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Free GTM Skills / Discovery and diagnosis

Customer interview

Use this skill before and during a customer interview for a story, a testimonial or a launch quote: prep the interview, questions for the customer call, the prep doc, what to ask, pre-call email. Produces the pre-call research, the prep doc with the angle and the customer's own prior quotes, the question set (a core ten plus a bank), the call rules, and the pre-call email. See references/question-bank.md.

By Matt Santos, BOM Growth. Free under the MIT license.

Install

npx skills add BOM-Growth/b2b-gtm-skills --skill customer-interview

Run it in your project folder, then ask Claude Code for customer-interview by name or in your own words.

skills/customer-interview/SKILL.mdView on GitHub

This applies to every interview with a customer on the record. It produces a conversation that yields usable quotes and numbers without leading the customer.

Before you start

This skill works on its own. If the person has their own marketing brain (or any folder of context files about their company), read the files listed under reads in the header first and cite them for every fact. If they do not have one, do not look for one: ask for the two or three facts this play needs and go on. Never invent a fact; a blank is a question for the person.

Tools: this play speaks in verbs (check the CRM, pull the call, schedule the post). TOOLS.md at the root of this repo lists the tools recommended for each verb. The company’s own 1-context/stack.md wins when it exists. No tool is required; a spreadsheet and a mail client cover most of it.

The play

  1. Read the context (see Before you start). Pull the customer’s record: how long they have used the product, which teams, prior calls and anything they said on them (through the call recorder in 1-context/stack.md), their health status.
  2. Pick the angle with success: one project, one workflow, one result the customer has already mentioned. Write it in a line.
  3. Build the prep doc: the angle, the customer’s prior quotes to play back (“you mentioned on a call that…”), the numbers they have stated, the persona of the person being interviewed, the three things we most want to hear in their words.
  4. Pick the core ten from references/question-bank.md and tailor them to the angle. Open-ended; no leading questions; “how did you do this before” before “what changed”.
  5. Send the pre-call email: what the story is for, where it may appear, that they review every quote before use, roughly how long, and whether it is on video.
  6. Call rules: record with consent; let silences run; ask for numbers in their words and let them qualify them; ask who else on their team would speak; do not sell or roadmap on the call.
  7. After: pull the quotes and numbers into proof-capture the same day with status pending customer review.

What good looks like

  • The best operator plays the customer’s own words back to them. “You said it took two days before” gets a story; “how much time did you save” gets a shrug.
  • The mediocre version reads a list of questions and gets adjectives.
  • Good output is a transcript with three numbers the customer stated unprompted and a quote they will approve without edits.

Rules

  • MUST tell the customer what the interview is for and that they review quotes before use.
  • MUST record consent and keep the recording with the proof record.
  • NEVER lead the customer to a number or a claim.
  • NEVER pitch or discuss the roadmap on an interview call.

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