. Be picky. Before booking them call them quickly to verify responses and check they’re good communicators. Establish rapport and check availability.
4. Schedule 5 interviews on the same day.
• If UserInterviews or Respondent doesn’t work you have to do recruitment yourself. Leverage your network, tap up participants to find more, use LinkedIn, contact professional associations, go to where they are, hir a professional recruiter or expert.
• Tap up participants to find more - ask if they know somebody you should talk to.
• To avoid no shows: make the incentive meaningful, don’t recruit too far in advance, give them specific instructions (make it easy), make sure comms are professional, send reminders, make sure they’re engaged beforehand.

Chapter 5: Choose your Value Props and Three Prototypes

• Showing concrete examples forces you to get specific about the ideas you want to test.
• Use 3 prototypes with distinct combinations of product features, benefits and messaging
• Mock up select front pages or app store pages - this mimics the shopping experience.
• They should look like or actually be real sites.
• The format makes it easier for customers to digest and discuss the options.
• Bringing 3 prototypes to customer interviews allows for a richer discussion, offering variety without overwhelming the participants.
• With two prototypes, participants may choose a favourite without deeper analysis, but introducing a third option encourages them to critically evaluate the pros and cons of specific features.
• What to test?
• Think about what prototypes will help you elicit the feedback you need from you customers to help answer some of your prioritised questions
• You can mix and match from:
• Use what you have
• Use your competition
• Mock up landing pages
• Make sure your prototypes have three distinct value propositions
• Burrito example

Features	Options
Brand Promise	Authenticity	Convenience	Quality
Pricing Model	Buy 6 get 1 free	$10 each	Monthly Membership
Delivery	Pick up	30min Delivery	Grab n go

• Prototype Tips:
• Push the edges - test bold concepts not subtle differences
• Make the mockups visually distinguishable
• Be blunt and clear - the pages should speak for themselves
• Use headlines that capture the essence of each version
• Make them look realistic
• Avoid detailed UI
• Proofread carefully - poor quality undermines the perception of a prototype

Chapter 6: Draft Your Interview Guide

• Interview Goals:
1. Validate and refine a hypothesis about who will be your company’s Bullseye Customer
2. Identify the features and unique value propositions those customers will value most
• Split interviews into 2 parts:
1. Discovery: Warm-up and Semi-structured open-ended interview
• Focus on previous experiences, behaviours, goals, attitudes and difficulties
• Semi-structured open-ended questions teach us about our customers lives and helps us build empathy - and helps us understand their reactions in part 2.
• Elicit stories and examples that illustrate the customers past experiences, behaivour, successes and problems.
• Lots of who, what, where, when, how and why questions - and lots of follow ups. Ask to see examples of what they’re describing
• Plan a conversation arc that starts broad but increases in focus. You can go off track but try and cover the team’s most pressing questions.
• Use a shopalong format if you need to increase conversation.
‣
Example b2b questions:
2. Compare Prototypes: Introduce them sequentially, compare pros and cons. Is there an ideal combo? Cool down.
• Use the second half of the interview to have a structured conversation about the three prototypes
• Make sure the customers understand the prototypes - you’re not usability testing you want feedback on the value propositions
• Get customers to provide feebdack on each of the value propositions, and choose the elements they like most and least from each example.
• Finish the interview with each customer describing their ideal combination of features and positioning - get them to take aspects of each value proposition and build their own
• Structure:
1. Set the stage for the prototypes.
2. Prompt interviewee to give me a guided tour of prototype #1.
3. Get initial reactions, personal likes and dislikes.
4. Repeat for prototypes #2 and #3. (I mix up the order in which I introduce the examples for each participant.)
5. Ask them to compare the pros and cons of all three prototypes.
6. How would they combine their favourite parts from all the prototypes into a version that would be ideal for them?
7. What’s missing? What would make their ideal version even better?

Chapter 7: Learn More From Every Interview

• Make interviews conversational, engaging and personal. Be a gracious host and a good listener
• Three key habits: smile and maintain eye contact, be genuinely curious, focus on the person in front of you (not your notes)
• Get ready to shut up and listen - be fascinated in your customers.
• Don’t judge or dismiss their feedback - your goal is to elicit as much information as possible.
• Ask WWWWWH questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
• Ask follow up questions: What’s an example of that? Tell me more? Silence can also prompt more information.
• Ask for recent personal examples - get them to speak in concrete specifics not about their identity.
• Keep an eye on the time.
• Don’t pitch or explain - instead focus on what they’re thinking: What do you think it means? What questions or concerns do you have? How would you want that to work?
• Watch facial expressions, body language and tone. Keep them engaged.

