Your curiosity can be a business superpower. But the last time you were *authentically* curious was probably at age 6.

Here's the problem: As we get older, we get these horrible things called responsibilities: School, homework, activities, college applications, college, jobs, adulting, marriage, kids, retirement planning.

Time to get serioius - no time to be curious!

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At age 6, I was digging holes in the backyard because. Just because.

Maybe I thought I could get to the other side of the world. Instead, I found worms and other bugs and got real dirty. But I just kept digging. (Thank goodness for the old days of "unstructured play," when I wasn't on 3 sports teams and over-scheduled with multiple playdates.)

That was authentic curiosity. curiosity for no other reason than being curious. No agenda, no goals, no guardrails. I learned how to have fun without toys, games or equipment. I also accidentally learned how to build a rudimentary aqueduct, courtesy of our garden hose.

But for most of us, as our responsibilities increase, our authentic curiosity gets squeezed out, often down to zero. We don't have time or a compelling reason to be curious.

When we lose curiosity we lose a lot:
We lose the opportunity to learn.
We lose the chance to build empathy.
We lose the ability to gain new skills.

For example:

Early in our careers, we execute priorities that have been established from 10 levels above us. We aren't being paid to be curious - to ask questions and bring up other possible solutions.

But here's the truth: Those exhibiting curiosity at work (assuming we're doing our jobs well) can differentiate themselves professionally. They can be known as problem identifiers and problem solvers. A combination of execution and curiosity can make you indispensable and promotable.

But being promoted means more responsibility and less time to be curious. Curiosity can even become scary, because you're now in a cohort that views questioning the status quo as slowing down process and progress on their initiatives - and therefore risky to their careers. "We gotta get sh%t done, we don't have time to question it!"

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As someone who has benefitted tremendously from rediscovering and leveraging my professional curiosity, I strongly encourage you to try it.

Start by asking your stakeholders - internal or external users, customers, sponsors - for some "step back" time.

Ask them some disruptive questions that will help you understand their tailwinds: Why they are making the requests they're making.

These conversations will improve transparency. Transparency will foster mutual empathy.

And empathy will help you uncover information and insights to help you be more successful in supporting their priorities and goals.

Stay curious!

Great discussion over at Gain Grow Retain on "Helping customers become more strategic,"
where a member said this:

"...some clients cannot see, refuse to see, or refuse to even care about the value and importance of the services we offer and stay focused only on what is in front of them at the moment."

Here's my take:

How to get customers to be heads up vs. heads down (tactical). Tip: Ask if you can take 10 - 15 minutes for a "step back" conversation, then ask a few disruptive (disrupt the customer's same ol' thought patterns) about their company's priorities and challenges and their team's broader priorities - instead of about your product and the value they perceive.

1. Tell them you want to understand what's happening in their world, which will help your company be a better partner over the long term. Over 2/3 of customers who get this request from one of my clients schedules a call. (I have an email template for this.)
   
2. Two examples of disruptive questions: (i) If I was a fly on the wall at your next board or executive leadership meeting, what do you think is the biggest priority or challenge I’d hear about? (ii) Q: What’s the one thing your company is absolutely counting on you to get done this year? 
   
3. What I've learned during 2,600 customer discovery conversations is that customers are experts in their own business/job. They are not, nor do they aspire to be, experts in your product. This explains why they engage so much when you (a) ask about their business and their team's priorities, then (b) just go on mute and don't jump in to solve or sell. No agenda other than uncovering what they believe is important.
   
4. Their answers will help you better position your product/solution against one of their big priorities or sub-priorities.

Also - and perhaps it's just me - but the wording of the post sounded understandably frustrated but even a bit anti-customer: "Some clients cannot see, refuse to see, or refuse to even care about the value and importance of the services we offer." There could be an empathy gap here.

1. The way I encourage teams to think of this is that clients just want to do their job well, perhaps get some recognition, feel professionally satisfied and achieve growth (if that's the path they're on). They're just humans trying to get stuff done. So empathy is in order. Unless they're toxic which is another story. I wouldn't think of them as flat out "refusing," but just not understanding why you're asking them to take a step back.
2. So if you want to change their behavior, try modeling that behavior first. If you want them to be transparent, ask more authentic questions showing them you want their truth. If you want them to be strategic, position your "ask" per #1 above. Then all you have to do is listen to understand vs. listen to respond.

IMX (in my experience) and the experience of the teams I work with, customers talk 70%+ of the time when you use these approaches.

Raj Khera of MoreBusiness.com is one of the best interviewers I've had the privilege of speaking with.

He listens. He's comfortable with a bit of a pause or silence. He's curious as heck.

To see for yourself, listen to or watch our recent convo on his podcast below.

The topic: Power Questions that Unlock Product-Market Fit.

While we covered a lot of insights and tips for businesses, it was a wide-ranging discussion, for example:

How much better would our society be if just 1% of people got 1% better at understanding the perspective of the person they're talking to?

Cheers!

