How do you know if customers will pay for your product?

Desirability is measured in commitments, not compliments. Business design goes back through the sprint's synthesis pages and sorts every signal about value into three piles: what people said they would pay for, what they said they would never pay for, and what they gave freely. The third pile is where the case's central false assumption lived. The evidence was gathered in the sprint; this chapter is about reading it for money.

What is the difference between a compliment and a commitment in customer research?

Desirability is measured in commitments, not compliments. Business design goes back through the sprint's synthesis pages and sorts every signal about value into three piles: what people said they would pay for, what they said they would never pay for, and what they gave freely. The third pile is where the case's central false assumption lived. The evidence was gathered in the sprint; this chapter is about reading it for money.

How do you assess willingness to pay from interviews?

Desirability is measured in commitments, not compliments. Business design goes back through the sprint's synthesis pages and sorts every signal about value into three piles: what people said they would pay for, what they said they would never pay for, and what they gave freely. The third pile is where the case's central false assumption lived. The evidence was gathered in the sprint; this chapter is about reading it for money.

Evidence of desire · Business Design

§The hypothesis: the segments that value the most have shown it with a commitment, and the things they value are things they would pay for rather than things they already give away.

§The third whitepaper gathered the . This chapter reads it again with one question: where is the money? Not to price anything yet, which is chapter 9, but to know which of the four canvases has desire strong enough to carry a business.

§ 3.1Commitments over compliments#

§Fitzpatrick's rule from the is the sorting rule here. A compliment costs nothing and is worth nothing. A commitment costs the person something: time, reputation, money, or work. The synthesis pages recorded what each interviewee agreed to at the end, and with what face. Business design counts those.

§In the case, the were uneven in a way that mattered. Customers had agreed to second conversations and to being in a pilot; two had offered introductions. Operations staff had agreed to less, and two had refused the laptop. The desire on the customer side was evidenced. The desire on the operation side was asserted by managers and not yet shown by the people who would use it.

§ 3.2Three piles#

§Every signal about value from the pages goes into one of three piles.

§Would pay. Things people described as painful enough that they already spend money or time to relieve them, or said unprompted they would pay for. In the case: a table somewhere in the group on a full night, which occasional customers already paid for in the currency of calling three restaurants; and, for managers, knowledge of regulars that did not walk out with a departing server, which they already paid for in training and turnover.

§Would never pay. Things people liked and explicitly would not pay for, or that the market has taught them are free. In the case: being greeted by name. Every customer loved it. None would pay a subscription for it, because recognition is something a good restaurant does, not something a guest buys.

§Gave freely. Things people handed over without being asked and without expecting a return. This is the pile teams misread. In the case, six of six customers filled in their profile gladly, unpaid, because they understood it would get them served better. The team had designed a point economy to compensate customers for their data. The data was being given away.

§ 3.3Reading for the business, not the product#

§The three piles answer a different question from the sprint's. The sprint asked whether the problem was real and the solution understood. This reading asks where value concentrates. In the case it concentrated on two edges of the four canvases: occasional customers wanting a table, and managers wanting knowledge that survived turnover. The center, recognition, was the most desired thing in the room and belonged to the would-never-pay pile.

§That does not make recognition worthless. It makes it the reason customers participate, and participation is what produces the data that the managers' segment would pay for. Ramanujam and Tacke's argument is that the conversation belongs at the start, not at launch, precisely because it reshapes what the product is: here it turned recognition from the product into the mechanism.

§ 3.4What has to be true#

§Added to the running list: for each segment, the commitments given and dodged. The three piles, with each item's quote and code. The segments where the would-pay pile is not empty, which chapter 10 will need. And every item in the gave-freely pile, marked so that no monetization hypothesis in chapter 9 charges for it or pays for it.

3. Evidence of desire