Initial Discovery Meeting

This is a fictional account of an initial discovery meeting with a customer. This is an example of the types of questions I would ask as Product Manager before embarking on work with a new client.

• Tell me a little more about why you want this service.

  • Customer has an online presence devoted to content about the local bar and restaurant scene. She has a loyal audience of bar/restaurant owners, foodies, and other locals who are looking for places to go.

  • Bars and restaurants have really embraced trivia nights, but that there is a market still for other theme nights to bring in more business on evenings that are regularly slow. She researched and found that Bingo is gaining popularity, but wanted to build in a theme to this. Music is one of her passions, so she wants to start with music, but may also build in other themes, e.g., tv/movie bingo, meme bingo, etc. Since these all need screens, music bingo seemed like a logical place to start. Lower costs/lower barriers to entry. She is also looking at other possible game themes to add to her offerings if this takes off.

• Can you explain the rules for Music Bingo to me?

  • Similar to regular Bingo, each player has a card with a 5x5 grid for entries. Instead of the regular letter/number combo to select a square, each square has a song title and artist. The player marks the square when they have the song being played on their card. Five in a row in any direction wins.

  • Customer is open to suggestions on whether this should be a digital or a paper scorecard, and on whether or not the center square should be a free space, as in regular Bingo. She knows some places already have this as a game offering, but she doesn't believe there is a third-party seller for this yet.

• Who is your target audience?

  • She wants to sell her product to bar and restaurant owners, so her customer for the product is these owners. However, their customers will range in age/demographics, so having a variety of themes and genres to appeal to a diverse crowd is important.

  • She will use her active social media accounts to help promote both her products and the events created by her customers in her social media, so they are getting both the event from her and added promotions. This feels like a great way to create a double-win for them all.

• Are you selling physical equipment (i.e., scoresheets, daubers, speakers, microphones), or digital downloads (i.e., playlists, printable scorecards, scorecard app) for the product ?

  • The main product will be the IP in digital form (playlists, rules, etc.), but the customer is open to creating an online store with any physical products needed for game play. This was not part of her original plan, so this is a great add-on that came about in the discovery phase of the process.

• Why are you outsourcing this product instead of building it internally?

  • Customer's main asset in entering this market is having the pulse of the local community, and having an active audience for her content. She does not know much about building and monetizing a product outside of her social media activity, which consists of reviews and posts about local venues.

  • Customer is busy keeping up with current tasks and sees this as a great area for expansion, but she is unsure how to build it into a digital store and monetize it. She wants it to be professional and not to diminish her brand when she launches.

• What is the budget for this project?

  • Customer has asked if she can pay a flat fee for the initial consultation and research as she needs to work on numbers still. She requested an itemized list of costs by product area, e.g. cost per playlist to generate, cost of creating an online store, etc. She has not built this kind of product before, and she needs to know more about the costs. She believes it is the start of a series of similar products.

• What is the project deadline?

  • Agree to a one-week turnaround on the initial research and breakdown for building the product.

• What are your Social Media handles that are being used to build/promote this product? Can we create some content together to survey your current followers and better understand their wants/needs

  • This information is useful to understand the customer's current audience and tailor the product to them... or to determine if this is a product that will not fly in this domain.

My initial assessment after the interview:

Customer has an audience and access to it for surveys and more direct testing than we would attain otherwise. She bring little technical expertise to the team, but may have additional long-term work given her thoughts on expanding. This could be a long-term partnership, especially if she needs help maintaining and improving the product. It is worth doing some initial research and pricing out options to see where this goes.