Truth Seeking Questions to Help Product Teams Identify Customer Problems and Priorities
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 On the eve of my webinar with ClientSuccess (nearing 800 registrations at last count), I feel the need to thank a few customer success leaders for their support, wisdom and generosity.
Jay Nathan Jeff Breunsbach Gain Grow Retain Kristi Faltorusso Shari Srebnick Ty Raia (he/him) Jeremy Donaldson Diana De Jesus Jeff Heckler JMI Equity Vincent Prajka You Mon Tsang Cori Pearce Erika Villarreal Appreciate you all - and others I missed. Seriously, being introduced to the world of customer success has been one of the best things that’s happened to me in the last several years of my professional life. See post and video here. The chat window during yesterday's Strategic Convo's webinar was buzzing.
Here's recap of my answers to just some of the questions and comments. Thanks once again to Kristi Faltorusso of ClientSuccess...note that many of the kudos and "thank you's" are directed at you! Glad to be of service. 9/19/2021 Why did thIS SaaS CEO/co-founder personally do a listening tour of his customers?Read Now To...
1. Help guide product roadmap? 2. Prioritize & crystallize customer pain points? 3. Update company messaging? 4. Hone his already excellent customer discovery skills? Actually all of the above. Here's Taylor Stein, co-founder and co-CEO of fertility clinic SaaS leader EngagedMD, on his customer listening tour using some of my customer discovery questions and techniques. 9/18/2021 success league's kristen hayer interviews me on breaking down the vendor-customer wall (yes, that's a thing)Read Now I enjoyed speaking Kristen Hayer of The Success League on her podcast on my fave subject: using better questions to break down the vendor-customer wall.
While the wall is imaginary, it's very real. The good news is that, for the most part, vendors are responsible for creating the wall...so they can also tear it down! Listen here. A ton of important insights are lost because we don't ask the right FOLLOW UP questions to probe and learn - especially on customer discovery calls.
Shout out to Will Fuentes of B2B sales consultancy Maestro Group who uses "question trees" to help train sales folks on asking the right follow up questions. (BTW, I connected with Will through the amazing MindShare Inc. community of founders, entrepreneurs and other tech leaders.) For example, one of the questions I teach is: "What would your boss want you to tell me or ask me if he or she knew we were meeting?" If the answer is "X," then the follow up would be: "That's helpful, thanks. And what's the one thing that absolutely has to be off your boss's whiteboard in the next 90 days that would lead him to say to X?" Will's company even created an app to help train reps on "question trees." Fantastic work. Check out The Maestro Group. |