What did you learn from your first ten sales conversations?

Ten real conversations with potential buyers will change your product more than a month of building. This thread collects what they taught people.

Reply with:

• Who you spoke to and how you found them
• What you expected to hear
• What you actually heard
• What you changed afterwards: the product, the price, the pitch, the customer
• The question that got the most useful answers

Questions that tend to get honest answers:

• "How do you handle this today?"
• "When did it last go wrong? What happened?"
• "What have you already tried?"
• "What does that cost you?"
• "Who else would need to agree to this?"

Questions that tend to get polite, useless answers:

• "Would you use this?"
• "Do you like the idea?"
• "How much would you pay?"

People describe their past accurately and predict their future badly. Ask about what they did.