I got my bum kicked.

It was a Saturday afternoon in March 2016. Cambridge, UK. I was sitting on the benches of an indoor sports center, watching two people play tennis. Others were there too, but a deafening silence hung in the air, like everyone holding their breath.

Except…for the sound of a bell.

Each time the tennis ball hit the floor, it made a ding, then a smack as the player sent it back over the net. Two exceptionally talented tennis players, returning every shot.

Except this was no ordinary tennis.

The two people playing were completely blind. Yet you wouldn’t even know it.

They were all Serena Williams.

I was bewildered. My mouth hung open as I watched the precision of their movements. No amount of reading about this or hearing about this could have prepared me for what I was seeing...and was about to experience.

Then the coach called out: “Portia, your turn. Want to give this a try?” I took a breath and nodded. Then got up, grabbed a tennis racquet, and walked over to the coach.

The coach, also visually impaired, placed a blindfold over my eyes, guided me to the center of the court, explained the rules, and there I went.

I heard the ding. I ran toward it…and...missed. Then again...missed. I couldn’t stop laughing. How did they make it look so easy?

I didn’t end up there by chance, though.

At the time, I led product for a Cambridge University spinout: an AI wearable assistive device for visually impaired individuals. We turned the surrounding physical environment into audible information so people could navigate the world more freely. The product was mine to shape. Strategy, roadmap, and every decision.

And it was one of the hardest problems I’d ever been handed. A mix of hardware, software, and a customer whose experience I could read about, do Q&As with, but never fully…know.

I’ve seen it far too often. Teams treat “getting close to customers” as a survey, a focus group, a set of interviews. Useful methods, but customers only reveal what they can explain. Then those same teams get confused when features aren’t adopted. When marketing doesn’t connect. When sales don’t close.

What I learned from being in the field:

What people say they need and what they actually do are two different things. Because you can’t understand someone’s world by asking them to describe it.

You have to enter it.

So I submerged myself inside the customer community. I went beyond the surveys, interviews and focus groups. I joined them in their life. Including blind tennis on a Saturday afternoon. I needed to understand what my customers couldn’t articulate: how they behaved, how they navigated, how they made decisions in the moment.

And the truth? The answers to my toughest product decisions and the hardest business challenges were never in a meeting room. They were in the field, immersed in my customers' world. Every time.

That’s where I learned something that has never left me:

Behavior tells you what words never will.

That was a lesson in 2016 that has stuck with me in B2B SaaS. It has shaped every hybrid product-led growth motion I’ve built since.

In attraction, it’s what makes a campaign stop a VP mid-scroll. In conversion, it’s what removes the friction between signup and first value. In expansion, it’s what makes a customer say “you get me.” And stay.

So if you’re stuck on why conversion is stalling, why your features aren’t being adopted, why your campaign isn’t landing as expected…call a customer. Not for a Q&A. Ask if you can spend an hour in their world. Watch how they work. Watch where they pause. Watch what they skip.

Even better, immerse yourself in it. And take a team with you. Someone from marketing, someone from product, someone from sales, someone from customer success.

That’s where the answers live. In the gap between what they say and what they do.

Portia

♥️ Love this? Three easy ways you can spread the love: Click here to get the link and share it on your favourite social, your company's Slack channel, or your B2B SaaS peer community.