From Grit to Growth

23. Three Minutes With a Customer Can Change Your Business

• Dundee Growth Partners

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There’s a weird thing that happens as companies grow: founders start farther away from their customers.

Early on, you talk to them all the time. You hear what they like, what annoys them, why they chose you in the first place. Then the business grows, dashboards appear, teams expand, and suddenly “customer feedback” shows up as a report instead of a conversation.

Mark Hasebroock and Jennifer DiMotta talk about why that shift creates blind spots for founders. Data matters. Reviews matter. Metrics matter. But none of them replace hearing directly from the person buying your product.

A few short phone calls can reveal more insight than weeks of internal analysis, and this episode of From Grit to Growth deepens into it.

One takeaway: call your customers.


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About Dundee Growth Partners 

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started. 


SPEAKER_01

The successful ones say, All I want is three minutes, and I want your advice. I'm not calling to tell you anything. Then you get a lot of advice. And the ones that do that have a lot of success.

SPEAKER_00

From grit to growth, a podcast for e-commerce, entrepreneurs, and business owners. By experts who have been there, done that, and come out the other side. Here are your hosts, Mark Haysbrook and Jennifer DeMotta. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01

I'm Mark Haysbrook, and I'm with, of course, my co-founder, Jennifer DeMotta, and we're talking today about talking to your customers. You know, the other day, I was talking to a founder of a company. They're um they're about$15 million in revenue. Last year they were about 13 and a half. The year before they were about 12. And they're forecasting maybe 15 this year. And I said, What's going on? I mean, what you guys had a decent clip, not eye popping. Oh, I don't know, you know, there's this and that and the weather and COVID and excuse department stuff left, right, and sideways. Um, and a customer quit. And so then we uh, you know, we got these other things going on, and I don't know. And I said, wait a minute, but let's back up. What do you mean a customer quit? Yeah, uh they well, they just decided not to use us anymore. Oh, did well when you called them, what did they say? I and he goes, What do you mean? And I said, When you called them, what did they say? He was well, I didn't call them, they just sent me an email and said, We're just not going to renew and thanks. And it was kind of eye-popping to me on that front because you know you learn so much talking to your customers. And when growth starts to stall, I guess I want to ask you when you see that happening, where does that fit in the equation with just inquiring with your customers what's going on?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And we talked about this a couple of times, but we really haven't dedicated a full podcast. And it's just something we see with every client. And I would equate um learning from your customers to this. So if you need to drive from New York to Phoenix and you've never done it before, why would you do that without a GPS? Why would you do that without a map? And that's exactly the same thing. When you are not actively listening to customers, it doesn't matter if you're pre-revenue, if you're 5 million, if you're 50 million, if you're, you know, 500 million. Listening to customers is invaluable. The thing is, there's different ways to listen to customers these days. And some of them, it's it's really more the proximity in which you're listening to your customers, in my opinion. And this is what I'd love to talk to the founders uh more about uh that are listening here is you know, it's some some of us listen to our customers through the data. And but that's there's kind of a distance there in proximity because you are reading it through demand or through, you know, whatever, reviews and stuff like that. And then the, or excuse me, ratings, uh, customer reviews, which is what a lot of uh founders and entrepreneurs need to listen to now, is really a rich set of data. But I can tell you that just about every founder I've ever talked to does not spend time looking at customer reviews. Or if they do, they're not spending the time to understand what the insights are and then making decisions from those insights. And then the closest way to me to really talk to your customers to talk to your customer. Like it's very simple. Talk to them on the phone. Um, some of our best clients are founders with a storefront. Why? Because they are right there, right two feet from their client having conversations and they get the most insights. And if you just don't have a storefront, to your point, that's okay. Pick up the phone and call the client.

SPEAKER_01

They're shocked, right? Yeah. I I followed up a couple weeks later uh with this guy, and and he said, I learned more from 10 phone calls that I make than in two years of internal meetings and PowerPoints and decks and slides and examination and so forth. And part of that he's got probably an internal issue he's got to face because nobody wants to give him bad news. But but when he talks to his clients, first of all, he said they were just, wow, you're you're not calling with a problem? No, just look, if what can we do better? What do you like about what we're doing? I want to thank you for being a customer.

SPEAKER_02

Well, that's the that's the really nice part about talking to customers. They don't care if you're the CEO of your business, they're gonna be honest. As far as they're concerned, they're the boss and they should be. And that's exactly why you talk to them because they are your boss. And then you made a different point of learning. Learning is incredibly it's the right verb, it's the right thing to do with customers. You don't need to make every decision and spin your team out of control by all the different anecdotal pieces of feedback you get from customers. Yeah, but learning and finding the trends and the insights, you can never get without also picking up the phone or talking to your customers face to face in some way, shape, and form.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

What have you seen on the side of um like you work with a lot of tech and SaaS type companies? How do they touch base with their customers? How do they get that feedback?

