PDF Summary:The Mom Test, by Rob Fitzpatrick

If you ask someone what they think of your business idea, they’ll almost always lie to your face to spare your feelings. However, if you ask the right questions, you can strip away these lies and receive brutal honesty from anyone—even your mom.

The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick is a practical guide on how to get meaningful feedback about your business or product. In this guide, we’ll show how to use the author’s “Mom Test” to gather objective feedback about your business idea and develop that idea into a successful product or company. We’ll discuss how to choose the right customer segment, how to arrange conversations with customers, and how to extract the most important information from feedback conversations. We’ll also include additional practical business tactics from experts like Ray Dalio and Grant Cardone and use ideas from books like Purple Cow and Stumbling on Happiness to provide a more complete understanding of customer behavior.

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To narrow down a customer segment that’s too wide, Fitzpatrick recommends asking yourself questions to divide that group into subsets. For example, if your initial target demographic for your e-reader is “everyone who reads,” you can narrow this down by asking yourself questions like “What groups of people read the most?” or “What kinds of readers spend the most money?”

You’ll know your subsets are specific enough when you have a clear idea of where to find customers to interview for feedback. For example, you may decide to design your e-reader for people who work from home and want to read more but are struggling to quit the habit of mindlessly scrolling through their phones. In this case, you could find a company that uses remote workers and reach out to all of its employees via email.

(Shortform note: If you work at an already established company, narrowing down your customer segment is even easier than the process Fitzpatrick describes. In New Sales. Simplified., Mike Weinberg suggests simply identifying your best customers and seeking out others who fit that same demographic. You’ll already know where to find these new customers: presumably, the same place you found your existing superstar customers.)

Step #2: Settle on Three Learning Objectives for Your Conversation

Once you’ve chosen a target audience, Fitzpatrick advises identifying the three most important things you’d like to learn by talking to these customers. Use these objectives to keep your conversations focused. For example, if you’re planning to sell e-readers, your three learning objectives may be to 1) find out if customers really are dissatisfied with the way they currently read books, 2) figure out what has kept them from buying an e-reader in the past, and 3) discover what is motivating your customers to read books in the first place.

As you gather information from your potential customers, you’ll need to continuously update your learning objectives. Adjust your learning goals to fill gaps in your knowledge until you fully understand your customers’ motivations, problems, and daily routines.

Good Learning Objectives Serve a Higher Purpose

What differentiates a good learning objective from a bad one? According to Angela Duckworth in Grit, good goals always contribute toward a specific “higher” goal. For example, you might set the goals to eat healthy foods and get sufficient sleep to feel more energized, and you might seek more energy so you can effectively build your business. Thus, a helpful way to brainstorm learning objectives is to identify your higher goal and list all the things you need to learn to achieve it. If you come up with a long list of sub-goals, paring it down to three objectives, as Fitzpatrick suggests, will ensure you focus your efforts enough to make progress.

Duckworth’s framework also reveals that you’ll need to update your learning objectives not only after you achieve them, but also as your higher-level goals change. For example, when you stop gathering information and start pitching your product to customers (as we’ll discuss later), you’ll stop asking questions like “What do our customers’ daily habits look like?” and start asking questions like “What is our customers’ biggest fear dissuading them from buying our product?”

How to Choose Learning Objectives: Seek Disappointment

How do you know which learning objectives to set? According to Fitzpatrick, the most important thing to keep in mind is to seek disappointment. The most valuable customer feedback you can receive is bad news that highlights the flaws in your business. The earlier you can pinpoint these flaws, the fewer resources you waste by investing in flawed ideas. Thus, aim your learning objectives at the weakest and riskiest parts of your business.

For example, if you’re looking to sell e-readers, you may be tempted to set learning objectives that have no chance of disappointing you: You may want to learn how readers typically motivate themselves to read, or what features the customer would want in their ideal e-reader. In contrast, if you set the objective “find out if customers really are dissatisfied with the way they currently read books,” you may discover that no one really wants a fancy e-reader and your business idea is hopeless. However, it would be better to learn this before you build your business rather than after.

