Last week we talked about how to capture your expertise without having to write everything yourself, using conversation and AI to turn your knowledge into content.

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This week, I want to tackle something that sits underneath that: what happens when you're having loads of customer conversations, but you still can't figure out what to do next?

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You know you should be talking to customers. You probably are. But here's the uncomfortable truth: most founders are sitting on a goldmine of insights and have no idea what to do with them.

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The pattern I keep seeing

A founder reaches out. They've done the "right things":

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• Talked to 20+ customers
• Got feedback on their product
• Asked about pain points
• Took notes

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But when I ask "what did you learn?" they give me surface-level stuff:

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• "They want it to be faster"
• "Price is a concern"
• "They like the ease of use"

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Nothing wrong with any of that. But nothing actionable either.

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The real insights - the ones that tell you which market to focus on, what positioning will cut through, which features to build next - they're buried in there somewhere. But you can't see them.

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Why this happens

1. You're too close to it

When you're the founder, every conversation confirms what you already think. Confirmation bias is an absolute pain. You hear what you want to hear and miss the pattern that's actually emerging.

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2. Insights live across conversations, not within them

One customer says they struggle with onboarding. Another mentions they wish it "just worked". A third says they had to get IT involved.

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Individually? Just feedback. Together? That's a signal that your "ease of use" positioning isn't landing with technical buyers.

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But you won't spot that pattern unless you're specifically looking for it.

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3. You don't know what questions your insights are answering

This is the big one. You're collecting feedback without knowing what strategic questions you need to answer.

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Are you trying to:

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• Find a new ICP segment?
• Validate product roadmap priorities?
• Sharpen your positioning against competitors?
• Understand why deals are stalling?

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Different questions need different types of analysis. But most founders just... collect feedback and hope insight emerges.

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It rarely does.

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The gap between conversation and strategy

Here's what the insight gap actually looks like in practice:

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You talk to customers → You take notes → The notes sit in a doc → You make decisions based on gut feel anyway → You wonder why nothing's working

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The gap isn't about having conversations. It's about systematically turning those conversations into strategic intelligence.

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When we work with founders on audience research, here's what we do differently:

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Before any conversations happen, we define what we're trying to learn

• What market segments exist?
• What do they value that competitors miss?
• What's the real cost of inaction?
• Where do they go for information?

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We layer different types of insight

• What customers are saying in interviews
• What your sales calls reveal about objections
• What social intelligence tells us about market trends
• What internal knowledge is trapped in your team's heads

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We use AI to spot patterns humans miss

• Clustering themes across 50+ conversations
• Quantifying sentiment without losing nuance
• Cross-referencing what people say with what they do
• Surfacing the contradictions that reveal truth

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We turn patterns into strategic recommendations

• Here's the segment to focus on
• Here's the positioning that will work
• Here's what to build next
• Here's the message that will convert

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A real example

One of our clients is a data governance platform. Brilliant tech. Selling to banks and financial services.

They'd done loads of customer research. Knew their product worked. But couldn't figure out why some deals closed and others stalled.

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We ran our research process. Here's what we found:

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What they thought: Banks care about compliance and risk

What we discovered: Different roles care about completely different things

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• Compliance teams care about audit trails
• IT teams care about not breaking existing systems
• Business teams care about speed to market

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They were selling "governance" to everyone. Which meant their message landed with no one.

We restructured their positioning by role. Sales cycles shortened by 30%.

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That insight was sitting in their sales calls all along. They just couldn't see the pattern.

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The uncomfortable truth

If you're having customer conversations but can't clearly articulate:

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• Who your absolute best customer is (not just "enterprise" or "SME")
• What they value that your competitors don't deliver
• What message will make them stop and pay attention
• Which features will actually move the needle

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Then you've got an insight gap.

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And it's costing you. Every day you're guessing is a day you're spending budget on the wrong things.

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What you can do about it

Option 1: Build the muscle internally

Start by defining what you're trying to learn before you talk to anyone. Write down the strategic questions you need to answer.

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After each conversation, don't just take notes. Ask yourself: "What pattern is this part of?" and "How does this change what we should do?"

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Use AI to help spot themes across multiple conversations. Feed transcripts into Claude or ChatGPT and ask it to cluster feedback by theme.

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Option 2: Work with people who do this for a living

This is literally what we do. We've built a framework specifically for turning scattered customer insights into clear strategic direction.

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If you're sitting on a pile of customer feedback and can't figure out what to do with it, or if you know you need better insights but don't have time to run a proper research process, let's talk.

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We can help you see what you're missing.

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The bottom line

Having customer conversations isn't enough. Neither is "doing research".

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The insight gap isn't about quantity of conversations - it's about systematically turning what you're hearing into strategic intelligence that changes what you do.

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Because the difference between a guess and a strategy is evidence. And the evidence is already sitting in your customer conversations.

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You just need to know how to extract it.

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Want to chat about how we could help you close your insight gap? Let's chat.

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