How can you use customer discovery techniques to create a sales strategy that puts customers first?

1 What is customer discovery?

Customer discovery is a method of validating your assumptions about your customers and your market. It involves asking open-ended questions, listening actively, and observing how your customers behave and interact with your product or service. The goal is to discover the problem-solution fit, which means finding out if your product or service actually solves a problem that your customers care about and are willing to pay for. Customer discovery is an iterative process that requires constant testing and feedback. You can use various tools and techniques to conduct customer discovery, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, experiments, and analytics.

3 How to conduct customer discovery for sales?

To conduct customer discovery for sales, you need to follow a systematic process that involves four steps: define, reach, ask, and learn. In the first step, you should define your hypotheses and assumptions about your customers and your market by using tools such as the lean canvas or the value proposition canvas. The second step is to reach out to potential customers by using methods such as referrals, social media, email, phone, events, or online platforms. You should aim to reach a diverse and representative sample of your target market and offer them some incentives or value in exchange for their time and feedback. The third step is to ask your customers open-ended questions that help you validate or invalidate your hypotheses and assumptions. You should use techniques such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, experiments, or demos. Lastly, analyze and synthesize the data and insights you collected from your customers in order to look for patterns, trends, gaps, and surprises that reveal your customers' pain points, desires, objections, and expectations. Compare and contrast your findings with your hypotheses and assumptions to identify what needs to be changed or improved in your product or service or in your sales strategy.

4 How to use customer discovery insights to create a sales strategy?

To use customer discovery insights to create a sales strategy, you need to apply what you learned from your customers to your sales activities and processes. Refining your ICP and targeting the most qualified prospects for your solution, segmenting your market and tailoring your sales outreach and follow-up based on customer characteristics and behavior, and crafting a UVP that is communicated clearly and convincingly to customers in sales pitch and content are all important steps. Additionally, developing a buyer persona to empathize with customer goals, challenges, and pain points in sales conversations, creating a customer journey map that aligns with the buying process and decision criteria, and aligning sales messaging, content, and channels with customer needs are all essential in delivering value at every touchpoint.

5 How to measure and improve your customer discovery for sales?

To measure and improve your customer discovery for sales, you need to track and evaluate your customer discovery activities and outcomes. You can use various metrics and indicators, such as customer feedback, customer validation, and sales performance. Customer feedback can help you assess customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, and advocacy. Customer validation can help you test your value proposition, pricing, features, and benefits. Sales performance can help you evaluate your sales effectiveness, efficiency, and profitability.

Customer discovery is an effective way to create a sales strategy that puts customers first. It enables you to understand customers better and tailor your sales approach accordingly. You can use customer discovery insights to refine your ICP, segment your market, craft your UVP, develop buyer personas, create a customer journey map, and align sales messaging with customers' needs. By measuring and improving your customer discovery for sales through feedback, validation, and performance metrics, you can increase your chances of closing deals and building long-term relationships with customers.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?