Bring the Insight to Win Over Skeptics
Earn trust from more-experienced people by owning customer insight, not by faking expertise
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
When you're the youngest or least experienced person in the room, you can't out-credential the execs, designers, and engineers you're trying to influence. Instead, become the person who has watched customers use the product and holds a defensible point of view about why one approach is better or worse. Insight — not borrowed authority — makes people curious and willing to trust you.
Origin
Paige Costello's own hard-won practice as a product leader who was frequently the youngest person leading people with decades more experience, developed across Intuit, Intercom, and Asana.
Core principles
- 01Don't pretend to have more experience than you do; be willing to ask great questions instead.
- 02You don't need to master another person's functional domain to be valuable — you need first-hand customer truth.
- 03Insight framed as observed fact ('this just is true') is more persuasive than advocacy for your opinion.
- 04Curiosity plus insight in every meeting compounds into trust over time.
How to run it
- 1
Watch customers use the product first-hand
Get a front-row seat to real customer behavior — read tickets, set up sessions, observe usage. What customers actually do often differs from what research reports or your internal team assumes.
Pro tip When you take a new role, become best friends with a researcher and ask how to set up time with customers, how to compensate them, and how to read the tickets.
Watch out In heavy dog-fooding cultures it's risky to assume you are the customer — that makes teams naval-gazy and insensitive to real user needs.
- 2
Form a defensible point of view
Develop a clear opinion about why one tool or approach is significantly better or worse on a specific dimension, grounded in what you observed rather than preference.
Pro tip Know thy customer, know thy market, know thy competitors, know thy numbers, know thy product.
- 3
Deliver insight with confidence and clarity, framed as truth not advocacy
Present the observation as something that simply is true and creates an opportunity, rather than as you lobbying for your preference. This makes skeptics curious instead of defensive.
Pro tip Pair the insight with genuine questions — being willing to say 'I don't know what you mean, can you say that again?' conveys more real confidence than armor.
In the wild
Costello was often the youngest person in the room leading designers, engineers, and execs with far more experience. Rather than pretend expertise she didn't have, she showed up as the person who had watched customers use the product and could say with clarity why one tool was better or worse on a given dimension.
→ Skeptics became curious and trusted her judgment, and colleagues she'd worked with universally praised her, because her value came from insight and curiosity rather than borrowed authority.
Common mistakes
Pretending to have experience you lack
Faking seniority erodes trust the moment it's exposed; owning what you don't know while bringing insight builds it.
Assuming you are the customer
In dog-fooding cultures people conflate their own usage with customer reality, so decisions drift away from actual user needs and become self-referential.
Is it for you?
Best for
Early-career PMs or ICs who must influence more senior, more experienced colleagues across other functions
Not ideal for
Situations where the required contribution is deep functional expertise you genuinely lack and cannot substitute with customer insight
From the transcript
“the thing I would say is bring the Insight Know Thy customer know they Market know like competitors know like numbers Know Thy product”
“you don't need to know the other person's functional domain and you don't need the expertise and what they're experts at you can bring Insight…”
“when you take a new role become best friends with a researcher and spend time with watching customers use the product first hand”
From the episode
How to ask the right questions, project confidence, and win over skeptics
Paige Costello (Asana, Intercom, Intuit)