Checklist for a Thorough In-Depth Study on a finding Stage

Anastasia Berezhnova, Head of CustDev Center, explains how to conduct a deep research of consumers’ pain points on a product finding stage. Read this piece for an encounter-based advice on formulating hypotheses, analyzing the trade, generating leads for interviews, launching a navigator funnel, and more

On a finding stage, any recent business throng goes through a procedure of seeking for viable product hypotheses. Since there is yet no product to develop and sell, startuppers require to discover such acute consumers’ problems that people will desire to acquire the answer to them in trade for their challenging-earned money.

In this piece, Anastasia Berezhnova shares her checklist that contains all the essential steps of an in-depth study on a product finding stage. It includes not only research and leadgen recommendations, but also practical advice on preparing for and analyzing CustDev, JTBD, and hybrid interviews.

Step 1. Formulate a hypothesis

There are different types of hypotheses — for example, they can be related to trade analysis, navigator search, or how factor A affects metrics B, C, and D. This piece primarily talks about hypotheses that one formulates when building a recent business.

Most often, product managers arrive to their teams with extremely generic requests, something like, “I desire to make a furniture rental service in Europe.” But this is not a hypothesis. A well-formulated hypothesis should always contain an If-Then statement. Here’s a universal formula for it:

If we do X, then we’ll get the outcome Y.

feasible results may include

• various benefits for a recent business (for example, 200 recent sales),
• benefits for customers (30% boost of their business KPIs),
• recent leads (+1000 recent customers, +500 newsletter subscribers),
• confirmation of consumers’ pain points, and so on.

In the encounter of Admitad Startups, we formulate several hypotheses at once and proceed with exploring them during in-depth interviews. For example, we might be trying to validate our assumptions on these topics:

• What problems do consumers face every day?
• How do they cover their needs?
• What tools are used for this purpose?
• What do consumers discover lacking in these tools?

Based on these deep interviews, we can make truly appealing offers that would bring us customers and, eventually, money. The more hypotheses we validate, the more we recognize about our target spectators and the more likely we are to construct such a product that consumers will consent to buy.

Step 2. Set quantitative goals and criteria for leads

After the hypothesis, it’s period to set quantitative goals and determine the navigator criteria. 

• navigator criteria are assumptions about segments of the target spectators that the throng makes before diving into deep research. 
• Quantitative goals are required in order to comprehend how many people will be interviewed from each segment.

It’s better when the navigator criteria are flexible, whereas quantitative goals are fixed. Admitad recommends conducting 10–15 interviews. 

Why is it significant? A product manager can request 10 in-depth interviews, but the 10th interview happens to contain some distinctive concept that changes the PM’s hypothesis. So they request 10 more interviews, and it goes on and on and on. So in order to avoid these infinite cycles, you require to set specific goals. When you hit them, you’ll recognize that it’s period to stop.

As for navigator criteria, in-depth interviews may or may not refute your assumptions about the target spectators completely. It’s alright, nobody is trying to guess all the segments. Instead, these criteria require to become a starting point that your throng uses to schedule the outline of the study.

Also, since a recent business usually has limited resources, its throng can’t survey everyone. So before a navigator is invited to an in-depth interview, they must respond a bunch of qualifying questions. It’s a short screening that determines whether this navigator fits the criteria and qualifies to become a potential customer. This way, a recent business throng ensures that they only talk to relevant leads.

Example: furniture rental

Here is a live example from the encounter of Admitad Startups. We were building a furniture rental service for the US trade called Rentomatic. American citizens mostly rent vacant apartments, so furniture rental services are quite popular there.

When we were looking for navigator criteria, we came up with several feasible segments. One of them was students, ages 18–30, from sure states. We figured that they needed rental services because they

• went to university/college across state borders, or
• had no money to buy furniture, or
• shared apartments with friends.

So we started looking for students at the correct age in the correct states. When we collected a list of potential leads, we proceeded to screen them with qualifying questions, trying to comprehend whether they were relevant for our product. 

There were three key points that we asked:

• How long ago was your last shift?
• Have you ever tried to rent furniture?
• How much did you pay for the rented furniture?

