Rule No. 2: Don’t Shirk Your Customers

In a previous post, I mentioned that hardly anyone knows their market like they should. There’s a phenomenon that I’ve observed in companies that makes it nearly impossible to innovate.

DRINKING FOR FUN AND PROFIT

There’s a reason people drink. We don’t call alcohol a “social lubricant” for nothing. Humans use alcohol to loosen up inhibitions and to make social interactions easier. The fact that alcohol is so widely consumed in social settings should tell you just how hard being social is.

So what does this have to do with your customers? Well, when you’re a startup, you have to know your market and your customers to even hope to survive. If you can’t find product market fit, you’re doomed. But this requires talking to new people and talking to new people is hard. Really, really hard.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

As social as we are as humans, initiating social contact is a threat. It triggers your fight or flight response and attacks your body’s serotonin levels. And every time you talk to a new customer, you’re starting that attack all over again. So we push it off. We don’t do it. Even in startups. So many startups never talk to their customers enough. They pin their hopes on gleaning the knowledge they so desperately need from surveys, data, competitors, etc.

In established companies, it’s even worse. The people in product teams who need customer knowledge more than anyone rarely speak to customers. It gets offloaded to sales and customer success. Everyone thinks that someone else knows the customer. The deep customer understanding that is the lifeblood of a business gets shirked.

TYPE HEYYYYYY

There’s a reason that successful CEOs, salespeople, and serial entrepreneurs are often Type-A personalities. People with this profile are driven and aggressive and have less social fear. For the rest of us, we feel anxiety around meeting new people. We avoid it and try to abdicate the responsibility to others. Unfortunately, the people on product teams are often creative, introverted and anxiety-prone.

But there’s hope. Social skills can be learned and practiced. You can actually become highly skilled. And like with any skill, as you become proficient, your anxiety levels can drop to a low hum. You can get so that you actually enjoy creating new customer interactions. And this skill will roll into your personal life as well. Maybe you won’t need so many drinks next time.

THE TAKEAWAY

So if you’re a founder or a member of a product team, talk to customers like your business depends on it. Because it does.