The underlying strategy behind the Mafia Offer campaign can be summed up as:

Learn before you pitch

Do problem discovery before solution building (whether it is an MVP or a demo)

Use the Innovator’s Gift in your pitch

Anchor your solution against old problems

Demo-Sell-Build

Sell the demo before building a working solution

1. Customer interviews to understand customers' current worldview

2. Design an entirely new solution or retrofit into the existing solution you are envisioning already. Usually, during discovery you uncover problems you never thought or problems that you are addressing but that people value much more than you. In the latter case, you can position your message deeper around the 2nd/3rd problem rather than the one you thought was 1st.

3. The goal of the demo is to get people's attention so they can give you insights to build a better MVP. To make the demo compelling, you need to understand people's problems.

   Don't show how to use your product. Convince the customer that you can do something different that can deliver a UVP. You can use a single slide or a mockup to do that.

   Package your learnings into a Mafia Offer:

   • if you can get enough traction, you can get Problem/Solution fit and build the MVP
   • if you can't get enough traction, do some more discovery or refine your solution further

   How much is enough traction? It depends on your traction goal that comes from your traction roadmap. Even without building a product you can begin to tell a traction story.

Building a compelling mafia offer is a high-touch process built on several weeks of customer interviewing with the goal of uncovering story 1 and crafting story 2.

Story 1: Understand your customer’s current worldview

What existing alternative are they using and why?

You use problem discovery interviews to understand what existing alternative your customers currently choosing and why.

Customer/Problem Fit Criteria

Story 2: Cause a switch to your solution

What solution will you offer to cause a switch?