Thought Provoker: Vision, Hallucination, and Customer Reality

You may think you know what customers want; but until you test and gather evidence on their reality, you’ll just be following a hallucination.

Drawn during a layover in Doha, Qatar.

Sometimes, we are so certain that we know what customers want, that we don’t think we need to test our ideas. In fact, the smarter and more experienced we are, the more likely we believe we are right.

The more we rely on our opinion, the bigger the risk that we might be hallucinating. It’s only by testing, and Customer Discovery, that we unearth the customer reality.

The more you test and perform Customer Discovery, the more you increase the overlap between your (visionary) ideas and the reality of customer needs. Sometimes when you start out the overlap is bigger; sometimes it’s smaller. However, without testing, you don’t know with certainty.

Make Testing A Priority In 2017

We've organized our 10 essential posts for testing your value propositions and business models in one place. Get out there and start talking to customers!