Tell me about a time you had to work closely with someone who saw a problem very differently from you.

I was the operations lead at a 30-person software startup, and we were losing about 4% of our customers every month. Our head of sales, Daniel, was sure the problem was price. He heard it on every renewal call and wanted a 20% discount for anyone who threatened to leave. I thought the problem was onboarding. The customers who left had mostly never finished setting up the product. We had to agree, because the CEO wanted one plan from the two of us. Instead of arguing, I asked Daniel to help me understand what he was hearing. He let me sit in on six of his renewal calls. He was right that everyone mentioned price. But I came away thinking we were each seeing part of the same problem. So I proposed a test instead of a debate. We tried both approaches on different customers. The setup sessions kept more customers than the discount did.

I was the operations lead at a 30-person software startup, and we were losing about 4% of our customers every month. Our head of sales, Daniel, was sure the problem was price. He heard it on every renewal call and wanted a 20% discount for anyone who threatened to leave. I thought the problem was onboarding. The customers who left had mostly never finished setting up the product. We had to agree, because the CEO wanted one plan from the two of us. Instead of arguing, I asked Daniel to help me understand what he was hearing. He let me sit in on six of his renewal calls. He was right that everyone mentioned price. But when I asked those customers what they used the product for, four of the six were using one feature out of five. Price was the reason they gave, and low usage was why the price felt high. So I proposed a test instead of a debate. For 60 days, half of the at-risk accounts got Daniel's discount and half got a two-hour setup session that I ran with our support lead. I wrote down in advance what result would prove me wrong, and Daniel signed off on it. The setup sessions kept more customers than the discount did. Monthly churn went from 4% to about 2.5% over the next two quarters, and Daniel started booking the sessions himself as part of every sale. What I do differently now is go and hear the other person's evidence firsthand before I argue with it. Daniel wasn't wrong about what customers said. I just hadn't heard it.