The Answers Are Outside The Building

Pragmatic marketing, lean startup, and other externally focused approaches suggest having a commitment to looking to customers and prospects for answers. Good stuff. And it references a series of diagrams, tasks, and templates to help with this. I love it all. But these approaches often do not speak to the details of how to implement this in the qualitative world of conversations and business development. And most importantly, they focus mostly on process, which while absolutely necessary, leaves out the also fundamental points of mindset, attitude, willingness, and listening. In short, there are many excellent processes that outline the info you need to get from customers and prospects, but this is the book tells you very specifically HOW to get that info. The Answers Are Outside The Building is intended to be a compliment to pragmatic marketing, user-focused research and design processes, lean startup, and other outside-in activities. I outline in this book a mindset and attitude that I rarely see used, but one that has served me, my employers, and my customers very well. At its very core it assumes, and truly embraces, the reality that we do not have the best answers to our questions, but rather our customers and partners do. This book preaches that "I Don't Know" is a good thing. A very good thing. My experience has taught me that simple is better. Getting into action fast is better. Focusing on people first rather than sales first is better. All of these things have led me to some very simple steps to identify how to do truly useful things, be of service, and ultimately drive better P& L results. Included in these steps are two simple questions I ask of every ecosystem member, and the responses to them give me almost every answer I need. Every time. Get ready for words like "embrace" and "emotional hot buttons", as well as suggestions like "do not use slides." And even what some might call the most taboo phrase of all, "don't sell." All of which are intended to focus us on our audience members and really, really listening to them and what they need.