If the learner moved many years ago, they were irrelevant for our research since they no longer remembered their customer trip. We also crossed out those who paid insignificant amounts for furniture rental. 

Step 3. Analyze the trade

When a recent business throng is first given an assignment, most of the period they are not familiar with the topic. For example, our colleagues that started working on Rentomatic did not recognize a thing about the furniture rental trade in the United States. They had no concept it was a ordinary thing for locals to rent vacant apartments and use furniture rental services.

So when you receive on a recent job, you require to commence with the trade analysis. Be ready to set aside 1–2 weeks in your work timeline to study the competition, gain insight into the niche, and write research materials. This should be your ground zero.

It would make sense to search for analytical articles and statistics that describe trade conditions. Another straightforward way is text surveys and questionnaires. There are various respondent platforms (for example, Respondent.io) that allow you to post questions for the general community. As a rule, they also allow you to select the segments of your target spectators that you desire to reach. 

Overall, trade analysis is exactly the stage when a recent business throng gets roughly acquainted with the industry. Further steps become obvious in the procedure. For example, when we researched the trade before launching Rentomatic, we posted this list of questions:

• Have you ever rented furniture?
• Why did you rent furniture?
• What pieces of furniture did you rent?
• What website did you use?
• How many times did you shift?
• How many of your friends have moved?

We also found articles stating that the average American household moves 11 times in their lifetime, and that 85% of rented apartments are unfurnished.

Step 4. discover ways to generate leads

As soon as the trade analysis is ready, a recent business throng can shift on to the next step. Now it’s period to deduce several different hypotheses about where a recent business will discover leads. Aside from paid platforms that connect businesses with target respondents, there are always less obvious options, and it’s best if you can cover them all.

For example, Rentomatic was testing these assumptions:

• Customers of furniture rental services leave their feedback, so one can discover their names from reviews and parse their profiles in social media.
• There are social media chats and groups of people who are looking for furniture rental.
• People who are looking for an apartment are also looking for furniture, so one can associate up with apartment rental services.

Every navigator creation hypothesis should be quantitative. For example, “If we post 5 ads in chats for people who are looking for furniture, then we will get at least 5 interview appointments in 2 weeks.” It’s significant to limit the period frame so as not to get stuck.

To keep track of everything that is going on on this stage, you can make a table with columns: ‘Actions taken’ and ‘Results obtained’. This is an straightforward way to view which hypotheses brought the most leads and which ones should be discarded as ineffective.

Step 5. Prepare scripts in advance

For navigator creation in each segment, generic text messages get prepared beforehand. These are scripts that pursue scenarios of each feasible exchange with respondents. Thanks to them, recent business employees will always recognize what to declare next in order to get the maximum advantage from communication with leads.

Scripts must be translated into all languages essential to conduct in-depth research in a particular trade. For each segment, a divide text communication is written in advance. Here are some categories that Rentomatic singled out:

• communication for social media chats
• Email for partnering rental services
• Private communication to cold customers
• Private communication to warm leads, etc.

To write excellent scripts, you require to pursue a customer’s trip from A to Z. inquire questions about every turning point, starting with a instant when a customer decided they needed a product, and ending with reasons why they chose to purchase from a particular store. 

Step 6. Launch your navigator funnel

When all of the above steps are completed, you can launch the funnel — i.e. all the channels of navigator creation in order of priority. It’s best to commence with the ones that perform the best across your hypotheses, ending with the ones you depend in the least.

At Admitad Startups, we prefer to launch navigator creation channels in the following order:

1. Respondent.io (it takes a long period to set it up)
2. Social media chats
3. Manual navigator search
4. Paid navigator parsing (if purchased)

Step 7. Conduct your in-depth interviews

When your funnel starts bringing in recent leads, you commence interviewing them. With cold leads, you usually require to inquire some of the qualifying questions. Warm leads mostly arrive from paid platforms, so they have already been screened.

Be cautious of paid respondents. Sometimes they pretend to be whoever you desire them to be because they earn money for each interview they participate in. So these leads require to be checked for authenticity — discover them in Linkedin and/or Facebook beforehand and make sure they are a real person.

