Customer Discovery: Inbound vs. Outbound Strategies

In a competitive marketplace, knowing your clients’ pain points and needs is essential for success, and one of the best ways to gain these valuable insights is through customer discovery.

In our comprehensive guide, we’ll explain all there is to know about inbound and outbound customer discovery, including the nuances of each type, the overall process, the best tactics to use, and how your team can practice these techniques risk-free. 

What Is Customer Discovery?

Customer discovery is a way to better understand your customers, including their pain points, needs, desires, and overall situation. Not only that, but it’s also a process for seeking specific feedback from potential buyers to validate your service or product. 

With customer discovery, teams can take a deeper dive into who your target audience is, what challenges they experience, and whether or not the solution you’re selling addresses their specific pain points. 

Teams can then iterate based on the feedback received to improve their service or product. 

Why is customer discovery important? 

Customer discovery is important for a plethora of reasons, the number one reason being it helps teams know what their audience needs and wants so the solution they sell will address those needs and wants. 

However, it’s also important to validate any assumptions you might have about the service or product. For example, you might assume that a buyer will react to the solution in a certain way, but discovery can shed additional light on the validity of those assumptions so you can better prepare. 

Teams also rely on discovery to: 

• Optimize and refine products before they’re even created
• Build rapport, trust, and credibility with a client base
• Make smarter choices and investments

Customer discovery vs. customer development

Both customer discovery and customer development go hand in hand, as they’re both essential for success in the marketplace. However, there are some key differences to keep in mind. The key difference between customer discovery and development is that the former focuses on gaining a better understanding of the market for potential consumers. On the other hand, customer development hones in on how to develop a customer for the solution you’re selling, be it a product or service. 

Inbound Customer Discovery vs. Outbound Customer Discovery

Understanding the difference between inbound customer discovery and outbound customer discovery is actually very straightforward. The difference lies in who initiates the first contact. Inbound customer discovery happens when the consumer reaches out themselves; outbound customer discovery involves the seller reaching out to the buyer.  

Of course, there are more nuances to keep in mind, and other differences to consider. For one, outbound discovery can be more costly compared to inbound. 

Not only that, but the type of client sellers will meet can differ based on the discovery type. For example, someone who’s already shown interest in the solution you’re selling is an inbound customer or a “warm lead.” On the other hand, a customer who isn’t familiar with the service or product would be considered a “cold lead” or an outbound customer. 

The benefits of inbound vs. outbound customer discovery can vary as well. Whereas outbound discovery can boost client loyalty and trust, the benefits of inbound discovery can help sellers verify leads, better understand their clients’ needs, and influence marketing strategy.  

Here’s what else you should know about both inbound and outbound customer discovery.

Inbound customer discovery considerations

When a buyer reaches out to the seller, it’s considered inbound customer discovery. However, it doesn’t stop there. There are also some key differences to think about when planning product development or future strategies. 

Inbound marketing doesn’t necessarily mean sellers sit around and wait for customers to come to them. Instead, teams need to consider ways to attract potential buyers through methods like digital marketing. For example, leveraging methods like social media strategy, email marketing, SEO, and content strategy are all great catalysts to encourage customers to explore more about the product, service, and company. 

You’ll also want to ensure your website’s landing page is high quality and up-to-par with your target audience’s standards. Depending on the solution you’re selling, ideating and creating meaningful content can also help generate leads. Teams can then rely on lead qualification methods to prioritize and better allocate resources.

Outbound customer discovery considerations

Since outbound customer discovery requires sellers to reach out to customers, the strategy is a little different. Here, sellers need to leverage methods where they can directly reach clients. For example, email outreach and cold calling can both be fruitful strategies to connect with potential buyers. 

Another great way to conduct outbound discovery is through in-person relationship building. Teams can connect with potential customers through various events, like network events or other industry events, to build relationships and rapport. 

If your team has existing relationships with customers, they can always tap into referrals and partnerships as opportunities for connecting to clients. 

Understanding the Customer Discovery Process

Getting to know your target audience and what they like is essential to market success. By understanding your audience, you can adjust your product to their liking and boost sales. 

The overall process is pretty straightforward, although there will always be nuances depending on your audience. In a nutshell, here’s what the customer discovery process could look like.

1. Pinpoint your target customer base. 

The first step of the customer discovery process is to identify who your target audience is. Make sure your team has defined the ideal customer profile (ICP) for their purposes. Take a look at the demographics, concerns, pain points, and needs of your target market. From there, you can tap into buyer data and metrics to best pinpoint your potential clients. 

2. Host interviews with customers. 

To continue the customer discovery process, set up interviews with customers. Before conducting interviews, it’s a good idea to ideate and develop an interview guide so everyone on the team is on the same page.  

