Teresa Torres on how to interview customers, automating continuous discovery, the opportunity solution tree framework, making the case for user research, common interviewing mistakes, and much more

Teresa Torres is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and coach. She teaches a structured and sustainable system for continuous discovery that helps product teams infuse their daily product decisions with customer input. She’s coached hundreds of teams at companies of all sizes, from early-stage startups to global enterprises, in a variety of industries. She has taught over 11,000 product people discovery skills through the Product Talk Academy and hundreds through her coaching practice, and is the author of Continuous Discovery Habits.

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Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible:

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In this episode, we cover:

[3:37] How Teresa is in the top 5 people in the world who’s helped the most PMs.

[5:25] What is the “opportunity solution tree framework”?

[8:19] What’s an example of an opportunity solution tree, for Netflix?

[14:17] Why do we usually approach opportunity finding wrong?

[18:10] What should you do if your company is a feature factory?

[21:00] What is continuous discovery, and why is it so important?

[23:13] What do you do if your leaders tell you there’s no time for user research?

[25:55] How can you automate weekly conversations with customers?

[29:04] How do you stay unbiased as a PM about a potential solution?

[31:23] Should a PM have more say over other functions?

[35:33] What are Teresa’s best tips for how to interview customers?

[39:57] What’s the most common mistake people make while interviewing customers?

[40:25] How does discovery change as your company grows?

[43:27] When should you do user research and when should you run an experiment?

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Where to find Teresa:

• Product Talk: https://www.producttalk.org/

• Opportunity solution tree: https://www.producttalk.org/opportunity-solution-tree/

• Continuous Discovery Habits: https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Discovery-Habits-Discover-Products/dp/1736633309

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresatorres/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ttorres