You will produce a worksheet that helps a buyer quantify their problem during the meeting.
In lesson 4.2, Put a number on the impact, with the buyer, Priya worked out the cost of Joel's problem on a scrap of paper. It worked, but she was improvising, and on a busy day she would have forgotten a question or done the arithmetic wrong in front of him.
An impact worksheet takes the improvising out. It is a single page you bring to discovery meetings, with the questions that get the buyer's own numbers, a simple calculation they can follow, and space for urgency. This exercise walks you through building one for your own product, using Hafiz's worksheet for payroll software as the worked example. Allow twenty-five minutes.
Write down the three root problems you solve most often. Use the work from lesson 4.1, Find the problem underneath the first problem: these should be roots, the things that cost money, time or reputation, rather than surface complaints.
Hafiz's three, for small and medium firms:
Payroll corrections take admin staff days every month Managers lose time handling pay complaints Staff leave partly because they stop trusting their pay
Three is enough. If your list has more, pick the three you hear most.
For each problem, write the questions that let the buyer estimate the size of it. You want frequency, duration and cost per event, as in lesson 4.2. Every input should come from the buyer.
Hafiz's questions for problem one: "How many days a month does payroll take, including corrections?" "How many hours is a working day for that person?" "Roughly what does an hour of their time cost the company?"
For problem two: "How many hours a week do you spend on pay questions and complaints?" "How many weeks a year?" "What is an hour of your time worth to the business, roughly?"
For problem three: "In the last year, has anyone left where pay was part of the reason?" "What does it cost to replace one person, including hiring and training?"
Read each question aloud. If it sounds like a form, rephrase it so it sounds like a conversation, using what you learned in lesson 2.3, Questions that sound like interrogation, and fixes.
Under each set of questions, write a simple calculation with blanks for the buyer's numbers. Keep it to something the buyer can check in their head or on their phone, such as hours a week times weeks a year. Avoid anything that needs a spreadsheet in the meeting.
Here is Hafiz's worksheet filled in with Rachel's answers. The figures are hers, and they are an example only.
Problem one: 2 days a month, 8 hours a day, 12 months, which is 192 hours a year. At S$25 an hour, that comes to S$4,800.
Problem two: 3 hours a week, 50 weeks, which is 150 hours a year of Rachel's time. At the S$40 an hour she put on it, that is S$6,000.
Problem three: 1 driver in the past year, at the S$3,000 she estimated to replace one, which comes to S$3,000.
Total across the three: S$13,800 a year, from Rachel's own figures.
Leave a line under the total for a reading-back sentence, as in lesson 4.2. Hafiz's reads: "So, using your numbers, that's about [total] a year. Does that sound right, or would you change anything?"
At the bottom of the page, add two lines from lesson 4.3, Urgency: why now, and what if nothing changes. The first asks: "What made you look at this now?" The second: "If nothing changes in the next year, what happens?" Leave room to write the date or event that drives the urgency, if there is one.
Rachel's answers: the new night shift starting in two months, and "overtime would double and I'd lose my mind." Hafiz writes the start month beside it.
Ask a colleague or friend to play a buyer with one of your three problems. Give them a short brief, but let them invent their own numbers. Run the worksheet with them as you would in a real meeting.
Watch for three things: a question that confuses them, a calculation they cannot follow, and a point where they start to feel interrogated. Afterwards, ask them directly which question was hardest to answer and why. Then fix those questions.
Hafiz's first test found one problem. "What is an hour of your time worth?" confused his colleague, who did not know how to answer. Hafiz changed it to "If you hired someone to take this off your plate, what would you expect to pay them an hour?" which got an answer straight away.
You have a one-page worksheet with your three most common problems, the questions that draw out the buyer's own figures for each, a calculation the buyer can follow, and space for urgency and its date. You have tested it once and changed at least one question that confused the tester.
Open a blank page, write your product's name at the top, and start with the three problems before you begin the activity below.
Build the worksheet for your product and test it with a colleague playing a buyer, then fix any question that confused them.
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