Questions to Ask and Not to Ask During Customer Interviews

As a B2B Product Manager, you're bound to get into sales demos & customer interviews at some point.

As you're going through your pitch, it's imperative that you sense how engaged the audience is to avoid belaboring over things that don't interest them.

This is because, apart from a few blunt ones, most people won't interrupt you out of courtesy. Others will tune out & go into passive listening mode.

It's not enough to pause & ask for feedback. The questions you ask are really key.

I'd suggest avoiding yes/no and leading questions like:
- Do you like the feature? (they'll mostly say yes, not to sound rude)
- Are you willing to pay for this? (puts them in a defensive mindset)
- Is it clear to you? (of course - they don't want to seem dumb)

That feedback is pretty useless.

A few of my sales buddies taught me 3 questions which extract a lot more interesting insights.

Try these instead:
1) Glad you liked the demo. What stood out to you the most?

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2) How do you think you or your team will use this feature?

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3) What existing problem can this solve for you?

These help you quickly assess if:
(a) they were paying attention

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(b) their need is aligned with your product's value prop

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(c) you're actually solving a worthwhile problem