Surprising Similarities – Sales and Customer Discovery

Over the past year I’ve had the opportunity to do a surprising amount of interviews in the customer discovery process of a start up. First, in my Lean Launch Pad class, I did about 15 interviews with business owners and managers in the construction sector. Last semester, I had the opportunity as part of an E+I Fellows internship to conduct discovery interviews for a robotics start-up in Pittsburgh. Most recently, my team in Digital Entrepreneurship has been following the same customer discovery process, conducting interviews with the goal of narrowing down our customer base. Through these opportunities I’ve learned a fair amount about the process, I’ve read books on the subject, talked to experts, and gained experience in the field.

However, the most surprising part of this process was actually the many analogous connections between conducting a interview and conducting a sale. First of all, the very core of both processes is to discover more about in the subject. In the case of the discovery interviews, you’re looking for the problems and frictions your target market faces … and in the sales processes, you’re looking for the exact same thing! Both conversations are intent on looking for the same thing, despite differing applications of the information. As a result, the methods used in both are remarkably similar. For example, you should always be talking less than you are listening, the information the subject gives you is far more important than what you have to say; moreover, talking too much (especially about the wrong things) can definitively harm both the sales and the discovery process. In a similar way, you always need to focus on the core issues faced by your subject, not just the face level issues. Other key techniques – such as Daniel Pink’s Attunement, Buoyancy, Clarity are essential for both. While we’ve discussed the sales applications, they are equally applicable to customer discovery. You must put yourself in the subjects viewpoint, you must remain buoyant (but not illogical) when discouraged, and you must search for clarity on the conversation. Overall, it’s been very interesting to examine the surprising similarities in each process, and how I can apply techniques I’ve learned in one discipline to benefit the other.