To quote Jeff's podcast page, here's what he said about this episode in his fantastic GSD (getting services done) podcast:

Jeff sits down with the legendary Bob London  to discuss Strategic Conversations. Bob has over 2600 customer conversations analyzed among sales and CS, and has put together a framework for talking to customers called the Five Customer Love languages. Jeff and Bob dive deep into the 5 love languages and talk about how to use the framework to get your customers to open up about what's important to them. We discuss how these interact with customer calls, 45 minute zombie QBR's, and also how to overcome imposter syndrome. Additional topics include: working with Covid, schadenfreude as a Red Sox fan, getting fired and finding your own path.

​Enjoy!

I recently had the privilege of presenting a webinar, courtesy of my friends at ChurnZero, on how to better engage our customers and prospects by understanding THEIR definition of value (aka love) based on what's important to THEM, not us.

Here's a great recap article from ChurnZero with highlights.

And here's the full recording of the webinar.

And to see the slides, just click below:

"86% of people think their listening skills are above average."

I know it's first thing on a Monday, but hopefully your math radar just went off.

Kudos to listening guru Oscar Trimboli for that stat which reveals a significant lack of self-awareness and understanding of so many folks - including me!

Amazing things will happen when you "mute yourself," especially when talking to customers and prospects.

Start conversations with a quiet mind.
Don't rush to solve or sell.
Go where THEY want the conversation to go.
Don't judge or defend.

Generally speaking, just...

$TFU

Here's a link to Oscar Trimboli's wonderful podcast: https://oscartrimboli.libsyn.com/the-four-villains-of-listening

Hard to believe that it's been nearly 2 years since I got a big taste of how generous the customer success world is.

After I did two podcast interviews with Jay Nathan and Jeff Breunsbach of Gain Grow Retain (which was in and of itself a somewhat generous act since I was a nobody in CS at the time), someone I did not know, Diana De Jesus, wrote two articles summarizing my interview. Here's one.

And I liked her summaries better than my interviews!

She clearly and concisely highlighted points that were relevant to HER and HER AUDIENCE - something I wasn't able to do at the time.

Fast forward to last evening, when I finally had the privilege to speak live with Diana, 1:1. And she blew me away again with her insights.

So thank you, Diana, for providing significant emotional tailwind to my customer journey. Looking forward to our next chat for sure.

And give her a follow on LinkedIn or at her web site.

This is inspired by a really interesting observation by a customer success manager yesterday during our weekly team check in call.

His said he looks forward to these meetings because it is a welcome departure from his regular routine. He appreciates the opportunity to take a step back once a week “to think and reflect a bit.”

To think about
- how things are going.
- how we engage in customer conversations.
- what we can do differently to reach desired outcomes.

It reminded me of the question coaches often ask business owners and entrepreneurs, “Are you working in your business or on your business?“

In it = The regular routine, the daily grind.
On it = Taking a step back to be curious and reflect.

So I’ll end this post where it started: “Are you working in your job or on it?”

Have a great Friday and to my US friends, hope you enjoy the long holiday weekend.

"As a customer success professional, I work accounts in tandem with #sales. Some of them panic when I ask these (bold, disruptive, open-ended) discovery questions, even if the answers I get are great. Any advice for working with nervous sales folk?"

That is an actual question from my webinar this week with Involve.ai - and I've heard it before. Here's my answer:

Quick background

• True, many sales folks are trained to choreograph and script customer/prospect interactions to get the answers they want - the answers that will advance towards the salesperson's desired outcome.
• Customer discovery is often considered more of a formality that is compartmentalized to the early part of the sales cycle.
• Questions are often leading vs. open-ended. Sales believes that leading questions keep them in "the driver's seat" on the call, while open-ended questions may lead to other topics.

But consider the facts...

• Customers are begging sales to listen more and better (image at left below). The Rain Group, a leading sales consulting and training company, asked buyers what factors most influence their purchase decision. The first is "Leading a thorough discovery of my concerns, wants and needs." The third: "Listening to me."
• Sales folks who listen more sell more. In their analysis of 1 million recorded sales calls (image at right below), Gong.io found that "star reps" talk less than half the time while "average reps" talk more than two-thirds of the time. (BTW, on my discovery calls, customers talk 85% of the time, on average.)

• My experience in conducting nearly 2,600 customer discovery conversations is that customers have a lot to say about their problems, priorities and challenges but aren't given the time and space to communicate those. Open-ended questions are the key to achieving trust and getting customers to feel comfortable expanding on topics important TO THEM. This in turn enables you to understand and best address their real-world needs.
• At the end of my discovery calls, customers often thank ME! "Why?" I ask, "are you thanking me? I want to thank you for your time!" "Because," they reply, "not enough vendors ask these kinds of questions. I feel as though I got to talk about what was important to us."

My suggestions:

1. Nicely remind sales that your role is customer SUCCESS, which means understanding what's important from the customer's point of view so you can retain them, add value and, when the opportunity arises, grow revenue. Therefore you may need to ask questions different from the typical (cliche) discovery questions. 
2. Point out that the answers customers gave were "great," and explain why and how these insights will help towards your common objectives with sales.
   
3. Politely share the research above to educate them on the importance of listening - based on how important it is to customers - and also to their paychecks!
4. Feel free to blame your Radically Authentic Discovery approach on this guy Bob London who has done a ton of discovery calls!

Questions? Email me at bob@chieflisteningofficers.com.