Practice

In Pickleball we practice. We drill, we experiment while we play in recreational games, we try out various strategies so that when we are playing in a tournament we have a full arsenal of strategies at our disposal.

Customer Development should be viewed the same way. You should employ all sorts of tests and experiments, with the most successful attempts folded into your daily Customer Development strategy.

All too often, I hear an Executive say "show me a Customer Development strategy that works". That's a Professional who isn't willing to risk anything. What we should hear is "we experimented and learned that tactics "A" "B" and "C" worked, and we are rolling those tactics out to our customer base".