Bob London argues that rigid agendas squeeze authenticity out of customer conversations. Drawing from 2,600 B2B discovery calls, he shows that unscripted listening segments surface the strategic insights that actually drive buying decisions, even when some customers want structure.
Chapters
Welcome back to Customer Discovery with Bob and Mike. I am Bob London, customer discovery expert, and this is— this here is Mike. We're going to continue the conversation today about the 6 myths of customer intimacy. I've uncovered these during 2,600 customer discovery conversations that I've conducted with B2B decision makers over the years. These myths are really meant to help you understand how customers really see things so that you can get them to engage. We are not going to be able to keep and grow customers or acquire them for that matter if we don't get them to engage. They have to show up and open up about what's most important to them. Only then can we align the value of our solution with what's most important, not only to them, but to their company at large. What are they trying to accomplish? So let's break it down. Customer intimacy myth number 2: Every meeting has to be driven by a tightly scripted agenda. False. Wrong. Yes, of course. Don't freak out. I know in customer success, account management, and sales, sometimes the customer wants an agenda. Well, that's just a sign that they want to know you're not wasting their time and they want to know perhaps who to bring to the meeting or who not to bring to the meeting. What I'm saying to you is, sure, have an agenda sometimes, but the most revealing and useful parts of the meeting will be agenda-less conversations, agenda-less listening. Let the customer go where they want to go because the reality is customers have so much to tell us and they're— that they're willing to tell us that will be useful to us, but we just don't leave time and create a space in the meeting to talk about that stuff. They are much more candid when you take take away the guardrails like agendas. Agendas are like boa constrictor, it sort of squeezes the life out of the meeting. There's no room for humanity, there's no room for honest, authentic connection and conversation. We spend so much time talking at them, not enough time talking with them. We're going to talk about PowerPoint and slides, that's a whole nother thing. Everyone hates them and I got a rant on that for another day, another myth. So think about creating parts of the conversation that are agenda-less. It could be 5 minutes, it could be 10 minutes, it could be an entire 30-minute sort of a customer— think of it as a customer rediscovery call. I talk about that in my UBR training. When you do that, I promise you, you will get insights. And it happens over and over and over again in the conversations that I have with my clients, customers, doing customer listening tours, but also when I teach customer-facing teams to have more strategic customer conversations. There are parts of the meeting that should be agenda-less, and those will be the richest sources of insights. And again, going back to the beginning, You can use the insights to align the value of your product or service towards what is most important, not only to the customer but to their company, because their company's priorities and challenges are what is driving your customer to make decisions. That is all for now. Join me tomorrow for the next myth, number 3 out of 6.
