instinct mining.

I built go to market strategy for companies like stripe, segment and drift. they were loaded with genius talent from the eng to the sales team. yet I always found strategies they hadn't.

my secret wasn't to be the smartest in the room. I never would be. and it wasn't to have them tell me what might work. Here's my favorite technique for finding scalable go-to-market ideas:

The instinct mining interview.

The typical way to find strategies is to ask "what's working?" or "in a perfect world, what campaign would you want to see?"

But what's working can only scale a bit more than it does already.

And if you ask a sales person what great campaign would be, they'll tell you the perfect campaign whose conditions never occur. Or are impossible to find. "If we could find out when someone dreams about our product that would be killer." Yes, yes it would. if that happened.

The problem with these questions is they take someone out of their real experience. And force them to guess.

The best ideas buried in the intuition. It's how the founder knows the perfect story to share to relieve a prospects concern. It's how an AE can review an account 30 seconds before a call and just sense it's a bad fit.

It's tacit knowledge, the intuition you can't put directly into words. And if you ask them to describe it, you'll get clunky attributes that don't capture what really makes it work.

Like learning to ride a bike. I can describe how to pedal: whichever pedal is highest, push down and forward. When it gets to the bottom, stop pushing and repeat for the next highest pedal.

But how do you describe balance?

Um, you kind of shift your weight based on where the bike is pulling. I mean the bike wants to stay up at a certain speed, and you can use the wheel as a counter balance if it's slow... phew.

The only way to teach balance, is to do it. That's tacit knowledge.

So the attribute the AE describes are part of the picture, they aren't enough. Not every 200 person company is the same.

Here's the secret:

Instead of asking them to translate their expertise into the information you need, keep the expert in their expertise.

Your job is to translate their expertise to your context.

Here's how I'd do this with with a great AE:

1. Prepare 5-10 accounts. Ideally half are known to great fits. and half fit the "attributes" but ended up being bad (closed lost is a good source)
2. Ask the AE to mock preparing for a first call. and REALLY do it. don't describe it. Actually look up their website, their Linkedin, etc. every step.
3. Ask questions about EVERYTHING they do. Especially small actions. "You just scrolled down their website and back up without clicking anything. Why? What were you looking for? What did that tell you? How will that change the rest of your research? What assumptions do you make about them now? What if that thing was there? What would that tell you? Will that change the questions you ask them? Why? What will the answer mean?" And that's just for a quick scroll to the footer and back

If you've done this right. The answers will be nuanced and hedged:

"Well, I check if they have any compliance disclaimers. Can mean they have regulatory issues. But that's not always the best, because sometimes they are using a Wordpress template and it's boilerplate, but it sometimes gives me a clue to see if they have a compliance person. Well, unless they are in XYZ industry, then it doesn't mean anything because they all have one.."

The nuance is the tacit knowledge. The real reason they are experts. The balancing of the bike.

The real world is complex. And the best mental models of a market and product are too.

Once you have a mental model from that interview. You'll end up with the ESSENCE of what makes (at least a part) of a companies solution resonate.

And starting from the nuance, your campaigns will be much more likely to work. And if they don't your hypotheses are more likely to tell you why.

Next time you need an idea from an expert.

Keep them in their expertise.

Note to self: This is a 9/10 technique but 6/10 written. revisit!