The Quickest Way to Lose Money

Don't assume what your customers want. You'd be surprised how out of touch you may be with their wants and needs if you never ask.

Jun 05, 2024

“The Quickest Way to Lose Money” by Cubicle Farm

Cubicle Farm helps employees overcome inexperience.

Help others find this article by giving it a “like” below. Or simply share it directly with someone that could benefit from it. It could make their day. I know it will make mine.

This post is a continuation from last week’s post - “The Single Hack to Regaining Purpose in Your Work”.

My wife arrived home from the airport. She had been in Boston. Since she had a layover she had been in and around planes and airports for several hours. She refused to give anyone a hug before showering.

20 minutes later, having showered and cleaned up, she came into the room, arms open to give hugs.

She said to my 4-year old daughter, “Now I can give you what you wanted!"

She then moved toward my daughter with outstretched hands.

Without missing a beat, my daughter said, “Yes! We can do my Cinderella puzzle now!"

We Know What Happens When We Assume

We need to stop assuming what our customers want without asking, or projecting our wants as their wants. It may lead to a lot of wasted time pursuing the wrong thing.

Sometimes our customers don’t want a hug, or the 20 minutes of preparation that comes along with it. Sometimes they just want to do their Cinderella puzzle.

Discover Customer Wants and Needs

You can use several approaches to discover the wants and needs of your customers.

Customer Interviews: Chatting with customers directly to understand how they are using your product, and then identifying gaps is a very helpful approach.

Pro Tip: Asking direct questions, such as “What feature do you want to see?” is not a very helpful question. Customers often aren’t aware of the options available to them, making them unable to accurately describe what they would like. Instead, I recommend you use Teresa Torres’ model and ask customers to tell you a story about the last time they used the product. The customer will tell you exactly what happened, and you can then read between the lines to discover opportunities worth pursuing.
Data Review: If you have access to customer data, you can look through and glean insights that may guide you in the right direction. This is not a fool-proof method. You may still make incorrect decisions; but at the least you are making informed and educated decisions based on statistically significant customer behavior.
Customer Tests: Put multiple scenarios in front of your customers, and then observe their behavior.

In the 1960’s, McDonald’s CEO Ray Kroc wanted to introduce a burger that his Catholic customers could eat during Lent. His solution: the Aloha Burger - a meatless burger topped with a pineapple patty. At around the same time, a franchise owner name Lou Groen developed the Filet-O-Fish. Ray and Lou decided on a wager. They would offer both items for one day and observe the customer behavior. Whichever sandwich had the most purchases would be introduced as the newest menu item.

It is rumored that the Filet-O-Fish sold 350 sandwiches compared to 6 Aloha Burgers. The decision was easy.

However you decide to speak to your customers, it is important you are building what they want and need. Otherwise, you will likely waste a lot of time, money, and energy building a product that no one is willing to pay for.

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Get Your Game On!

Purpose:

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sallie - do you remember the mathematical order of operations? If not, then you may need to refresh your memory because Krypto is a math card game where players aim to reach a target number using five cards drawn randomly from a deck. They must use addition, subtraction, multiplication, and/or division to combine the numbers on their cards to reach the target number.

Do you think you’re up for the task?

Rules:

You must use all 5 cards.
Positive numbers only - no negative numbers.
Integers only - no fractions.

Example:

Step 1: 19 (card) - 11 (card) = 8
Step 2: 8 (difference in step 1) / 2 (card) = 4
Step 3: 14 (card) / 7 (card) = 2
Step 4: 4 (quotient in step 2) + 2 (sum in step 3) = 6

The correct mathematical formula would look like this:

(19 - 11) / 2 + (14 / 7)

Your turn:

I completed today’s puzzle in 28.45 seconds. Think you can beat it?

I’d love to hear from you. Drop a comment below telling me how fast you solved the puzzle, and what your solution was. I’ll throw my solution in the comments as well in case you are having a hard time solving it.

I’ll give a shoutout in next week’s newsletter to the person with the fastest time.