Getting the Prototype “Right”

Once, during a conversation with a young entrepreneur I had just agreed to coach, I asked him to tell me a bit about the status of his embryonic "software as service" business. Proudly, he replied, “We’re putting the final touches on our 7th prototype!” Wanting to be impressed with what he and his team had done, I asked, “What did you learn from the customer on the earlier ones?” He replied, “Well, we haven’t been to the customer yet. First we need to get the prototype ‘right’.” Instantaneously, I firmly queried, “How will you know?”

In my work with companies – new and established – I continue to see a reluctance to engage the customer, the final arbiter of product success or failure. The reasons why people avoid engagement are numerous and include: “No time”, “No money”, “We already know what the customer wants”, and my favorite, “The customer doesn’t know what they want”. All of these can be true in certain circumstances, but history would suggest that we generally know less about the customer and her needs than we need to, and our product development efforts suffer as a result.

My mantra is to engage customers early and often, and I’ve found that, with a defined objective for the engagement, this approach always results produces benefits. What we ask will differ depending on where we are in the development of the product or the business – but we can almost always learn from talking with the customer in the appropriate way.

Instead of accepting the reasons why we’re unable or don’t need to engage the customer, let’s come up with ways that we can and should!

See the October 22 entry for stories of low cost customer engagements that paid huge dividends. More to come.