“The enthusiasm of customers to talk with us is an indicator of how successful they want us to be.”

I just got off a call with a client’s past customer. Three years ago the customer had a very challenging experience with my client and yet, they booked the second available slot on my first day of interviews. As challenging as their experience was at the time, how much it left a bad taste in their mouth, they still wanted my client to be successful.

This isn’t unusual.

Earlier this year on a completely different project for a completely different client, the first customer brought with them a list of 35 complaints – big and small. All of the complaints were thoughtful and obvious improvements to the product. He wanted the product to be wildly successful so he and his team could also be more successful, he was going to take every possible channel to communicate his position. While not all of the customers in that series shared his level of enthusiasm, they all had some level of enthusiasm as 3 weeks of interviews were booked in 2 days. The result was far greater clarity on why my client’s product was hired by these customers.

This isn’t always the case.

Back in For Starters #31, I tell the story of a former client receiving zero feedback from a friendly, handpicked, group of beta testers. Nothing. Nobody even logged in. This was the first time I had to tell a founder their idea, despite smiles from his friends, has absolutely zero demand.

Since then, I’ve had other engagements where customers – whether current or prospective – were completely silent. Always awkward because there are so many other factors that it could be. Which is why running a second round with a different technique may help. However, it’s highly likely subsequent rounds end up the same – leading me to write far more often than I’d like, “The multiple rounds of research did not capture additional demand.”

Pre-product, pre-revenue, established company, none of that makes a difference to customers ambivalent about your success. The key commonality I’ve found across my clients with enthusiastic customers: they serve a very tight niche, and have just one or two direct competitors.

It was inside a very large organization serving everyone, attempting to do this kind of customer outreach, that I learned the quote in the subhead.