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Guerilla Style Research
Touch your customer without being creepy
Founder & Director, University of Utah, Utah Community Research
Group (UtahCRG)
§ Teach micro economics, statistics, applied research & data
analytics, and American economic development & history
Co-Founder and CEO, Emperitas
Luciano Wheatley Pesci
During my last SLC|SEM presentation (Datapocalypse) I talked about customer conversations. This Qualitative step should always be done to inform larger Quantitative research because it improves the theoretical foundation. I’ll show you how to find customers for these conversations using public information without being too “creepy.”
Talk With Customers TODAY!
01. Define Your Purpose
02. Market Snapshot
03. Expert Interviews
04. Customer Conversations
05. Spera.io Case Study
Research Steps
emperitas.com
Figure out what information you need, how you will use it, and how you plan to get it
01. Define Your Purpose
Team Level Intelligence Identifying what information is needed and how it will be used is the first and most important step in any effective research design.
● Learn how everyone's role connects (the “big picture”)
● Identify the unknowns people face when doing their individual part
● Where there are overlapping needs you have a key informational target
● Pool resources (especially networks) for your research
● Don’t shut down any ideas at this stage
● Formalize a list of hypotheses to test in the research
02. Market Snapshot Make sure you understand the environment you’re operating in
Know Your Place Updating what you already know about your market position will help your research focus and give you a chance to identify key people necessary for the next steps in the research.
● Market Size & Trends (especially
customer preferences)
● Competitors, their offerings, their marketing strategies and their operational structure
● Regulation (current and planned)
● Identify experts, influencers and customers
Tools To Use There’s never been an easier time to collect competitive intelligence. Here are some key tools you can use:
● NUVI
● Mentions.com
● twitter.com/search
● social-searcher.com
● Moat.com
● Spyfu.com
● google.com/trends/explore
● pwcmoneytree.com/HistoricTrends/CustomQueryHistoricTrend
● mwcn.org/deal-flow (Utah specific)
03. Expert Interviews Jump start your experiential knowledge by learning from the “right” people
Expert Interviews Talking to experts focuses your research direction on what really matters, not just what interests you or what you THINK is important.
● Understand their job and expertise
before the interview
● Be prepared and professional (they
may open their network to you if you
impress them)
● Record the interviews if possible, and
take notes
● Ask for additional experts you should
talk to (snowball sampling)
● Compensate them for their time
04. Customer Conversations Get out of the building and talk to end-users to test your hypotheses
Customer Conversations No amount of data is ever going to provide as strong a theoretical base for you than talking directly to your customers.
● Try to complete 30 interviews with
qualified customers
● Learn about their pains & gains
● Test your hypotheses
● Demo your offering and shadow test
● Record the interviews if possible, and
take notes
● Ask for additional customers you should
talk to (snowball sampling)
● Compensate them for their time
Tools To Use Interviewing is incredibly easy thanks to digital technology. It’s possible to find, and talk to, customers all over the world for almost no cost. Here are some key tools you can use:
● Google Docs
● Facetime/Skype/Hangouts
● TapeACall
● Surveymonkey.com
● Qzzr
● Qualtrics
● Sawtooth Software
● R and R Studio
● Tableau
05. Case Study :: Spera.io How this approached saved a start-up from wasted time and money
Spera Case Study
● Fintech App. During first wave of research discovered fierce competition in the space, but noticed 56%
of customers were freelancers. Company pivoted.
● Second wave of research focused exclusively on freelancers and narrowed the focus to an integrated
task, invoice and payments solution.
● Third wave of research discovered key product features, initial willingness to pay, distribution channels,
marketing preferences, and the messaging for Spera’s “why.”
● Fourth wave of research used “shadow interviews” where the founder followed freelancers around for a
day to learn how they were doing their job.
● Now have MVP, highly sophisticated financial model, clear customer targets, and marketing messaging
for their launch.
Spera Case Study :: Research Design
● We worked with the founder and his team to create a clear set of research questions, “hypotheses
briefs.” These focused the market snapshot (competitor analysis, marketing sizing, regulation, etc) and
allowed us to identify influencers, experts and customers for the conversations.
Spera Case Study :: Customer Solicitation
● We used NUVI to aggregate customers of fintech competitor apps, then we tweeted and emailed to
get them to complete a short qualifying survey. This allowed us to filter out people who didn’t qualify
and schedule interviews with target customers.
Spera Case Study :: Customer Conversations
● For the interviews we used a Google form so the analysts could take notes. They also recorded it with
TapeAcall. After the interview the analysts used the recording to complete the form (which put the
data right into a spreadsheet).
Spera Case Study :: Analysis
● We used R (with RStudio) to analyze the data, but it was small enough that it could have been done in
the Google doc itself. The reason for using R is that it’s possible to do advanced methods, like sentiment
analysis of the unstructured data.
Spera Case Study :: Report of Findings
● All the information from the market snapshot, expert interviews, and customer conversations was fused
to answer the original hypotheses briefs and now the startup is executing with precision.
Now It’s Your Turn Go talk to your customers already…seriously
Customer conversations give you a serious competitive advantage because everyone else assumes they know everything (hint: they’re wrong). Every customer group is different in their willingness to be contacted, so watch for clues during market snapshot to avoid being a creeper.
If you’re organized you’ll meaningfully connect with your customers, saving your company wasted time, money and effort.