Teams can take a deep dive into their perceived target market and recruit folks who would be a good fit for in-depth customer interviews. The goal of these interviews is to gather valuable insights that can further inform the process. For example, teams can evaluate and analyze the findings from various customer interviews to pinpoint patterns or recurring themes.

3. Evaluate feedback from customers.

Once customer interviews are complete, your team’s next move should be an in-depth analysis. For customer discovery, aim to use both qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods to ensure you paint the clearest picture you can. Teams should be looking for any and all useful information, including factors like client frustrations, pain points, needs, wants, and concerns. 

This step in the customer discovery process is important because the consumer feedback and insights you’re able to identify can inform any marketing and product development strategies going forward.

4. Reevaluate your target market with the new information gathered. 

Although some teams tend to drop off after analyzing the data from customer interviews, it’s well worth reevaluating your target market with the new insights you gathered from that analysis. For the best chances of market success, teams should continually refine their perception of who the target audience is. That way, teams can update their product or service to meet the standards of customers based on the feedback and data they receive directly from consumers. 

Additionally, the “final” step in customer discovery is hosting follow-up interviews to identify any other insights that could help inform future strategies.

How to Practice Customer Discovery With Yoodli 

Both inbound and outbound customer discovery are essential to market success. However, they can both be difficult to practice. Many folks end up putting their skills to the test during real calls with customers and gaining experience that way. But with Yoodli, there are more efficient ways to practice and improve. 

Yoodli, a virtual sales coach, uses artificial intelligence to provide a space for teams to practice inbound and outbound customer discovery without risking client relationships. In fact, companies like Dale Carnegie, Korn Ferry, and Google have all already tapped into Yoodli to improve seller attainment and decrease ramp.

For customer discovery to be as beneficial as it can be, teams need to understand the importance of effectively asking open-ended questions to unpack consumer pain points and avoid common pitfalls like question stacking. Luckily, teams can practice doing all of that and more with Yoodli’s realistic inbound and outbound customer discovery sales roleplays. 

Folks can practice their active listening skills while also engaging in small talk and identifying pain points during a realistic conversation with a simulated customer. And if you “mess up” during the call? No problem. Yoodli provides actionable feedback based on your discovery calls that can take your skills to the next level. There’s no risk when you’re practicing with an AI-generated client. 

If you’re curious how this works at scale in large organizations, you’re not alone. Google Cloud recently used Yoodli’s services to train more than 15,000 sales reps. The result? The case study was such a success that Google expanded its use of Yoodli into other programs. 

See for yourself how you can use Yoodli to practice and improve inbound and outbound customer discovery skills at https://yoodli.ai/. 

Best Tactics for Customer Discovery

Because there are so many lead qualification methods, it can feel overwhelming knowing exactly where to begin. But the good news is, reps can experiment to find out what works best for them and their organization. Here are some of the best tactics for customer discovery. 

Focus groups

To start, go ahead and identify some leads to further evaluate. Explore some lead generation strategies to create a pool of potential clients that could be a good fit but need more evaluation. 

Ethnographic research

Once you have a good group of leads, the next step is to gather more information on each potential buyer. For example, reps should aim to get an idea of who the person is, including what industry they work in, their company, and their job title and role. It’s also a good idea to make sure to collect their contact information. 

Customer surveys

As you might expect, customer surveys are an excellent way to gather customer data to influence your product development and future marketing strategies. However, a survey is only as useful as its questions. In other words, if you push out a survey with poorly written questions or other issues, the data gathered won’t be as useful, if at all. 

For the best results, your team should aim to design effective survey questions that are unbiased and easy to understand. Teams also need to ensure the surveys are distributed via multiple channels to reach as many people as possible. For example, many companies choose to distribute surveys via online newsletters, social media platforms, email, and even in person.

Once you’ve distributed these customer surveys, you can assess the data to pinpoint any patterns, insights, or trends that crop up.

User testing

Another great tactic for customer discovery is user testing. With this method, teams will assess service or product prototypes with usability tests. 

You can observe and evaluate interactions with consumers to gather valuable feedback and inform how you and your team move forward. For example, user testing can unearth areas for improvement that teams can work on to better connect with the customer.   

The Bottom Line

Customer discovery — be it inbound or outbound — is critical for success in the marketplace. Teams can ensure their product will meet the standards and expectations of their target audience and make tweaks and adjustments if the product’s capabilities and client expectations don’t align. Using a sales enablement tool like Yoodli to practice both inbound and outbound customer discovery can help you take your marketing strategy and overall product to the next level.

Sources

• Harvard Business School: “Customer Discovery Basics.”
• GrowthMentor: “Customer Discovery.”
• Agile Alliance: “What Is Customer Development?”
• Zendesk: “How to create customer surveys: 8 tips and examples.”