Reading People Before Products
The First Lesson in Customer Behavior & Segmentation
As a school-aged survey interviewer, I learned that business development starts with understanding people, not questionnaires.
Early in my career, long before leading global commercialization programs, I learned a foundational truth about business development: customers behave differently depending on context, motivation, and environment. As a school-aged interviewer conducting market research surveys, I quickly realized that success depended not on the questionnaire, but on understanding human behavior.
People in a hurry declined immediately. Smokers were more open to conversation. Individuals waiting for buses had idle time and were willing to engage. By observing patterns, I learned to segment audiences, tailor messaging, and approach each group differently: a precursor to modern GTM strategy, customer profiling, and behavioral segmentation.
This experience became the earliest building block of my commercial identity: effective business development begins with understanding people, not products. It taught me how to read environments, adapt communication, and build trust. Those skills later shaped my approach to global partnerships, hospital networks, GPOs, NGOs, and multinational stakeholders.
