Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

The Untapped Power of Sales Calls: Unveiling Honest Customer Feedback with ZoomInfo's CEO

16 Oct 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:48

A short YouTube monologue (by Jason M. Lemkin) arguing that sales calls are a uniquely honest source of customer feedback. The speaker—who built product and sold at ZoomInfo and DiscoverOrg—recounts that being on sales calls let him hear immediate reactions to new features and competitive comparisons, and advises product designers/engineers to participate in sales conversations to avoid losing critical feedback.

Chapters

So, first, what happens on a sales call is pretty magical. Like, if you've built the product and you've engineered the product, getting on that sales call where you have a customer or a prospect and you've got to ask them for money, the most honest feedback ever comes in that moment. And for someone who's building a product, who's designing a product, who's engineering the product, to not be front and center when that's happening is just a huge loss. Like every I built product at ZoomInfo, at DiscoverOrg, the first company for the first six, seven years. And I had a tight connection to the customers because I was also selling. And so I could hear their feedback when I showed them a new feature. I could hear their feedback when they would talk to me about what competitors had that we didn't have.