what customers don't say

I recently read yet another book about building wealth (because despite most of those books telling me that reading books won’t create wealth, I read them all).

In it, the author shares insights from 100s of interviews with people who are healthier, wealthier, and maybe wiser than him. All to discover what wealth really is.

Regardless of what wisdom is shared, it’s a remarkable observation that becomes the central theme of the book:

None of the people interviewed, even the ultra wealthy ones, talk about money.

And it occurred to me that when we interview customers and do sales discovery calls, we’re looking for people to say the “right things” and behave the right ways.

We — or at least I — have never considered to look in the negative space for insights. What aren’t our customers saying and talking about and doing?

What isn’t there is harder to spot than all the obvious things that are. Tools like Gong record our calls and tell us everything that was said. Even how many times and with what kind of sentiment.

But it does not tell us what we didn’t talk about. It doesn’t tell us what 9/10 people didn’t talk about.

Like the author of this book, we need to be open to seeing the things that don’t come up; the things that aren’t obvious.

What aren’t our customers talking about? If the things they don’t mention overlap with the things we offer, we could be in big trouble.

Peter

(282 / 500)

PS: This one is Sahil Bloom’s Five Types of Wealth. It’s one of the best I’ve read yet.