Objective

Understand how customers currently select and use solutions (existing alternatives) when triggered to get a job done. You will use these stories to prioritize problems worth solving in order to formulate a solution and assemble a compelling offer.

What you need to learn

The existing alternative interview is all about capturing a factual customer journey from the trigger point to wherever the customer ends up in the consumption funnel.

By the end of an interview, you should be able to identify:

• The initial trigger (first thought) and any additional triggers
• The old solution (what they were using before the selected existing alternative) and why it was no longer good enough (the expectation violation)
• The consideration set (what other solutions they considered)
• The new solution (chosen existing alternative) and why they picked it
• Inertia (old habits) that kept them from moving forward
• Friction (new anxieties) that kept them from moving forward
• What's next for the customer?

Finding prospects

Here are some guidelines and techniques for recruiting prospects:

Target your top existing alternatives

• If you have a known list of existing alternatives your customers turn to when they have the job to be done, start with your top 3 existing alternatives.

• If you are unsure what existing alternatives your customers use, turn your focus to triggering events and ask:

  When customer [encounters a triggering event], they [use possible existing alternative].

  (e.g. When entrepreneurs get hit with an idea, they go to startup-specific meetups.)

Using this exercise, you may end up with indirect and even complementary solutions which is ok. You can use this to find potential customers to interview and through the interview discover the existing alternatives that compete with your envisioned product directly.

Focus on people who recently switched

Because memory has a short half-life, you need to target people who have recently purchased the existing alternative within the last 90 days. This timeframe still allows people to recall important details while also giving them time to have tried the solution enough times to be able to evaluate whether it gets the job done.