The purpose of customer interviews is to gain valuable insight from the minds of your customers. The only way to achieve this is to listen. You do not gain anything of value when you are the one talking. Telling customers about your product is not customer development, it is marketing. Customer development is listening to customers so you can better understand and serve them. If your conversations with your customers are only about getting your message across, you have missed a great opportunity.
When I’m interviewing customers, I challenge myself to speak as little as possible, so I can listen as much as possible. This has been one thing that I personally had (and still have) to work on tremendously. I am a big talker… I could honestly talk to a wall if I wanted but when it is a topic on something I am passionate about I could talk for days. To counter that I always time myself on how long and much I talk when I am with a customer. It allows me to truly see in black and white how I did. Every customer discovery call I work to decrease that time.
In order to understand what causes customers to buy, I need to hear how they articulate things themselves. How they rate their issues. The sequence in which they remember things. The connections they make between things that I never would have thought of.
If it’s in person, I leave empty air space to the point that it can be awkward. People will often blurt out anything to break the silence, and this sort of blurting is usually unfiltered and straight from their subconsciousness. That is gold.
>
“Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.”
I listen carefully to the words and terminology they use to describe their situation, so I can use those words to communicate at scale to other people just like them. I want to know everything I can about them. Who are they as people? What has been their journey that got them to where they are today? What motivates them in their work? What is their typical day like? What crazy thing happened last week?
I avoid any urge to inject my thoughts or opinions into the mix at all costs. I’m there to understand them, not for them to understand me. This is not to say you should speak. Go out of your way to make them comfortable and put them at ease. Ask questions that make them dig deeper into a deeper topic. Backtrack so you are sure you are understanding them. Ask for any clarification that you feel you need.
Just be sure that you are staying focused on their story, their problems, their opinions. Think of yourself as a therapist. They never tell you anything. They ask questions that allow you to discover it yourself. That is what you need to emulate and through their self discovery is your ticket to success. If you ever feel like you are being a politician you are on the wrong track.
Give the customer freedom to wander intellectually. I can almost guarantee you that they will go off in directions you hadn’t considered before. This is a good thing. Follow them — they’re showing you the path to success.
