Blog Category: Customer Insights (VOC)

If you like sub-optimizing, you’ll love using traditional voice-of-customer methods.

Traditional Voice of Customer

B2B companies have huge advantages over B2C, but they may not be obvious. After all, didn’t the same fellow who bought a rail car of soda ash also buy a can of soda pop? Nope. He changed… a lot. B2B customers are more technically savvy, objective, supplier-dependent, and can predict their needs. Careful reflection of these differences leads to different approaches.

More in article, B2B Customer Interviews: Are They Different?

Be clear on what you own and what your customers own.

82 Solutions

Customers own “outcome” space. You own “solution” space. Don’t let them into your space… unless you want to become a contract manufacturer. Instead, enter their space to understand desired outcomes better than competitors. This lets you deliver unique value in your solutions, which is handsomely rewarded though premium pricing.

More in article, Should You Develop New Products like Steve Jobs? (Originally published in B2B Organic Growth newsletter).

Maximizing shareholder value is a lovely result… but a lousy goal.

81 Shareholder Value

Tell me to increase shareholder value and I struggle to identify something I can do as an employee to raise earnings per share. Tell me to understand and increase customer value, and I can think of a dozen things to do, most of them actionable, measurable, and beneficial to our bottom line. Many of these I will find inspiring… as will others.

More in article, Why Maximizing Shareholder Value is a Flawed Goal (Originally published in B2B Organic Growth newsletter).

For successful innovation, you need to “get out” more.

77 Get Out More 1

It’s risky to incrementalize… but “great hope” projects often absorb huge resources and end with a whimper. What’s the answer? Get out more. Spend more time in customers’ worlds to reduce commercial risk. And reduce technical risk through open innovation, tapping into external technologies. You can’t thrive today without external insight. (Hmmm… “exsight”?)

More in article, The Commodity Death Spiral (Originally published in B2B Organic Growth newsletter).

Don’t confuse yourself with Steve Jobs or Henry Ford.

74 Henry Ford Quote 1

Steve Jobs quoted Henry Ford, who said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.’” But these men were end-consumers themselves, so they understood their markets. Most B2B suppliers, typically have much to learn about customer desired outcomes… and B2B customers are willing and able to tell them.

More in article, Should You Develop New Products like Steve Jobs? (Originally published in B2B Organic Growth Newsletter).

For many companies, innovation is like a medieval comet… rare, unexplained and unpredictable.

73 Medieval Comet

That’s too bad, because customer insight—the first critical step to B2B innovation—can be learned like any other science. You examine customer outcomes (desired end-results) at nine levels. Just as a microscope’s magnification is increased, so each level reveals something new about each outcome. You should try it. Before your competitors.

More in white paper, Catch the Innovation Wave (page 8).

Most companies know they’re squandering R&D resources. They just don’t know which resources (yet).

Squandered Research and Development

It’s common to invest about half of a company’s resources on unsuccessful new products. It’s not that their people can’t find the right answers. They’re just being asked the wrong questions. Questions that are unimaginative, and—if solved—create too little value. Questions that are too obvious. Proper B2B interviews produce much better questions.

More in article, Are You Squandering R&D Resources?

B2B companies should have two VOC objectives, while B2C companies have but one.

70 Engaging Customers

B2C companies seek to understand customer needs. B2B companies should do this and engage customers, priming them to buy later. If you interview ten customers that represent 20% or 50% of the market segment’s buying power, wouldn’t it be an incredible waste if you failed to engage these companies… so they wanted to work with you?

More in article, The Missing Objective in B2B VOC (Originally published in B2B Organic Growth Newsletter).

Heaven save us from the “value proposition workshop.”

68 Value Proposition Wordsmithing

I am sometimes asked to do a workshop on developing value propositions. I say, “Not unless you invite your customers to it.” Seriously, suppliers already spend far too much time guessing what customers want. Why try to legitimize this innovation malpractice by creating and word-smithing value proposition statements internally?

More in article, The Science behind Great Value Propositions (Originally published in B2B Organic Growth Newsletter).