How The Mom Test helps distinguish between false hope and genuine feedback

If you have ever walked out of a customer conversation feeling great about your product, only to realize months later that the enthusiasm never translated into a purchase, you need to read The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick.

The core idea is deceptively simple: your mom will always tell you your idea is great because she loves you and does not want to hurt your feelings. Most customers do the same thing, just for different reasons. They are polite. They want to be supportive. They do not want the awkwardness of telling you your product is not worth what you are charging.

Why this matters for pricing

In my pricing work, I see the consequences of false positive feedback all the time. A team conducts customer interviews, hears encouraging things like “that sounds really useful” or “I could see us using that,” and concludes there is strong willingness to pay. They set their price accordingly.

Then they launch, and nobody buys. Or people buy once and churn immediately. The feedback was real in the sense that people said it, but it was not genuine in the sense that it reflected actual buying intent.

The Mom Test principles

Fitzpatrick’s approach boils down to a few key rules for customer conversations:

1. Talk about their life, not your idea. Instead of asking “would you use this?” ask “how do you currently handle this problem?” The first question invites polite agreement. The second reveals reality.

2. Ask about specifics, not hypotheticals. Instead of “would you pay 50 euros a month for this?” ask “what are you currently spending to solve this problem?” Hypothetical willingness to pay is almost always inflated.

3. Look for commitment signals. People who genuinely value something show it through their behavior. They give you time, share internal data, introduce you to colleagues, or ask about implementation details. Compliments are not commitment.

4. Listen for what they do, not what they say they will do. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. “I switched from tool X to tool Y last quarter because of pricing” tells you more than “I would definitely consider switching if the price were right.”

Applying this to pricing conversations

When I conduct pricing research interviews, I structure my questions around these principles:

• “Walk me through the last time you evaluated a solution like this. What happened?”
• “What did you end up spending? What was that approval process like?”
• “If this solution disappeared tomorrow, what would you do instead? What would that cost you?”

These questions ground the conversation in real behavior and real trade-offs. They make it much harder for the customer to give you a politely inflated answer.

The uncomfortable truth

The Mom Test often delivers uncomfortable truths. You might learn that customers value your product less than you thought. You might discover that the feature you built your pricing around is not actually what drives purchase decisions. That is painful, but it is infinitely better than discovering it after you have committed to a price point.

I would rather have five honest conversations that challenge my assumptions than fifty polite ones that confirm my biases. The Mom Test gives you a framework for getting those honest conversations. I recommend it to every founder, product manager, and pricing strategist I work with.

Want help designing customer research that informs your pricing? Get in touch.