Of course, if you realize that the respondent is lying to you during the interview, you can contact the platform and get a refund. Still, it takes little detective work to filter out respondents who seem ingenuine — and it will save you even more resources in the long run.

Now, let’s talk about interviews. One conference usually lasts between an hour and an hour and a half. If you can’t be now in the same room, ponder of conducting a video interview in Zoom, Discord, Google Meet, etc. — this way, it’s much easier to read a person’s emotions. The entire exchange should be recorded and stored so that you can profitability to it later.

Step 8. Transcribe the interview material

Transcripts are required to complete the Jobs to Be Done research. Instead of only taking up this job when you complete conducting all the interviews, you can commence transcribing them in parallel. For example, hold one or two conversations and immediately transcribe them. This way, you can swiftly notice the interviewer’s errors and edit (if needed) the list of questions.

It’s useful when the person who transcribes interviews is not the same person who conducts them. An outside observer can point out unobvious gaps, impoverished wording, or questions where an interviewer needs to dig deeper. 

At Admitad Startups, we have two methods of working with texts: transcribing them and writing a detailed summary.

• Transcripts — for JTBD-only interviews. This is a machine-performed, automated job that needs to be rechecked by an employee.
• Detailed summaries — for CustDev interviews and JTBD+CustDev hybrid methodology. These are done by a live person who analyzes the information and provides their feedback.

Step 9. Provide the interim update

This paragraph describes how we do it in Admitad Startups. Your processes might be organized differently, but still, an interim update is a useful tool to track your assignment’s trip.

In the middle of our research, we usually meet with the product manager and talk over the results that we’ve got. There are 3 feasible variations of how this talk might advancement.

1. The original hypothesis has been confirmed. Product manager approves further work.
2. The original hypothesis has been refuted. In other words, we suddenly realize that the issue was somewhere else. To save period and strategy, we transformation the hypothesis and reshape our upcoming product so that it conforms to the recent conclusions.
3. The original hypothesis has been refuted. However, the product manager insists on keeping the ancient one until we confirm that we’re going in the incorrect path. If our setback gets 100% confirmed, we transformation the vector of our actions.

Step 10. Collect and analyze the results

When the transcripts are completed, we distribute the data between the following documents:

• chart of pain points
• Jobs to be Done canvas (more on that in our piece)
• List of customers/leads

The last document is a table where we sum up the results: the number of our customers, their navigator criteria, their turnover rates, tools they use, money spent on them, etc. In short, the list contains everything that’s significant for us to recognize about the navigator segment of our research.

Let’s demonstrate it with an example. If your navigator segment consists of bloggers, then you might desire to include

• which websites these bloggers arrive from,
• how their subscriber base is segmented, 
• how they monetize their subscribers, and so on.

Final thoughts

Anastasia Berezhnova shared her checklist of a deep research of consumers’ pain points that is usually conducted on a product finding stage. Her advice comes from the encounter of Admitad Startups and covers the way we conduct in-depth studies in our studio.

Here is a short summary of all 10 steps that Anastasia suggested.

1. Formulate a product hypothesis using an If-Then statement that mirrors the desired results.
2. Determine your navigator criteria, i.e. must-have attributes of your respondents, and the number of leads you will interview.
3. Get yourself familiar with the trade, niche, and competitors before you dive into deep research.
4. Formulate hypotheses on how you are going to generate leads and discover your leadgen channels.
5. Prepare scripts to engage with your leads. Write down all feasible communication scenarios for all segments of respondents.
6. Launch your navigator creation funnel, adding the leadgen channels in order of priority (from best-performing to least-performing).
7. Conduct in-depth interviews: CustDev, Jobs to Be Done, and/or hybrid.
8. Transcribe the interview material into text format so that you can view and highlight the most significant points. 
9. update intermediate results of your in-depth study to your product manager to determine whether your findings align with the original hypothesis, and what you should do in case they don’t.
10. Collect the results of your in-depth study and analyze them: chart out consumers’ pain points, fill in JTBD canvas, collect your navigator list.