Module 2: Customer Discovery

Customer Discovery Interviews

A pragmatic script for conducting 20-minute discovery calls that reveal real purchasing pain.

When validating a B2B product, early interviews should focus exclusively on past customer behavior rather than future promises or theoretical interest.

The Mom Test Rule

Never ask someone if they would buy your hypothetical tool. Instead, ask about:

1. The last time they performed the specific workflow you intend to solve.
2. What software or manual spreadsheets they currently use.
3. How much time and budget that workflow currently consumes.

# Example discovery questions:
- "Walk me through how you handled [problem] last Thursday."
- "What did you try that didn't work?"
- "What budget did you allocate to solve this in Q3?"

Screening Qualified Prospects

Not every conversation yields valid signal. Prioritize responses from operators who hold corporate card authority and actively feel the operational pain.

Signal	Qualified Indicator	Disqualified Indicator
Budget	Has dedicated software spend	Requires free tier only
Frequency	Workflow happens daily/weekly	Workflow happens once a year
Current Hack	Built ugly internal scripts/sheets	“It’s not really a big deal”

Next Steps

Once you have completed 10 interviews with consistent pain points, move directly into securing commercial commitment via paid pilots and pre-sales.

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