In this workshop, Elaine Chen, Cummings Family Professor of the Practice in Entrepreneurship and the Director of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, will be talking about how to use primary market research techniques to learn about the market and customer for innovative new venture creation.

1. Primary Market Research
Elaine Chen
2022-02

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3. Primary Market Research

4. “THERE ARE NO
FACTS INSIDE
THE BUILDING,
SO GET THE
HECK OUTSIDE.”
Steve Blank
Entrepreneur, Author,
Stanford Professor
Image
credit:
entrepreneur.com

5. Problem Solution
Problem-solution fit
PROBLEM SOLUTION
PURCHASE
INTENT
Customer Solution Money!
At different phases, PMR has different goals

6. START HERE
Problem Solution
Problem-solution fit
Customer Solution Money!

7. Build knowledge by talking to humans

8. Go to technique #1:
Detailed Interviews

9. Demonstration

10. Exercise: Interview each other
about your COVID travel experience
”Tell me about the last time…”
“Tell me about how you…”
”Tell me the story of…”
”You said XXX. Tell me more?”
“Why?” | “Why not?”
…
TALK LESS, LISTEN MORE

11. Technique cheat sheet
Establish rapport before you begin
Be 100% present. Don’t multitask.
Listen and observe. Pay attention to body language.
Don’t follow a script line by line. Let the subject lead.
Ask short, open ended questions – and practice active
listening.
”Tell me about the last time…”
“Tell me about how you…”
”You said XXX. Tell me more?”
“Why?” | “Why not?”
… 11

12. From raw data to actionable insights
1. “Boil the
ocean”
2. Detailed
interviews
3. Digest
insights
4. Build
“personas”

13. Persona template
2020 Revenue:
$629M
Headcount:
2500
Jim’s team
200
Behaviors
• Reports to the BU General Manager
• Manages the software organization (all
aspects) and the associated budget
• Primarily concerned with strategy,
leadership, management – high level
• Relies on direct reports (dev, devOps, SQA
managers) to recommend the right technical
decisions
Demographics
• 48 years old
• Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering degree
from UNY Stony Brooks
• Has been managing teams for 25 years; last
wrote production code 10 years ago
• Married with high school children
• Drives a Mercedes SUV
• Mac, iPhone 5, iPad Mini, W8 for work
Needs and goals
• Above all: his goal is to meet or exceed
revenue goals for his business unit by
releasing software on time and as planned
with marketing and sales
• He wants to keep the staff happy and to
attract hot new talent to join his team
• He needs to conserve budget – fixed $/y to
spend on tools, R&D – zero sums game

14. Interviews are just the beginning
Detailed Interviews Observation Immersion
Landing page experiments
Card sorting exercise Facebook ad experiments

15. PMR in real life – 2020-2021
PROBLEM SOLUTION PURCHASE INTENT
“Boil the
ocean”
interviews:
35+
Detailed
interviews:
12
Survey 1:
broad
207
Survey 2:
targeted
197
Product
concept
testing:
5
Ad & Landing
page tests
200
Diary
studies
31
Feature
tests
Provider
interviews
10+
Paid beta
TBD
Unpaid
beta
Pricing
tests

16. Go to technique #2:
Card sorting

17. Card sorting exercise
17

18. Exercise
Pick one person to be the customer
Decide which problem to solve for your
customer
Come up with a solution + brainstorm 10
features. One feature per card.
Sort with 2 rounds
Keep/discard
force rank top 5
KEEP IT MOVING!

19. Points to ponder with card sorting
Card sorting is a great way to get started in situations
where open ended interviews are hard to do (e.g.
translation needed)
You can use it for anything: Prioritizing needs/wants;
prioritizing features (but it works best for features)
Run two rounds of card sorting with voice over:
Elimination round
Prioritization round
Make sure you engage in conversation and ask “why”?
“Why not” – and be prepared to explain features the
customer does not understand
19

20. Procuring suspects

21. Deep dive on procuring suspects:
How do you reach them?
Stalk them where they hang out
Put out a call on your social networks
Place a Facebook Ad
Warm intro
Cold email
21

22. Deep dive on cold email:
HBR on the art of the cold email
Tailor the message to the recipient
Validate yourself
Alleviate their pain or give them something they
want
Keep it short, easy and actionable
Be appreciative and slightly vulnerable
Don’t use a template
22

23. Bad
Tailor the message to the recipient
Validate yourself
Alleviate their pain or give them something they want
Keep it short, easy and actionable
Be appreciative and slightly vulnerable
Don’t use a template

24. Worse
24
Tailor the message to the recipient
Validate yourself
Alleviate their pain or give them something they want
Keep it short, easy and actionable
Be appreciative and slightly vulnerable
Don’t use a template

25. This one worked (didn’t need to alleviate
pain as this was for discovery research)
• Tailor the message
to the recipient
• Validate yourself
• Alleviate their pain
or give them
something they
want
• Keep it short, easy
and actionable
• Be appreciative and
slightly vulnerable
• Don’t use a
template
Nagesh’s normal email auto reply says he gets so many
emails that he will no longer respond to them – and for
people to redirect their inquiries to his assistant

26. More Pro-tips
Start with alumni networks if possible
Spend at least 50% time on the subject line
Stalk them – then refer to recent quotes
Super short body with a clear ask
Specificity with flexibility for meeting times
26

27. “It’s really hard to schedule interviews”:
Don’t get discouraged
~1500 suspects
~100 leads
~75 contacted
~50
interviewed
50% yield is due
to warm intros
or other
common
connections.
Expect much
lower yield
otherwise.

28. Points to ponder when designing a PMR study
Goals and objectives? (e.g. Understand if XX has YY
problem; Understand how XX works today)
What methodology? (e.g. Detailed Interviews)
Who are your suspects? (Start with 5 real humans)
How might you procure suspects?
How do you make it easy for them to say yes? (15min
call)
How do you divide and conquer?
When do you boil the ocean versus do tight targeting?
…
28

29. Pro-tips on primary market research
Problem Research
before Solution
Research
Qualitative
techniques vs
Quantitative
techniques
Detailed Interviews
are the go-to
technique. Talk to
humans!

30. Learning more
“Talking to Humans” E-book - Giff
Constable
UX for Lean Startups: Faster, Smarter
User Experience Research and Design –
Laura Klein
PMR Primer - Elaine Chen
Templates and samples – Elaine Chen
Excerpt from MIT PMR class deck - Trish
Cotter
30

31. Additional Readings
“How Entrepreneurs can conduct Primary Market Research”
– Bill Aulet, Entrepreneur.com
“3 Go-to techniques for Primary Market Research” – Elaine
Chen, Huffington Post
“Scaling customer development: Crowdsourcing the
research” - Elaine Chen, Huffington Post
“How startups can run better landing page tests” – Elaine
Chen, Xconomy
PMR Case Study – Aavia – Elaine Chen
31

32. AMA
(Ask me anything)
go.tufts.edu/
entrepreneurship