Your customers are telling you exactly how to grow your business. You’re just not listening.

You’re already having the conversations. You’re just not mining the gold.

TL;DR Every client conversation is a potential goldmine of insights that could transform your product, marketing, and sales. Many tech founders waste this potential by not structuring these conversations properly. Learn a practical framework to capture strategic insights from client interactions, including mapping knowledge gaps, designing conversation flows, and implementing findings systematically. Plus: actionable questions you can use to uncover valuable customer insights.

Hi, it’s me (and I ain’t no bot, no)

Welcome to my new headquarters! From now on I’ll operate from my new business name Babelfish Customer Clarity Ops. You most certainly have seen The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? It’s a good name.

To me, AI is starting to become a very limited show full of gradients, all-caps, emoji’s and perfectly formatted bullet lists (i used them too, mea culpa). That’s why you can trust that this newsletter always stays hand-written and hand-strategised.

Especially for you, Jason Donovan sang to Kylie as I sing to you.

This week's truth bomb (2-3 min read)

Last week, I spoke with three tech companies about customer experience. Each one had the same realisation: they were having dozens of client conversations every week... and apart from actually solving client issues on those calls, wasting the hidden potential in them.

Here's the pattern I keep seeing: Founders spend hours and hours each week in client calls, demos, onboarding calls and support sessions.

But they're missing the golden insights that these clients intrinsically carry.

Honestly, I don’t blame them. They:

• Don't want to ‘waste client time’

• Fear damaging carefully built relationships

• Lack a systematic way to gather insights

• Aren't sure what to ask or when to ask it

• Are snowed under in the day-to-day (what to focus on!?!)

I decided to dedicate a full newsletter to this, because from my view every client conversation is a potential gold mine of insights that could transform your product, marketing, sales and your overall customer experience. You just need to know how to mine it.

One client proved this recently. Their HR tool seemed like ‘just another survey platform’ until they started having structured conversations with clients.

What they discovered? They weren't in the survey business at all - they were creating a supersonic flywheel between data collection and policy decisions. This insight completely transformed their marketing and sales approach.

Deep Dive. What unstructured client conversations are costing you (3-4 min read)

Let's get real about what you're missing when you don't structure your client conversations properly. I don’t know about you but usually my readers are in one of two areas. Pre-seed/startups on the one hand. Scale-ups on the other.

One thing that ties both of those groups together, is the deep need to make a positive impact (as opposed to just make a positive profit).

Here’s areas that i typically see both groups waste potential:

Mission & impact drift:

• Building a product that doesn't fulfill its true potential (leaving market share on the table)

• Missing opportunities to create deeper client transformation (smarter upselling)

• Solving surface problems instead of root causes (better lifetime value)

• Overlooking chances to make a real difference in your industry (building authority)

Message & connection loss:

• Speaking in features when clients care about transformation (conversion problems)

• Missing the emotional core of your value proposition (traffic/pipeline problems)

• Attracting clients who don't share your vision (resource issues)

• Investing energy in the wrong stories and channels (oooh marketing budget wasted)

Relationship disconnects:

• Working with clients who don't energise you (employee loyalty 😟)

• Misunderstanding what truly matters to your ideal clients (leads ghosting you)

• Missing chances to deepen client partnerships (upsells & crossells, ambassadors!)

• Building a reputation for the wrong things (hearing the same price concerns)

This isn't just about optimisation or growth. It's about building something that matters, that truly serves the clients you want to work with. When you have the right conversations, you don't just improve metrics - you validate that you're building something meaningful, something that creates the change you want to see in your industry and attracting the right people for it: both employees and partners and leads.

Roadmap. How to set up strategic client conversations

Before you dive into specific questions, let's set up a system that ensures every conversation counts. Here's the framework that transforms casual chats into strategic gold:

1. Map your knowledge gaps The best way to get strategic responses is to ask strategic questions (duh!). But first, you need to know what you're really looking for:

• Gather your marketing and sales geniuses

• Map out what you know (and think you know)

• Identify the assumptions you're making

• List the decisions you need to validate

• Document the patterns you want to test

2. Design the convo flow Strategic insights don't happen by accident. They need the right moment, the right people, and the right approach:

• Identify natural touchpoints in your processes for these conversations

• Pinpoint which team members have the strongest client relationships

• Create clear criteria for selecting the right interviewees

• Develop a narrative that makes clients WANT to share

• Decide between formal interviews or casual check-ins

3. Build your implementation system Great insights are worthless if they die in a stuffy drawer. Before you start gathering wisdom, know how you'll use it:

• Create a simple system for documenting insights

• Assign clear owners for different types of findings

• Set up regular reviews of what you're learning

• Define how insights connect to decisions

• Plan how you'll share wins back with (and thank!) participating clients

Think of this as your conversation compass. When you have these elements in place, every question you ask becomes more powerful because you know what you need to learn, what to ask and when to ask it and what you’ll do with what you discover.

Now that you have your framework, let's look at some example questions that will help you uncover these insights...

Example questions

I thought long and hard about enclosing actual questions because there’s obvious risks here - that you gather answers that don’t make any sense to your particular challenge. I decided to go forth and insert them anyway, because they could also just spark something that might be valuable to you.

Please don’t just go ahead and ask for the sake of asking. Please do your homework first.

Product conversations:

• "What's the most unexpected way you've used our [product]?"

• "If you had to explain our value to your CEO in one sentence, what would you say?"

• "What problem were you trying to solve when you first looked for a solution like ours?"

Strategy conversations:

• "How do you see your industry evolving in the next 2-3 years?"

• "What's the biggest challenge you believe your competitors aren't seeing?"

• "If budget wasn't a constraint, what would you change first about your current process?"

Implementation conversations:

• "What's one thing you wish you'd known before implementing our solution?"

• "How did you get internal buy-in for this change?"

• "What's been the most surprising benefit of using our solution?"

Truth bombs from my own trenches

In my business I’m currently moving into territory that i deeply enjoy: partnering strategically. Building my ecosystem of business partners that can easily amplify my impact and vice versa is starting to look like a very promising and powerful path.

Having conversations with companies that are highly complementary to me is so joyful. I’m starting to get better at this type of conversation too: i’m starting to recognise within the first ten minutes if this is yet another ‘abstract-will-never-get-to-an-actual-collab’ or an exploration that will lead to stronger bonds.

To me, this looks like a trend: it feels as if specialists are combining forces and recognising the true depth of the saying: ‘alone you can go fast, together you can go further’.

Does this resonate with you? What is your referral strategy?

• I am currently thinking about my visual identity. It is a mess 🙂 or basically even non-existent. I know that there’s a tipping point between bootstrapping things and actually harming your brand. I’m aware, I’ve just been building product so crazily these last 6 months that i’ve let the focus on tying it together visually slip. Would love to hear your take on this. Is this nerdy long-read too nerdy? (It fits my personality lol)

If you're ready to work with me

Here's how I can help you:

• Wisdom Workshop: In 90 minutes, uncover what's actually blocking your growth and get actionable recommendations from an independent nerd with 20 years of experience.

• FeedbackFuel: Get the exact words and highly strategic and tactical insights that help you nail your messaging and get you deals.

Curious if this could work for you? Happy to chat: https://savvycal.com/desireekolman/connect