The four steps to understanding customer needs faster.

#1 Take notes meticulously

Every conversation we have with a customer or prospect is an incredible opportunity to learn about them. People always share their problems, we just don’t listen very carefully. To make sure we listen better, we just need to start taking notes.

By taking notes you take time away from thinking about what you want to say, and spend it on absorbing the information.

#2 Actively reflect on your observations (debrief everything)

If you make notes while reading and listening, you’re going to be able to identify things that make sense in your world view and things that don’t.

It’s the things that don’t which reshape our understanding and help us learn.

So you should look out for observations that don’t connect with everything else you know about your customers. They’re the key to better understanding their needs.

#3 Share your insights freely.

Even with the observations you’ve already made — it’s likely that you don’t know everything there is to know. By sharing your insights, you’re able to open them up to other people’s observations as well. And they’ll tell you things they have observed, that you may have missed out upon.

They’re not disagreements or differences in opinion, they’re just unresolved observations in your understanding of the world. Use them to sharpen your own insights, and eventually, things start making sense.

#4 Validate your insights by acting on them (experimentation)

What you learn from your customers is only as good as how quickly you can act on those learnings. So make some predictions about what should happen if you act based on your insights — and see if they actually do.

If they don’t, you now have a whole new set of observations to sharpen your understanding. And the great part about your insights is that they keep getting better the more you learn about something.