Interview the lost and the churned, not only the happy
Interview the lost and the churned, not only the happy
The most comfortable research is talking to people who love you. They are easy to reach, pleasant to hear from, and they confirm that you are doing something right. They are also the least informative group you can study, because they already agreed with you. The buyers who teach you the most are the ones who said no, and the customers who left.
Lost deals carry the objections you never fully answered. The prospect who evaluated you and chose a competitor, or chose nothing, knows exactly where your story broke down for them. Maybe the price framing felt wrong, maybe a missing capability was a dealbreaker, maybe they never believed the outcome. A short, genuinely curious conversation a few weeks after a lost deal, with no attempt to re-sell, surfaces the gaps that your won deals will never reveal.
Churned customers are even more valuable and even harder to face. They bought, they used it, and the value was not enough to keep paying. That is the most honest verdict your product can receive. Why did they leave? Did the problem go away, did a competitor win them, did they never get the result, did the champion move on? Each answer points at a different fix, and you cannot guess which one without asking.
The reason teams avoid these conversations is emotional, not practical. Nobody enjoys hearing why they lost. But the discomfort is exactly the signal that the information is real and not flattering. A research practice built only on fans gives you a warm, useless picture. Add the lost and the churned, and you get the truth, including the parts you would rather not know.
There is a craft to it. Approach with curiosity, never defensiveness. Make clear you are not trying to win them back, you are trying to understand. People are surprisingly generous with honest feedback when they sense you genuinely want to learn rather than to argue. The willingness to sit in that discomfort is what separates research that improves the business from research that just reassures it.
INTERVIEW EWOUD: Tell the story of a churned or lost-deal conversation that stung but changed something important. What did you do differently afterwards?