(Shortform note: In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson takes this idea further, arguing that as well as seeking information to disprove your assumptions about your business, you should also seek information that disproves all your beliefs. While giving up the beliefs you hold tightly can be scary, it’s necessary for the same reason that seeking disappointment in business is necessary: It’s better to learn that you’re wrong and start over than to waste time investing in flawed ideas. For instance, if you believe that money is the key to happiness, it’s better to find information that disproves that belief and have a temporary identity crisis than to spend your entire life chasing higher salaries and making yourself miserable.)

Step #3: Seek Informal Conversations With Potential Customers

When the time comes to learn from potential customers, Fitzpatrick recommends sticking to informal conversations rather than official meetings. Customers are more likely to open up about their lives if they don’t feel pressured to give high-quality feedback. As mentioned above, in a casual setting, they often won’t know you’re conducting market research at all—they’ll just think you’re interested in their lives.

You can have informal feedback conversations anywhere—at the office water cooler, at a family reunion, or waiting for the bus. If you have your three learning objectives already in mind, you’ll be ready to learn from potential customers anytime. The vast majority of these conversations will take less than 15 minutes, making them far more efficient than scheduled business meetings.

(Shortform note: You may feel anxious about striking up informal conversations with total strangers to get them to open up about their lives. Psychologists offer several tips to help you overcome this fear: Ask yourself what you’re afraid of, then dissect whether or not these fears are realistic. Practice deep breathing exercises to calm your body in stressful moments. Finally, if you can, just start talking to strangers despite your fear—after you face the same fearful situation enough times without any negative consequences, your anxiety will likely go away.)

Where to Start Informal Conversations With Potential Customers

To initiate informal conversations with potential customers, Fitzpatrick suggests finding any excuse you can to talk to people in your target customer segment. People love talking about their lives and problems, so most of the time it’ll be easy to convince them to chat. Visit places where your potential customers’ community likes to spend time—for example, look for potential customers for your e-reader at bookstores. You could even bring the community to you by organizing meetups for people in your customer segment, like a productivity seminar for people who work from home.

(Shortform note: Instead of seeking out potential customers in their communities, it may be easier to reach out to those already around you—people in your community. In Sell or Be Sold, Grant Cardone recommends adding friends, family, and customers from the past to your business network. It’s much easier to message an old friend on Facebook than to stake out public spaces or organize a community meetup. Additionally, any business transaction, including feedback conversations, will be easier because you two already know each other. You’ll have an easier time gathering details about their life because you’re building on the knowledge you already have.)

Step #4: If Necessary, Schedule Formal Meetings

If you’ve chosen to sell to specialized professionals in an established industry (people you wouldn’t ordinarily cross paths with), you may need to schedule formal meetings to gather information. In formal meetings, Fitzpatrick mandates making clear that you’re seeking details about the customer’s life and nothing more. Otherwise, you risk the customer assuming that it’s a sales meeting, which puts focus on you and your business rather than them and their needs and goals.

(Shortform note: It may seem intimidating to reach out and schedule formal meetings with specialized professionals since they’re presumably busy with valuable, important work. However, if you clarify that all you want from them is information, many professionals will be glad to give you their time, as being an advisor has its own intrinsic rewards: They’ll feel good about helping out someone in need (you) and gain a new appreciation for their own expertise.)

To schedule formal meetings with specialized professionals without any personal connections in the industry, you might try cold calling—contacting strangers in your customer segment out of the blue. While Fitzpatrick acknowledges that cold calls can be nerve-wracking and frustrating, he says not to get discouraged by frequent rejection. If you find just one or two good leads, you can often leverage those into further connections by asking for introductions to these professionals’ business networks.

(Shortform note: You may feel uncomfortable about cold calling because you don’t want to be an unwelcome interruption to someone else’s day. Unfortunately, in New Sales. Simplified., Mike Weinberg explains that this attitude is self-defeating: If you make cold calls believing that customers don’t want to talk to you, they won’t. Instead, since the customer segment you’re calling has a problem you’re trying to solve, you can think of yourself as a helpful ally that people would be grateful to receive a call from. Customers who sense this selfless point of view will be less likely to resist if you ask to meet others in their business network.)

