When you launch a product, do customers instantly begin buying? Or do they need months of deliberation? Start them deliberating well before your launch with engaging interviews and follow-up. Customers will help you make course corrections for a better new product… and when you’re ready to sell, they’ll be ready to buy much faster.
Watch 2-min video, Engage your B2B Customers
The first is inherited growth from products launched long ago, which now “carry” your business. The second is market growth… the tide that lifts all boats. You can only impact the third—earned growth—by doing a better job than every competitor in understanding and meeting the needs of a market. This means it’s easy to be lulled into thinking your underlying growth is greater than it is.
Watch 2-min video, How Much Growth Did You Earn?
The research on B2B sales call preparation isn’t encouraging: 75% of B2B executive buyers say salespeople are not knowledgeable about their business… and don’t understand the issues they face. Unsurprisingly, only one in four salespeople get agreement from these buyers to meet again. With help from AI, B2B salespeople can now prepare quickly and thoroughly.
Download the white paper, Sales Call Preparation with AI
The term “B2B” is useful, because business customers can be so different than end-consumers. But it’s a blunt and imprecise term, and we can do better. Check out the “B2B Index” developed by The AIM Institute. The higher your market’s B2B Index, the greater you can engage customers… in both early-stage and late-stage marketing. (This is a free service.)
Calculate your B2B Index at www.b2bmarketview.com
Imagine a fellow on a date who just talks about himself for an hour. His only questions are, “What’s your income? What’s your educational level?” Then he closes with, “Will you marry me?” Does this sound like an old-fashioned “qualify-and-then-close” sales call? As with a good date, you should be genuinely interested in your customer and their needs.
Watch 5-min video, Reinventing VOC for B2B
Your CRM will never reach its full potential until three steps perform well. AI can now help all three… often in unexpected ways. 1) Move needs from customers’ brains into your salesperson’s brain using expert probing. 2) Move these needs from the salesperson’s brain into your CRM. 3) Use advanced AI (now built into all CRMs) to mine your database to create market foresight.
Download the white paper, Transform Your CRM with AI
You can miss an important customer need… pursue the wrong need… over-design and add unneeded costs… measure customer success the wrong way… overlook a competing alternative… over-estimate what customers will pay… under-value your product… use improper messaging. So many chances to err. Fortunately, B2B producers can use a “science” to avoid all of these. And this science delivers a truly outsized return on investment.
Watch 2-min video, How Blueprinting Drives Organic Growth
You’re probably familiar with VOC for innovation. B2B suppliers use methods like New Product Blueprinting to understand market needs before developing their new products. The “other” type is Everyday VOC®. This acknowledges your company has thousands of customer interactions every year which shouldn’t be wasted. All your customer-facing staff—sales, marketing, technical service—use B2B-optimized probing to truly understand customer needs. Every day.
Download white paper, Everyday VOC
Many B2B suppliers consider competitive pricing as they plan new-product pricing. Or worse, cost-plus pricing. Both are irrelevant if you deliver real value to customers… not a “me-too” product. Competitive pricing just helps you judge initial customer reaction, and cost-plus just sets the pricing floor. Neither tells you what customers will pay. For that, you need customer-value pricing.
Watch 2-min video, Use Value Calculators to Establish Pricing.
Most sales professionals are rewarded for one thing. Selling. This year. But if you want to sell a lot more in 2-3 years, better learn today what customers really want. Who better to do this than the people you’re paying to meet with customers daily? Perhaps future companies will unleash sales-and-learning pros… not just sales pros. Maybe it’s time to complement your “VOC for innovation” with “Everyday VOC.”
Learn about Everyday VOC® at Everyday VOC Training.
It may be that your customers’ customers’ opinions matter more. Somewhere in your downstream value chain, there’s a “drive sprocket” that’s moving the rest of the value chain. Find it, uncover all their needs, quantitatively isolate the critical ones, and pursue these like there’s no tomorrow.
More in e-book, Reinventing VOC for B2B (page 26)
You develop your customer’s new product. It’s like this: “Mr. Customer, we’ve assembled a team aimed at developing something you’ll love. As you can see, we even brought a top R&D expert with us to listen to you. So can you tell us everything you think we should know before we go into our labs? We want to get this right so the innovation makes you a hero at work.” THIS is the approach that drives unprecedented organic growth for you.
Watch 2-min video, How Blueprinting Drives Organic Growth
This can super-charge your organic growth: Don’t let your R&D conduct any product development work without unbiased, unfiltered data on what customers do and do not want. Market Satisfaction Gaps—based on importance and satisfaction scores for customer outcomes—provide this. You’ll free up enormous resources by working on only what matters.
More in white paper, Market Satisfaction Gaps
What else is there besides hearing customers’ needs? Impress them so they’ll want to do business with you. Incorporate your insights into a value calculator to optimize pricing. Use customers’ precise interview language on your website to improve SEO. Uncover unspoken needs in a post-interview customer tour. Understand their next best alternative. These are the reasons VOC training delivers ridiculously high ROI.
Watch 2-min video, How Blueprinting Drives Organic Growth