I don't ask if they think my product is a good idea. I ask questions about how they work, delve deep into the mundane details of their work, understand what the challenges are. Finally I make my own assessment of whether my product will truly be valuable to them. I do plan on pitching to some of them later, once I've a fairly good understanding of how my target users work.

Importantly, I was clear with everyone (including my friends) that I wasn't selling or pitching anything, and that my goal was to understand how the target users work. The product idea I have is just the context explained in the first 2-3 mins, the rest of the call is just listening and understanding their workflow. The conversations usually tend to be 30 mins to 1 hr.

+100 for 'Four Steps to the Epiphany'. All of what I did above was lifted straight from that book. I've been internalizing it for years, and still fail to follow it properly. It's an amazing book :)

I feel like that's the right way to do it. Those initial early calls aren't "sales calls" per-se, but depending on what you learn, you may well circle back to those people and try to sell them something later in the process.

All of what I did above was lifted straight from that book. I've been internalizing it for years, and still fail to follow it properly.

Same here. I have followed parts of it pretty closely at times, but it's hard to discipline yourself to stick to that more patient, rigorous approach sometimes. Too often I've been guilty of falling back into the conceit of thinking "of course this is a good idea" and starting to build stuff just because I convinced myself. :-(

That said, I think part of the trick is to not just ask "do you think this idea sucks or not", but rather to ask probing questions that, in and of themselves, seem totally innocuous - but which will tell you if your idea has value or not. Figuring out how to that is part art / part science, and I can't claim to have completely mastered it myself either TBH. Still working on it...