## Questions to Ask Potential Customers If you have something that no competitor does and that some subset of users urgently need, you have a beachhead. [What Is Customer Development? Definition, Process, Concept, & FAQ (airfocus.com)](https://airfocus.com/glossary/what-is-customer-development/) Record the calls. Start with the area you're focusing on. Focus on problems, no solutions. 1. Tell me how you do ___ today. 2. What is the hardest thing about doing ___? 3. What are your pains around ___ today? 4. What do you think your pains around ___ will be in 12 months? 5. Why is it hard? 6. How often do you have to do ___? 7. Why is it important for you and your company to do ___? 8. What do you do to solve ___ for yourself? 9. If they aren't interested in the area you're focusing on, ask them "what else is bothering you?" **Follow-up questions:** 1. What do you mean by that? 2. Can you tell me more about that? 3. Why is that important to you? **Do not ask:** 1. Will you use our product? 2. Which features would make our product better? 3. Yes/no questions 4. How would a better product look like to you? 5. Two questions at the same time. Note: users have no reason to say no to new features, but we need to figure out which are the most important. (edited)  ## Next Steps 1. Do 5-10 user interviews and synthesize your learnings. 2. Create problem/solution hypotheses. 3. Sketch an MVP.