Bob London opens customer discovery calls with one question: "If I could sit in on your next board meeting, what would be the number-one priority being discussed?" It shifts focus from product features to executive priorities, disarms prospects, and helps sellers align solutions with strategic goals that survive staff changes and economic shifts.
Chapters
The very first question I ask in almost every single customer discovery conversation and what I teach, it goes something like this. So let me ask you this. Suppose I could sneak into or was a fly on the wall in your next board meeting or executive leadership meeting. What do you think I would hear as the number one priority or challenge that they're talking about right now? So let's talk about why I ask that. Number one, it sets the tone that this is not a feature function conversation about day-to-day stuff. It really clearly telegraphs that I'm authentically curious in what's going on at the highest levels of their company. The classic reaction sometimes to teams that I coach is like, our customers aren't going to want to talk about that. Oh yes, they will. Because customers say discovery and listening are so important and they also rate us vendors as doing a poor job on those two things, they welcome those conversations. And think about it this way, the customers don't really want to talk yet again and more about our product. They're experts in their job and they're experts in what their company is doing. And that's why it's so effective to tap into that expertise as opposed to dragging them through a conversation about our product again. So it achieves this sort of big picture, like we're going to talk about big picture. And it's also very disarming because once they hear that we're not jumping in for another conversation about us and our product, then they're more likely to be transparent and feel comfortable opening up by the time we do get to questions that are a little bit more focused on the day-to-day and us. So it opens them up. The most successful companies in the world are really good at positioning the value of their product or service against their customers' top-level business priorities. So if I tie my solution, the value of it to the day-to-day customer, that customer may leave or get promoted. And then we have to kind of start over again, educating them and establishing. And also companies change their priorities all the time because of economic issues, macroeconomic trends, you know, interest rates, inflation, pick your poison. If we can discover the top-level priorities, here's what's going on in the board meeting, here's the big topic of conversation and tie the value of our solution to that. We have a much greater chance of not only keeping that customer and retaining them, but growing the business because we're proving value at the top level. Of the company so that when our decision maker or day-to-day contact leaves, there's still an impact to that organization if they no longer use our product. So all those things, the disarming nature of why it's kind of the lead-off question and the fact that it gives us insight as to what's going on at the top levels of company so we can position our solution accordingly are all super important.
