Here’s a harsh truth: Your favorite customers are the worst people to ask for customer feedback. Are they bad people? No. But are they giving you a skewed view of what your customer base actually wants and needs? Yes. If you want reliable feedback to guide your product and marketing decisions, you can’t go to the same people over and over.
It may sound counterintuitive, but as Brandon Redlinger (Fractional VP of Marketing and Co-Founder of The Forge) pointed out on our Best Story Wins podcast, CEOs often seek feedback from their favorite early customers, but those early customers probably don’t represent the current ICP.
What happens when you’re stuck in this cycle? You end up building for the loudest voices instead of your real market. To counteract this, you need to diversify the voices you’re listening to. But that requires a real shift in perspective and a willingness to hear things you might not want to.
How to Source the Right Customer Feedback
If you want to break out of the bubble, it’s time to audit your customer list and expand your horizons to get more reliable feedback. Here are Brandon’s best tips to find the right people (and build a better company).
1) Talk to customers who didn’t buy.
This might be the most valuable (and most avoided) customer research you can do. While your successful customers want to make you happy and stay on your good side, prospects who walked away will give you the real truth about your positioning, product, and sales process.
Brandon has found that these conversations reveal huge gaps you’d never discover otherwise, whether that’s messaging that falls flat, features that don’t matter as much as you think, or competitive advantages you’re not communicating effectively.
Tip: Create a systematic process for reaching out to lost prospects 30-60 days after they’ve made a decision. Ask about their decision-making process, what drove their choice, and what could have changed their mind. Note: When you engage with them, focus on understanding their decision-making process rather than trying to win them back.
2) Question your customer assumptions constantly.
Product-market fit isn’t a destination; it’s an ongoing process that requires constant validation. The market shifts, new competitors emerge, and customer needs evolve. That means what worked six months ago might be irrelevant today.
“After you find that product market fit, you have to be constantly questioning your own hypothesis about the value that you’re delivering to your customers,” Brandon says. This means regularly revisiting your core assumptions about why customers buy, what they value most, and how they define success.
The real danger is getting comfortable with early success and assuming you’ve figured it out. The companies that maintain strong product-market fit are the ones that never stop questioning their own understanding of customer value.
Tip: Schedule quarterly “assumption audits” where you list your top five beliefs about why customers buy from you, then design research to test each one. If you’re surveying customers, make sure to survey your newer customers separately from your longtime customers to spot shifts in motivation and expectations.
3) Diversify your perspectives.
Your favorite customers are favorites for a reason. They’re probably successful, vocal, and easy to work with. But that’s exactly why they’re problematic for guiding strategy.
Beyond your personal bias toward them, there are often other factors at play that can skew their feedback, too.
- They may be outliers who have unique needs.
- They may be particularly adept at navigating things like implementation.
- They may have different priorities than your typical customer.
To get a more accurate read, Brandon suggests talking to customers who maybe aren’t as enthusiastic or are even unhappy. Ultimately, your goal is to get a representative sample that includes different customer segments, implementation experiences, and satisfaction levels.
Tip: Source a random sample of customers from the past six months, including at least 20% who’ve had implementation challenges or expressed concerns. This will give you a much more realistic view of the customer experience.
4) Learn faster than your competition.
“Speed of learning matters more than anything,” Brandon says. “It’s easier than ever to start a company now and to build a product. But that means there’s so much more noise out there.”
In a crowded B2B landscape, the companies that learn about their customers quickly will outmaneuver those stuck in assumptions. To stay on top of things, you need to create systems for continuous customer insight gathering (not just quarterly surveys or annual research projects).
Remember: The quicker you learn about your customer, the more you can accelerate your journey to product-market fit.
Tip: Create a doc or Slack channel where various team members (sales, support, product, etc.) share one customer insight each week. This will help you review patterns or trends you might miss otherwise.
How to Keep Your Customer Voice Central
The best marketing leaders don’t just collect customer insights; they become the voice of the customer within their organization. This means regularly challenging internal assumptions, bringing customer perspectives into strategic discussions, and ensuring accurate customer feedback influences everything from product roadmaps to messaging decisions.
Luckily, there are key ways to make that process easier for you, your customers, and your teammates.
- Systematize your outreach. Don’t rely on ad hoc customer conversations. Create regular touchpoints with different customer segments and document what you learn.
- Look for what people do, not just what they say. Customer behavior often tells a different story than customer interviews. You should use both qualitative and quantitative insights to get the full picture.
- Make it safe to share bad news. If your team only brings you positive customer feedback, you’re not getting the real story. Create an environment where people can share concerning customer insights without fear.
Ultimately, your goal isn’t to get good feedback; it’s to get consistent feedback. That is the best way to build a competitive company that truly serves your customers. Of course, staying on top of best practices will help you do all this and more. To hear more about Brandon’s approach to customer-first marketing, check out his full episode of the Best Story Wins podcast (and subscribe for more marketing tips).
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