I still want to be in the demos, onboarding calls and support conversations. They're where I find out which parts of our product need an explanation that shouldn't be necessary.
It's easy to convince yourself that support needs to be handed off immediately. You've got a business to build, and spending time with individual customers feels like something you'll eventually have to stop doing.
But eventually can be a long way away. In the meantime, you're giving up information you could use to make the product better.
When I'm showing someone Clipflow, I can see where they hesitate. They might be struggling with the pricing, misunderstanding the workflow or trying to solve a problem we'd described differently. Those details help me work out what to change when I go back to building.
I can also make decisions in the conversation. If there's a sticking point with an offer or the way something is delivered, I have the authority to work through it. Someone on the team may need to take the same question away and ask me anyway.
The conversation usually starts with their business. What are they trying to achieve? How do they work today? That gives me a much better foundation than jumping straight into a tour of our features.
There are ways to change the format as the load grows. Group onboarding, for example, can let you stay involved without repeating the same session separately for everyone.
I'll delegate more of the work when we need to. For now, those conversations are helping me decide what the business should build. I want to keep hearing the problem before it becomes someone else's summary.