Stage #2: Use Discussions With Customers to Develop Your Business

So far, we’ve explained how to use the Mom Test to learn about your customers’ lives and diagnose the flaws in your business. After a week or two (at most) of seeking out these conversations full time, Fitzpatrick asserts that you should have gathered enough feedback to know that your product successfully solves a problem for the people in your customer segment.

At this point, Fitzpatrick recommends developing a prototype of your product or service as quickly as possible. As we’ll see, discussions with customers look a bit different after you reach this stage, and having a prototype to show off will make these conversations easier.

(Shortform note: Fitzpatrick recommends developing a prototype as quickly as possible, but he doesn’t give specific tips on how to streamline the development process. In Sprint, Jake Knapp recommends a process he calls the “Design Sprint”: Challenge yourself to transform an idea into a working prototype within a five-day workweek. This bare-bones prototype only needs to create the illusion of being a complete product for you to get accurate feedback from customers.)

Push Customers to Commit to Your Business

Once you have a prototype to show, you can set aside the Mom Test and start pitching your product to customers. This is because, at a certain point, the only way to objectively verify that your product is valuable is by convincing people to sacrifice something for it. In sales, this is known as “commitment.”

Before your discussions with customers, Fitzpatrick suggests identifying the specific way you’d like the customer to commit to the business, so you have a goal to aim for. Frequently, this means trying to convert the potential customer into an actual customer by asking them to put money down, but there are other ways customers can demonstrate their commitment. Rather than money, they may commit their time (for example, by agreeing to let you film them for a product testimonial) or their reputation (for example, by posting on social media about your product). If your product is truly valuable, there’s a good chance that potential customers will be excited to commit to it.

Fitzpatrick states that pushing for commitment after a meeting always results in a win: You either get a commitment that moves your business forward, or you get a rejection that yields valuable information (it either highlights your product’s flaws or indicates that you’ve met with someone outside your customer segment).

Don’t Push Too Hard for Commitment

Many sales experts believe that Fitzpatrick’s advice to set a commitment goal and push toward that goal is the cornerstone of sales. For example, in SPIN Selling, Neil Rackham explains that many salespeople swear by “closing techniques,” psychological tricks that subtly influence customers to commit. One closing technique is to ask questions that assume the customer has already agreed to purchase, like “How many can I order for you?”

However, using these techniques to doggedly push for commitment has risks. Rackham argues that if the potential customer feels you’re trying to pressure them into a quick purchase, they may assume you’re trying to manipulate them, and you’ll lose their trust.

The larger the commitment you request from the customer, the less effective aggressive closing techniques will be. In other words, avoid using closing techniques if your product is expensive, if you’re asking for a significant amount of your customer’s time, or if you’re asking them to risk a very prestigious reputation, like asking a well-respected critic to endorse your product.

This is why it’s vital that you give the potential customer a product they’re excited to commit to, as Fitzpatrick advises. To pitch such a product more effectively, Rackham suggests giving the potential customer plenty of time to ask questions or express concerns so they can learn why they should be excited about the product. In contrast, if you push for commitment too quickly, they’ll suspect you’re trying to hide something bad about the product.

Fitzpatrick’s advice to see every push for commitment as a victory, even if you don’t make the sale, may help you avoid falling into the trap of pushing too hard. Once you understand that the information you get from rejection is valuable and will help you get more sales in the future, you won’t feel pressured to make every sale and resort to closing techniques that may alienate your potential customers.

Scout for Advisors, Not Sales

When you push for customers to prove their commitment to your business, you’ll often end up turning feedback conversations into sales. However, Fitzpatrick recommends going into these conversations with the goal of finding long-term advisors, not making sales. Advisors—people who give you consistently accurate feedback over time—are valuable if you can stay in contact with them. More importantly, by making it your primary goal to judge the quality of the customer’s advice, you’ll feel more confident and in control than if you spend the meeting hoping you’re good enough to land a sale.

