Most customer conversations fail before they start, because we walk in wanting to hear a yes.
The failure is not that people lie. It is that we ask questions whose only polite answer is encouragement. "Would you use this?" invites kindness. Kindness is not evidence.
Three habits fix most of it:
- Talk about their life, not your idea. Your idea is the one thing they cannot give you useful information about.
- Ask about specifics in the past, not generalities about the future. What someone did last Tuesday is a fact. What they would do next quarter is a guess wearing a confident voice.
- Talk less. Listen more. If you are talking, you are not learning.
Done well, the person you are talking to should not be able to tell you have an idea at all.