Chapter 8: Plan a Watch Party

• Watch parties save time, streamline communication and help align and motivate teams.
• Teams prefer dedicated a single day - allowing them to focus on the interviews without getting distracted.
• It makes it easier for everyone to spot patterns.
• You don’t have to spend anytime on summarisation, documentation or reports
• Builds consensus on ideas based on their merits
• Accelerates the teams’ understanding and empathy for customers and their goals
• Watch Party Format:
• Schedule an entire day
• Watch each interview one at a time and debrief after each
• Session Debriefs:
• Capture the key info and observations from the session.
• Celebrate the interviewer and give them any feedback
• The decider leads the discussion - resist the urge to discuss big takeaways until you’ve fully debriefed each interview
• Get everyone to take notes
• Make sure folks know: research objectives, who you’re interviewing, the schedule, their jobs
• Assign everyone a slightly different note taking job and have them rotate:
• Primary note taker: Captures detailed notes and quotes.
• Secondary note taker: fleshes out notes, highlights important observations and captures noteworthy quotes. Add timestamps so they can be located later.
• Facilitator: facilitates the back room
• Debriefer: the decider (product manager) should lead the discussions about key observations after each interview
• Get everyone to predict what they’ll learn from the watch party -
• Get everyone to independently capture big takeaways at the end of the day:
• Name
• 3 biggest takeaways
• How would you refine or adjust the description of your bullseye customer?
• If any, what open questions or concerns do you have?
• What should be the next steps?
• Do a final debrief the morning after:
• The decider describes the patterns they see in everyone’s responses
• Did you answer the big questions?
• Were there any surprises?
• Did the teams’ predictions come true?
• Questions that can help:
• What is your confidence in each of the big takeaways? Rate them low, medium, or high.
• Do the big takeaways fit and help explain other data and analyses you’ve seen?
• What additional information or analyses would help boost your confidence in your big takeaways?
• How should you update the definition of your bullseye customer?
• Which big questions remain unanswered?
• What new questions do you have about your customers? About your product?
• What new ideas did the interviews inspire?
• Are there any immediate fixes or changes you should make to your existing product or website?
• When do you want to schedule your next watch party and Bullseye Customer Sprint?

Chapter 9: Common Questions and Pitfalls

• Why can't we just launch to learn? - Launching without testing is risky and can lead to expensive mistakes. Conducting quick research with bullseye customers can reveal critical issues before a broader launch, ensuring a more successful and confident rollout.
• When should we do research? - Research is essential when developing new products, entering new markets, or understanding different customer segments. It's particularly crucial at early-stage startups or when expanding into new areas. Research helps refine your understanding and approach, ensuring product-market fit.
• How much research is too much? - Excessive research can dilute its effectiveness, especially if it’s not aligned with high-priority goals. Early-stage startups should focus on targeted, high-impact research rather than ongoing low-impact studies, which can waste resources and diminish the power of research insights.
• Can we just test with friends and family? - Testing with friends and family can be useful for practice, but it shouldn’t be relied on for critical feedback. It’s better to seek input from people who aren’t biased by a personal relationship, ensuring more honest and actionable insights.
• Should we target early adopters? - Early adopters are not always the best target across all categories. It's essential to define specific behaviours and criteria that align with your bullseye customers to ensure you’re targeting the right audience.
• When should we use unmoderated testing tools? - Unmoderated tools are great for quick feedback on well-defined tasks but should be supplemented with in-depth interviews when dealing with more complex issues or when deep insights are needed.
• When should we use surveys instead of interviews? - Surveys can be effective after initial qualitative research has identified key questions. Early-stage startups should prioritise 1:1 interviews first to gain deep insights before validating with surveys.
• What about focus groups? Wouldn’t that be more efficient?- Focus groups are less effective than 1:1 interviews for gathering detailed, personal insights. They may lead to less accurate conclusions due to group dynamics and social influences.
• Can we use a customer advisory group instead of recruiting fresh bullseye customers?- Customer advisory groups can become too familiar with your product, leading to stale feedback. Fresh bullseye customers provide more valuable, unbiased insights, ensuring your research remains relevant.
• What about working with a customer as a design partner? - While design partnerships can offer deep insights, there's a risk of developing a product too tailored to one customer’s needs, which might not appeal to the broader market.
• Should we measure NPS (Net Promoter Score) or satisfaction? - NPS is not ideal for product design feedback due to its limitations in reflecting true customer sentiment. Direct measures of customer satisfaction are recommended for more actionable insights.
• How could we get more feedback from our ex-customers? - It's challenging to engage former customers in productive interviews. Instead, focus on understanding and expanding your happiest, most engaged customers.
• Can we offer small gift cards as incentives? - Offering appropriate incentives can increase participation and engagement in research. However, the value and type of incentive should be thoughtfully considered to ensure it appeals to your target audience.