Feedback

Getting useful Feedback from your potential customers is the core of the Iteration Cycle. Useful Feedback from real prospects helps you understand how well your offer meets their needs before development is complete, which allows you to make changes before you start selling. Here are a few tips to maximize the value of the Feedback you receive:

1. Get Feedback from real potential customers instead of friends and family. Your inner circle typically wants you to succeed and wants to maintain a good relationship with you, so it's likely that they'll un-intentionally sugarcoat their Feedback. For best results, be sure to get plenty of Feedback from people who aren't personally invested in you or your project.

2. Ask open-ended questions. When collecting Feedback, you should be listening more than you talk. Have a few open-ended questions prepared to give the conversation a bit of structure, but otherwise encourage the other person to do most of the talking. Short who/ what/when/where/why/how questions typically work best. Watch what they do, and compare their actions with what they say.

3. Steady yourself and keep calm. Asking for genuine Feedback (the only useful kind) requires thick skin-no one likes hearing their baby is ugly. Try not to get offended or defensive if someone doesn't like what you've created; they're doing you a great service.

4. Take what you hear with a grain of salt. Even the most discouraging Feedback contains crucial pieces of information that can help you make your offering better. The worst response you can get when asking for Feedback isn't emphatic dislike: it's total apathy. If no one seems to care about what you've created, you don't have a viable business idea.

5. Give potential customers the opportunity to preorder. One of the most important pieces of Feedback you can receive during the iteration process is the other person's willingness to actually purchase what you're creating. It's one thing for a person to say that they'd purchase something and quite another for them to be willing to pull out their wallet or credit card and place a real order. You can do this even if the offer isn't ready yet-a tactic called Shadow Testing. Whenever possible, give the people who are giving you Feedback the opportunity to preorder the offering. If a significant number of people take you up on the offer, you're in good shape: you know that you have a solid offering and you immediately boost your cash flow. If no one is willing to preorder, you know you have more work to do before you have a viable offer-by asking why they're not willing to purchase right now, you'll discover their major Barriers to Purchase: what's holding them back.