(Shortform note: Throughout The Mom Test, Fitzpatrick speaks from experience selling directly to businesses. Here, he implies that most of the time, your ideal customers would also make good advisors (because he assumes that they’re industry professionals). However, if you’re selling directly to consumers, your ideal customers are unlikely to be reliable long-term advisors. In this case, you may need to separate your pursuit of advisors from your pursuit of customer feedback rather than using the “two birds, one stone” approach Fitzpatrick offers here.)

Discussions With Customers: Advanced Tips

So far, we’ve learned not only how to turn discussions with customers into constructive feedback for your business, but also how to convert these conversations into sales and ongoing support. Now, let’s discuss a few of Fitzpatrick’s advanced tips on how to use discussions with customers to enhance your business.

Tip #1: Involve All Core Team Members in Discussions With Customers

Fitzpatrick states that all of your business’s core team members should be present for some discussions with customers. If the founder of a startup is the only one to ever talk with customers, they may unintentionally neglect to share important information with the rest of the team.

(Shortform note: Although it’s important to make sure everyone on the team is well informed, take care not to force team members to attend conversations with customers when their time would be better spent elsewhere. This is an easy mistake to make: In Indistractable, Nir Eyal argues that when we want to avoid the discomfort of a difficult problem, we often invite team members along to meetings in hopes that they’ll solve the problem for us.)

Tip #2: Take Notes During Discussions With Customers

Fitzpatrick asserts that another important aspect of conducting the conversation is taking notes. By recording and organizing the information you learn, you’ll have an easier time accurately recalling past conversations and keeping your other team members informed.

Fitzpatrick advises having a designated note-taker at most meetings so you don’t have to take notes and run the meeting at the same time. In addition, write down direct quotations when possible. Not only do quotes help you be objective when referring back to your notes, but they can also later be used for marketing and fundraising.

(Shortform note: Taking notes doesn’t just help you in the long run, as Fitzpatrick states—it also helps you stay engaged during the conversation itself. The process of taking notes keeps you alert and focused on what the customer is saying. If you normally have trouble staying focused, you may consider taking notes yourself rather than designating a note-taker. Another way you can make your note-taking more active is by rephrasing the conversation in your own words instead of copying down exact quotations as Fitzpatrick recommends. This will help you process what you’re learning and spark creative new ideas.)

Tip #3: Actively Learn From Discussions With Customers

Fitzpatrick explains that to get the most out of your discussions with customers, you must dedicate time to reviewing what you’ve learned. Review your notes with the rest of your team as soon as possible to make sure everyone is cooperating smoothly. Based on this information, consider how you could improve your business strategy, as well as what you could do better in the next customer conversation. Finally, in preparation for your next conversation, decide on your next three learning objectives.

(Shortform note: In Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin similarly advocate for regular “debriefs” to get your whole team on the same page and identify areas of improvement. They have their own explanation as to why this practice is effective: By including your whole team in the review process and gathering their input as you adjust your strategies and plan your next learning objectives, you inspire them to take ownership of the strategies you decide to pursue. They’ll feel emotionally invested in and personally responsible for the team’s success, making them far more effective team members than passive subordinates who just do what they’re told.)

Tip #4: Never Stop Seeking Feedback

Fitzpatrick advises that you continue to seek feedback from customers as needed throughout the lifespan of your company. Once your product is a proven success, you won’t have to spend as much time talking to customers as when you’re first starting out, but it’s helpful to maintain an ongoing stream of feedback as your business continues to grow.

(Shortform note: It’s important to never stop seeking feedback because companies often lose touch with what their customers want after achieving success. In Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, Richard Rumelt explains that these companies lose touch with customers because of the twin forces of inertia and entropy: People in any organization will default to doing things the way they’ve always been done, even if it’s no longer effective (inertia), and organizations become more disorganized over time unless they’re actively managed (entropy).)