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1 In customer discovery there's no such thing as an irrelevant tangent. Everything's important.

Name: 1 In customer discovery there's no such thing as an irrelevant tangent. Everything's important.
Uploaded: 2023-08-18T20:45:31+00:00
Duration: 53 s
Channel: Bob London
Description: In this segment, Bob London critiques the common practice of vendors scripting and steering customer discovery meetings, arguing that such agendas…

18 Aug 2023 · 1 min

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In this segment, Bob London critiques the common practice of vendors scripting and steering customer discovery meetings, arguing that such agendas alienate customers. He advises interviewers to create a comfortable space where customers can speak freely, treating any tangent as potentially valuable. The key is to map whatever the customer mentions back to the core objectives of discovery: understanding the job the customer is trying to accomplish, the emotional outcomes they seek, and how the solution aligns with the company's value proposition. London emphasizes that the interviewer's sole agenda should be to uncover the customer's true priorities, not to push a pre‑determined script.

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Customers have kind of had enough of our agenda, of we vendors kind of overly scripting and choreographing meetings. And so it's really important to create a time and a place where they feel comfortable talking about whatever is most important to them. What I tell people is there's no such thing as going off topic. If the customer is talking about it, then it must be important to them for some reason. So whatever the customer is talking about, try to find how it links back to the things that you're trying to discover, which is what job are they trying to accomplish with your product or service and how is that going to make them feel good about the job they're doing and how will their company value them because it's, you know, what they're trying to do lines up with the company. So usually in there you can find a link between whatever they're saying and those two kind of top-level guiding principles. So I would emphasize try not to have your own agenda other than to understand what's going on in the customer's mind and what's most important to them.