Questions your customer can't lie to
People lie kindly about the future: “I'd buy that.” Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test shows how to ask about the past and the facts instead.
Rob Fitzpatrick wrote a book with a strange title — The Mom Test — about a simple problem: when you ask people about your product, they lie. Not out of malice — out of politeness. “Sounds great, I'd buy that” is courtesy, not an order. Even your own mom will praise a bad idea. Hence the test: ask in a way that even your mom couldn't lie to.
The future is polite, the past is truthful
The trick is in the tense. Questions about the future (“Would you buy…? Would you use…?”) invite fantasy and kindness. Questions about the past invite facts: When did this last happen? What did you do? What did it cost you? What have you already tried, and why didn't it stick? People fantasise about future behaviour; they remember past behaviour. And past behaviour is the best available predictor of the future kind.
A compliment is a bad signal
Fitzpatrick's sharpest warning: a compliment is a sign the meeting failed. “Interesting, send over the materials” most often means a polite nothing. Real interest costs the customer something: time (a next meeting with a concrete date), reputation (introducing you to the person who owns the budget), or money (a pilot, a deposit). Whoever pays with nothing hasn't said yes. They've said “I don't want to hurt your feelings.”
A diary of answers
Answers to past-tense questions have one more property: they age slowly and they add up. “It cost them three outages last year,” “the budget is approved in November,” “they tried a competitor and came back” — these are facts that will still be selling a year from now, provided you write them down somewhere. A diagnosis without a record is just a pleasant conversation.
What to take away
At your next meeting, ban one question (“would you be interested?”) and prescribe one (“when did you last…?”). You'll feel the difference in what you learn the same day.
Facts from past-tense questions belong on the relationship timeline — in Lemnio you'll find them exactly when the customer enters the market. Start free.