For B2B and SaaS founders, a simple yet profoundly impactful exercise awaits: becoming your own customer. This firsthand journey through your product's buying process can fundamentally transform your understanding of customer experience, product perception, and go-to-market strategy. It's time to truly buy your own product – slowly, calmly, and authentically.

Forget your admin login, internal shortcuts, or relying on your executive assistant. To gain genuine insight, you must navigate the entire customer journey exactly as a prospective client would:

  • Hit "Contact Me" and observe the response.
  • Ask Support for help and gauge their response time.
  • Call the number listed on your website (if one exists).
  • Attempt to upgrade your subscription in-app, just like a customer.
  • Request an extension for your free trial.

Prepare for disappointment. But here's the good news: that disappointment is invaluable. It means you've uncovered critical insights.

Why This Exercise Matters More Than You Think

Having spent over two decades in the SaaS industry, I've observed countless founders who, despite knowing their product intimately and demoing it flawlessly, have never truly experienced their own buying process. This disconnect from the customer's perspective — from the other side of that "Request a Demo" form — is a tangible reality, and it's silently costing businesses valuable customers daily.

What You'll Actually Discover

Embarking on this exercise often reveals a stark reality, exposing common friction points that deter potential customers:

  • The contact form goes into a black hole. You submitted it hours ago, with no auto-response, no confirmation, and no idea if it was even received. Meanwhile, a competitor might have responded in minutes.
  • Support is less than ideal. The chatbot might loop you in circles, the ticket system feels like shouting into the void, and the crucial knowledge base article you need is either missing, outdated, or assumes prior knowledge you couldn't possibly have.
  • That phone number? It rings endlessly, goes to a generic voicemail, or worse, is disconnected or leads to someone who left the company months ago.
  • The in-app upgrade flow is broken. There's no clear call to action, too many confusing options, pricing discrepancies between the app and the website, or a ridiculous requirement to talk to sales for a low-cost monthly product.
  • The free trial extension request? Good luck finding where to even ask for it. And when you do, it likely vanishes into the same black hole as the contact form.

The Companies That Get This Right

Leading SaaS companies exemplify this practice. Zoom's founders famously used their platform for all internal communications pre-launch. The Slack team were their own most avid users, and Stripe's founders meticulously refined their integration process through dozens of personal trials. Stewart Butterfield didn't just build Slack; he lived within it, experiencing every friction point, every confusing modal, and every opportunity for even a minor UX improvement. This is the profound level of customer empathy that drives success.

The Practical Benefits (Beyond Just "Empathy")

Beyond fostering deep customer empathy, this exercise yields tangible, practical benefits that directly impact your business:

  • You fix conversion leaks immediately. That broken "Contact Sales" form? It gets fixed today. That confusing pricing page? Clarified this week. Those gaps in your onboarding? Filled this quarter.
  • You understand why customers churn. Suddenly, those vague exit survey responses like "hard to use" make perfect sense. You felt that exact frustration trying to upgrade your plan.
  • Your product roadmap shifts. Features you once deemed critical might be deprioritized, while tiny UX improvements you overlooked become top priorities.
  • Your team gets it. When you share your firsthand experience during an all-hands meeting, the importance of customer experience becomes concrete, not abstract.

How to Actually Do This

To effectively conduct this crucial self-assessment, follow this tactical playbook:

  1. Create a new email address. Don't use your work email. Use a personal account to act as an anonymous prospect.
  2. Go through every entry point. Test your website form, chatbot, phone number, in-app upgrade, trial extension, and support ticket system. Hit them all.
  3. Time everything. Document how long it takes to receive a first response, the number of steps in each process, and the friction encountered at each stage.
  4. Document the experience. Screenshot everything, screen record the entire journey, and take notes on every emotion you feel.
  5. Compare to your top 3 competitors. Perform the same exercise with their products. Identify where they excel and where you have an advantage.
  6. Fix the top 5 issues immediately. Don't wait for next quarter or engineering bandwidth. Address these critical issues this week.

The Reality Check Most Founders Need

Here's the undeniable truth: if you, the founder, wouldn't willingly navigate your own product's buying process, why would a customer? Your frustration with a contact form is amplified a hundredfold for a prospect. A confusing upgrade flow won't lead to perseverance; it will lead to churn. The benchmark for B2B SaaS buying experiences has dramatically elevated. Today, companies like Stripe, Notion, and Figma allow users to transition from "interested" to "active" in mere seconds. If your process demands three days and four sales calls, you're undoubtedly leaving significant revenue on the table.

The Bigger Lesson

Ultimately, this exercise distills down to one core principle: cultivating customer empathy at scale. In a small team of five, direct customer interaction fosters inherent understanding. But as organizations grow to 50 or 500, that vital connection often erodes. Bureaucratic layers emerge, processes become rigid, and the chasm between "founder" and "customer" widens. Actively buying your own product effectively bridges this gap, offering an invaluable, firsthand reminder of the customer's reality – a perspective far more potent than any survey or NPS score.

My Challenge to You

This week, I challenge you: become your own customer. Not as the CEO, not with a corporate credit card, and certainly not via an internal admin panel. Approach it as a genuine prospect, using a personal email, and navigating the entire process. Hit "Contact Me," engage with support, call the listed number, attempt an in-app upgrade, and request a free trial extension. You will likely encounter disappointment. Yet, this very disappointment is the catalyst for profound improvement.

What insights did you uncover during your "buy your own product" journey? Share your experiences – the good, the bad, and the "I can't believe we've been operating this way" moments. Your stories are invaluable.