Want More Customers? Here’s How To Get Inside Their Heads

Everyone tells you to think like the customer, but nobody ever talks about how

If you want to acquire more customers, you have to satisfy more customer needs. Oh, and you have to do it without asking what those needs might be. And finally, those needs will change, probably from day to day.

Does that sound about right?

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But I can tell you that in over 20 years of building startups, I’ve learned there’s no foolproof way to deliver the exact right solution to every customer, every time. The answers lie in the margins — How many needs can we serve for how many customers with the least amount of friction?

Planning for every possible customer use case will drive you nuts. But there are steps you can take to maximize your chances of getting your solution mostly right for most customers the first time.

Last week, I sat across from one of the startup teams I’m advising and ran through exactly those steps.

Step 1: To Expand Your Market, Dream the Ultimate Solution

The first thing we did was make two lists. The first list identified all the things the solution could do…