SPEAKER_01

The successful ones do just what you say. They call and they just it's harder because some people just say things are fine, don't worry about it. But the ones that just take three minutes, and and if you preface it that, the successful ones say, All I want is three minutes, and I want your advice. I'm not calling to sell you anything, then you get a lot of advice. And the ones that do that have a lot of success. The ones that send out a survey, it's well meaning, and and sometimes if it's broad enough across a wide variety, you you actually get some interesting information. But if you have 10 or 12 customers, it's not that hard. It's not that hard. Yeah. And so those are the ones that just say, I'm just gonna take the time. Sometimes it's just, hey, this is so-and-so, the founder. I I just want thanks. I want to thank you for your business.

SPEAKER_02

You know, you know, you had asked me the other day, what are the signs of founders that aren't listening to their customers? What are the easy signs there? And I, you know, you had even thought of a few of them, but let's just point those out. Is number one, you know, you're selling something, right? You're selling a product or service. So as you're evolving that product or service, maybe adding products, maybe adding services, maybe making modifications. Um, we see those evolutions when they don't work out, it's very apparent they weren't going back to the customer first before they made those evolutions. Yeah. That's probably number one, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, what are some of the other signs that you've seen?

SPEAKER_01

You start to see that the customers don't respond.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So hey, you got a few minutes and it's just radio silent. You know, and so it becomes, uh-oh, what's happening here? Um you start to see maybe that they the the the the folks making the decision have kicked it to someone else. And the relationship is no longer there. And you start to wonder, geez, who am I who am I dealing with here? This is starting to fall apart. You know, no disrespect to whoever they kicked it to, but um, you know, when it when it starts to get ignored, there's that should be flashing red lights.

SPEAKER_02

That's so good.

SPEAKER_01

And so, yeah, the ones that get out in front of that and go back to the original decision maker and just have that conversation way in advance of when the contract is supposed to be renewed. And and come with fresh ideas. Because back to the example of this this one founder I was talking to, he said he got feedback from those 10 calls. Hey, you guys haven't come up with anything new in a long time. And the pace at which this industry moves, it's concerning. So we started looking elsewhere, including creating our own, including AI tools, including, you know, Claude or anything else. And so what you know, he's got, wow, okay, we let's circle the wagons here and figure out how we respond to this. And then he was able to fe figure out well, here's some features these people actually want. And they weren't shiny penny things, they were legitimate. So, you know, getting back to that decision maker and not waiting until that contract is 48 hours away from renewal.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And you know, I um that you're talking B2B, and that is really important, right? Because you're usually hanging your hat on a few customers that are bringing in a majority of your revenue. So you better be listening to them. You know, it's it's really critical. And then when you're on the B2C side, and let's say you have thousands of customers, that's still no excuse. You find customers in different buckets, the some of the best customers, who's spending the most with you? Who can you call? And they're gonna love hearing from you, by the way. There is nothing um more cool than um hearing from the CEO andor founder from a place where you are consistently making purchases. That isn't a neat experience for them, too. And then, you know, calling somebody who's maybe a first-time buyer, you know, why'd you why'd you decide to buy from us? So that you can understand there may have been a switch that that's such a great question, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and the other thing is, and you talk about this all the time, is how can AI play a role in supporting you and understanding your customers better? Well, we talked about like those different distances. I mean, at the end of the day, financials and all of your data do explain how your customers feel about you. Um, you know, people are spending money where they they want to spend their money, so and spending it on products and services that serve them. So if you uploaded reviews, ratings, financial data, and then all the anecdotal conversations, I think AI could probably do a pretty darn good job about getting you to trends and insights. And, you know, that's that becomes leverage for any given counter.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, it allows it allows you to really take that time. Whereas you probably had an employee that was supposed to be doing that. I think what I'm seeing is that the speed with which you can take all of those different data points and and utilize them meaningfully, almost like, what does all this mean? You know, give me some real feedback here. And and back to the guy that had that some little bit of cultural, we're afraid to tell you know, the boss he's not wearing any clothes. You know, I don't think AI cares about that stuff. It allows you to ask more pointed questions and then also really, really, truly understand the information. You know, so you've got a hundred data points and it it comes out as, well, here's what this means. You then have insight that allows you to better position the conversation with your customers. And and it shows that you're thinking of them, you're way out in advance. And it's a dialogue, it's not just transaction. And I think that's really going to play an important part, particularly in any SaaS, because SaaS is, man, it's under fire. You got people saying, okay, this is interesting, but can't I just do this myself now? Why do I need this? Who, you know, so so help me connect the dots. Um, I think it really helps you with the retention of those customers to show that you've you've thought it through. You connect it for them, you show that it's actionable. And you become your your term leverage, you become the leverage for them because they're like, I've got to work with these people. This this is too important.

