Top Highlights

• They were all about building a persona of an ideal, imagined customer. And, in my experience, the imagined customer had little in common with reality. The sales techniques taught in books didn’t work in practice for me.
• I began to make trade-offs, compromising on both sides of the table—with the customer and internally with the company: if they wanted black, well then I’d figure out black. I caused havoc back at the office. The customers were managing me and our process, where I felt I had been reduced to an order taker.
• “You’ve got to understand where they’re coming from,” he’d say.
• “Why don’t you go live in their stores for a few days?” he asked. “You will learn a ton.”
• So, I did. I went to Home Depot and volunteered in kitchen designs, quoting kitchens on Saturdays and Sundays, for several months. And it was my ah-ha moment; I quickly realized I had no idea what I was talking about! Sitting in the back of the vast Home Depot weekend after weekend, I suddenly realized it wasn’t about my product at all—it was about...