A few months ago, I was privileged to be introduced to Tara Hunt of Truly Social, while collaborating on a Canadian evidence-based advisor firm’s marketing and communications (or “marcomm,” as we in the biz call it, because it sounds so much snazzier).

While you may or may not be in the market for a full-on engagement with a marketer of Tara’s stature, she shares a ton of excellent stuff for free on her YouTube channel. I encourage you to visit her channel and click on the “subscribe” button toward the upper-right corner of her page. You’ll then be notified whenever she adds new material.

Her most recent video, “Marketing is NOT an afterthought” was as insightful as usual.

In particular, as someone who generally prefers books over video (Shhh, don’t tell Tara!), I perked up at her recommendation of the fast-reading “Talking to Humans” by Giff Constable.

How fast? I watched Tara’s video earlier this afternoon, downloaded the $0.99 Kindle copy of Constable’s book immediately thereafter (or there’s a free PDF version), and am writing this post about an hour later.

Don’t let the attractive price or brevity fool you. If “Talking to Humans” is good enough for Tara, that’s certainly good enough for me … and you.

From my perspective, the book isn’t really about marketing as much as it is about understanding who your existing and would-be clients are, what they really want out of life, and how you may be able to best help them with that.

Client discovery, in other words.

“Here’s what customer discovery is not,” writes Constable. “It is not asking people to design your product for you. It is not about abdicating your vision. It is also not about pitching. A natural tendency is to try to sell other people on your idea, but your job in customer discovery is to learn.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Constable’s book should provide you with some worthwhile new ideas to spice up your practice development. It’s divided into two parts: A fictional case study to introduce the essential ingredients to client discovery, and a second part that is packed with practical tips on how to proceed.

All that, and Tara’s video will also treat you to a classic video clip of The Odd Couple’s Felix Unger parsing the word “assume.” Do you remember that one? Don’t assume you’ve got nothing to learn from “Talking to Humans.” Give it a read today.