Polite Interest vs Real Demand: 6 Questions That Tell the Difference

Six thousand signups. Eight hundred free trials. Zero paying customers. This isn't a pricing problem and it isn't a product problem — it's a validation design problem. Those signups and trials measured interest. Interest and demand are different things. Demand is interest that survives cost, friction, and effort. There are six questions that separate polite interest from real demand — questions requiring the prospect to commit something before they've bought anything. One of them will make your most encouraging pilot customer pause. That pause is worth more than anything you'll get from a satisfaction survey. What they say next — including the silence — is the data you've been missing.