One of our marketing routines at SalesLoft is to answer questions around sales data and intelligence that come up in LinkedIn Groups. The other day while doing this, I stumbled across a neat way to conduct customer discovery via the same medium.

It all started when I posted a question that I’ve been wondering about for a particular product idea and got back about 10 responses from relevant parties.  I then replied privately to all the respondents and asked them 2 specific discovery questions followed by asking how they could envision the problem being solved if money was no option.

I got back 3 responses in short order that were very helpful on my quest for more market/problem knowledge.

The hardest trick is finding groups with high quality members,  a low filter for self-promotion, and an engaging audience that fits your market.

If you find that, I recommend using LinkedIn Group Q&A to discover the implications of your potential customer’s problems and to explore fitting solutions directly with them.