The Mom Test: How to talk to customers by Rob Fitzpatrick

The summary

The Core Problem with Customer Interviews

Most entrepreneurs make a critical mistake: they talk about their idea instead of listening to their customers. The Mom Test reveals this fundamental flaw and provides a simple solution.

Key Principles

1. Focus on Their Life, Not Your Idea

The book's central insight is powerful: we can discover if people are interested in what we're building without ever mentioning our product. Instead, we talk about their lives and experiences.

If you can avoid mentioning your idea entirely, your questions automatically become better. This is the simplest and most significant improvement you can make to customer conversations.

2. The Three Golden Rules

1. Talk about their life, not your idea
2. Ask about specific past events, not opinions about the future
3. Talk less, listen more

Essential Questions to Ask

Understanding Past Behavior

Ask customers to detail how they solved problem X last time. If the problem remained unsolved, find out why. Did they try to find solutions? Were those solutions ineffective? Or did they not even bother searching?

Measuring Problem Severity

"What are the consequences of this situation?"

This question separates problems people will pay to solve from problems they'll simply tolerate. Some problems have large-scale, costly consequences. Others just exist without meaningful impact.

Spotting Empty Talk

When someone talks about what they "always," "usually," "never" do, or "would" do - that's just idle chatter. Focus on concrete past actions instead.

Analyzing Feature Requests

When customers request features, dig deeper:

• "Why do you need it?"
• "What actions will you be able to perform with it?"
• "How do you manage without it?"
• "Should we add this immediately or can it wait?"
• "How will it fit into your current workflow?"

Reading Emotional Signals

Use these questions to explore emotional responses:

• "Tell me more about that"
• "This situation really seems to bother you. I'm sure you have stories"
• "Why is this situation so terrible?"
• "Why haven't you been able to fix it yet?"
• "Is this issue really that serious?"
• "Why does this make you so happy?"

Measuring Problem Importance

Ask questions that reveal how seriously customers take the problem:

• "How serious are you about your blog?"
• "Do you make money from it?"
• "Have you tried to make more money from it?"
• "How much time do you spend on it weekly?"
• "Do you have important goals related to the blog?"
• "What tools and services do you use for it?"
• "What have you already done to improve it?"
• "What are three important aspects you're trying to fix or improve now?"

The Golden Rule of Preparation

Always have your three most important questions ready.

Making Meetings Count

There are no meetings that go "okay." Every meeting is either successful or failed.

A meeting succeeds when it ends with a commitment to move to the next step. Without effort to achieve this, conversations drift aimlessly and waste everyone's time.

The real failure isn't getting rejected - it's avoiding the conversation entirely. You either avoid questions because they scare you or because you haven't thought through the next steps.

Types of Commitments

Commitments don't always involve money but should involve time, reputation risk, or financial investment:

Time commitments:

• Scheduled next meeting with clear goals
• Deadline set for reviewing prototypes
• Extended trial period with actual usage

Reputation commitments:

• Introduction to colleagues or team members
• Introduction to decision-makers
• Public recommendation or case study agreement

Financial commitments:

• Letter of intent
• Pre-order
• Deposit

The Bottom Line

Understanding customer motivation makes everything easier. Ask questions that could completely destroy your assumptions about your business. Every conversation should move toward the next concrete step - otherwise, you're wasting valuable time.

The Mom Test isn't just about asking better questions; it's about building a sustainable process for learning what customers actually want, not what we think they want.

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The article is based on notes of a human (Alexander Isora) who has read the book.