SPEAKER_02

Right. I mean, to your point, the red ocean is real. It's real across a lot of avenues. And so, what's going to be your biggest differentiator? Listening to customers is going to be a differentiator. And if you don't quite believe it, there are plenty of stats out there that show that. I remember when I worked at Sports Authority, we drew up a 3B hex, essentially revenue and net profit, uh, and employee um satisfaction and our customer NPS. What we did was we measured the performance of the business when the customer's NPS was higher versus lower. The gap was dramatic. The amount of margin that we make on the customers with a higher NPS is insane. The amount of lifetime value on customers that have higher NPS is high. Real interesting. Yeah. Oh, yeah, there's a direct correlation. So for any of those out there that say, well, listen, I know best and my customers will follow along. Well, that might be partly true, but you know, take a listen to your customers and see if it validates your direction. Maybe you just need to turn the dial just a tiny bit to support the customers. But the reality is, is it will come through in the numbers and your um client with, you know, sort of the flat 15 million, I bet anything, if they go back to the well, they look at the customer feedback, they find more customer feedback, they can lift that, right? They can go from 15 to 17 or 15 to 20 or whatever it is, simply by making decisions at the source, and that is from the customer data.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. So, so good. And tying in those relationships um to make it more human as well. Yeah. Uh it was interesting to hear this, it was another conversation, but um one founder asked uh one of his his actually her customers, um, how'd you get into your business? And and you know, the the client was just like, Well, oh, it's funny you should ask. Well, here's my backstory, and I don't have a lot of time though, okay? But I'll I'll tell you a few things. 45 minutes later, you know, that that is that is tremendous value, has nothing to do with the value prop or anything else. It's just like these are two humans and they wanted to share that story, and you know you get a deeper connection with your customer that way. Anything you can do to find those small advantages to stay in front, because as you know, the cost to acquire a customer these days. Huge. It's enormous. And to then just have an email come across and say, hey, uh, we're not gonna use you guys anymore. Thanks for everything. Good grief. You know, you it it costs tens of thousands of dollars to get customers in some cases.

SPEAKER_02

Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So in invest in the customers you have. And and also when you're starting to think about, oh, we've we've got to really, really scale this thing, talk to your customers first.

SPEAKER_02

I was talking you made me think of something here. So I was talking to a long-term client who serves the businesses, so it's a B2B format and it's a service. And I remember recommending that they do client surveys, satisfaction surveys, because they weren't doing it. And he said, you know what? I call my best clients and they say we're amazing. So I don't, I don't think there's really a need. And I said, Well, have you ever asked them that if there's one thing that can that can be improved, what would that one thing be? Or have you ever asked them if uh there's something else that you could do to serve them? What would that thing look like? Have you ever kind of poked at that a little bit? Yeah. No, you're right. I mean, I generally just ask the question, how's it going? So if you get on the phone with a client, go a little deep. You know, try to get to it's good to get on the phone with a client who's happy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

The reality is there's got to be something there that you can find and learn.

SPEAKER_01

And that's why the best founding teams, you know, there's a sales founder and a technical founder, at least in a tech company, right? Because no disrespect, but the the technical co-founders are are not good in front of people, generally. And and they they have this, I know what's best. You know, you generally don't. And the salespeople are good listeners. If they're good, yeah, that they're good listeners and they can pick up on those signals. Oftentimes, you know, that old story of Ray Kroc, the the founder of McDonald's, go going into one of the stores and listening to one of the managers, explain an idea for what became the Big Mac. You know, and if he would have just said, look, I know what's best for everybody, you don't. This is how we do things, this is the way we're doing it, you know, he kind of, you know, I'm elaborating a little bit, but like, this is this is there's something here. So, so picking up on those nuances where the people on the front lines, back to your your folks in the the brick and mortar, they can look those people in the eye, like, why are you here? What what could we do to make this better? And by the way, thanks for being a customer. I I mean, it just it it makes my day. It goes so far.

SPEAKER_02

It does go far. So, you know what, we're gonna wrap this up. And um, so I think some of the things for you guys to think about are the ways in which you acquire customer feedback. Of course, look at your data. It is customer feedback, and it should be a place from where you make decisions, but go a little bit further. Now look at real reviews, real ratings of your business, and then go even deeper, try to get face-to-face. Face to face or phone call, whatever format works for both the client and yourself, and then pull all those things together and make better decisions in the future. Correlated, it will turn into business growth. So hopefully you guys learned a lot from what we just talked about, and we'll see you later.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening. Like us, subscribe. We got more stuff coming.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for listening. If you like what you just heard, give us a like and leave a comment so that more people can tune in. Or go subscribe on YouTube. To learn more about Mark and Jennifer, visit DundeeTP.