Handling customers who say 'no' or give polite praise

Building the right thing is hard. Building the wrong thing is easy and costly. In this episode, Jason Sparks, Principal Product Manager at ReUp Education, dives deep into the discipline of continuous validation inside enterprise environments. From managing stakeholder pressure to proactively engaging customers in discovery, Jason shares battle-tested approaches for avoiding the classic trap of solution-first thinking.

Chapters

• 0:00 – The risk of unvalidated assumptions
• 1:02 – Meet Jason Sparks and his mission at ReUp
• 3:02 – From college dropout to product leader
• 5:19 – Product-market fit inside the enterprise
• 6:03 – Why most ideas don’t need building
• 8:10 – Misalignment: wrong product, wrong market
• 10:05 – Executive interference and assumption management
• 12:33 – Validation is not a one-off
• 14:44 – Continuous discovery in practice
• 15:38 – How to validate enterprise product ideas
• 17:02 – Story decks, user interviews and field testing
• 19:11 – Grading feedback and customer fit
• 21:11 – The danger of over-friendly users
• 23:08 – The power of early champions
• 25:21 – Preparing for and running discovery sessions
• 27:35 – Value testing and competitor awareness
• 29:08 – When to walk away from the wrong customer
• 31:17 – What happens after the meetings
• 33:30 – The role of AI in user research
• 35:46 – What Jason would do differently today

What you'll learn from Jason

— Validation should be continuous: One round of user feedback isn’t enough. Real product-market fit evolves through repeated conversations and iteration.

— Assumptions must be challenged: Build a culture where being proven wrong is celebrated, not feared.

— Don’t let leadership derail discovery: Product managers must set boundaries and bring clarity on the problem space before execution begins.

— Grading users is as critical as grading feedback: Identify the right customers to listen to—being nice isn’t the same as being the right fit.

— Use discovery decks to guide conversations: Jason uses bold assumptions, interactive sessions, and immediate iteration to refine ideas quickly.

— Tech accelerates, but doesn’t replace, human insight: AI tools for sentiment and semantic analysis are powerful but should supplement—not substitute—real human interaction.

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Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...