I am neither clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious
– Albert Einstein
In your process of figuring out how to best convey the value, you’ll keep asking questions and involve the different founders in hopes of hearing some words, or ideas, or stories, or experiences that would shed some new light on…the pains, the audience, the market, and more.
There are many ways to take such talks forward and in various directions, such as having an actual conversation (and not an interrogation) and inviting your own participants to talk and reveal items in an interesting chat, rather than answering a list of (boring) questions.
Another way that also entices some imagination and creativity is the ‘Yes, and’ approach as familiar in improv, focusing on agreement and directing that same conversation forward, inviting them to contribute more information, ideas, and thoughts…both realistic or made up.
And while there are other tactics to pull more information, there has to be some inherent curiosity within you when looking to uncover some hidden gems.
Your curiosity fuels your interest to know more about the product or solution, how the idea came about, why, who it will help, how much, how would they feel about it, and bring about so many more personal questions to help you in this task.
This personal interest to know more will drive you to dig further and help you get real information out (instead of just checking off a box), and your curiosity will feed your personal journey to learn, grow, polish, and dig deeper and deeper.
The curiosity is not a must, but it will bring you to places you wouldn’t have uncovered otherwise; it would keep the problem and the need stuck in your mind to think about it during your offtime, while out and about, and while you’re not interrogating your suspects any longer 🙂
Heck, this same curiosity won’t just solve the problem at hand towards a better value proposition, message, or copy, but it will enrich your own knowledge.
And…if you’re already aware you’re NOT the smartest person in the room, then wouldn’t you want to soak up all the knowledge that is in the room anyway?
Your curiosity will help you with that.