Blog Category: Customer Insights (VOC)

There are 4 Innovation Maturity Levels: 1) Solution push, 2) Solution validation, 3) Market insight, and 4) Market scouting. Learn how to dramatically boost your B2B innovation just by reaching Level 3. ... Read More

We see three common shortcomings with B2B product launches: 1) Low-quality front-end work: Suppliers develop the wrong product, so even the best launch is just putting lipstick on a pig. 2) Poor linkage between stages: The launch is not driven by what was learned in the front end. 2) Out-dated promotional tools: This includes poor selection of the many traditional and digital tools available today. It helps to follow these 4 steps: The Right Product delivered to the Right Market using the Right Message through the Right Media.

More in 2-minute video, Launch new products with power

If you want to develop a great new product, your first step should be to target a single market segment and job-to-be-done (JTBD) within that segment. A market segment is a “cluster of customers with similar needs.” If you develop one product for multiple market segments, your new product won’t satisfy any customers to the fullest extent. By definition, different market segments have different needs, right?

If your company makes colorants, your target market segment might by paint producers. But your project scope is still too broad: You need to target a specific job to be done by those paint producers. Their job might be, “production and sale of semi-gloss paint.” This is explained further in the article, Quantitative questions for interviews

More in 2-minute video, Begin with customers’ job to be done

What’s the key to accelerating your B2B business’s organic growth? The research is clear: Superior customer insight drives stronger new product value propositions… which in turn boosts organic growth. Now you can use this new Innovation Maturity Level chart to assess your current level… and plan your ascent all the way to Level 6. The ... Read More

People sometimes ask, “Can’t I develop breakthrough products without talking to customers… like Steve Jobs did?” But they are missing some key distinctions between themselves and Steve Jobs… especially if they are B2B producers. ... Read More

I think the biggest mistake is failing to use quantitative customer interviews. Why use quantitative questions for interviews, not just qualitative? Two reasons. First, qualitative interviews give you reams of customer quotes with no good way to prioritize customer needs. Sure, you could count the number of times customers cite a need, but frequency of remarks is a poor substitute for customer eagerness to improve.

More important, with only qualitative interviews you’ll succumb to confirmation bias… the tendency to hear and interpret information according to your preconceived notions. With quantitative questions for interviews, you’ll have hard data on customer needs that your team hasn’t filtered or skewed. You get 100% unadulterated insight straight from the customer.

More in 2-minute video, Quantitative interviews are a must

Your pricing could be supplier-focused, competitor-focused, or customer-focused. 1) Supplier-focused pricing is cost-plus pricing. It’s inside-out, leaves money on the table and only indicates your pricing floor. 2) Competitor-focused emphasizes unit pricing, and is only useful for me-too products and gauging initial price reaction. 3) Customer-focused pricing reflects the economic impact on customers. It’s outside-in and does require more work for you. But if you want to maximize value capture, it’s the only way.

More in 2-minute video, Use value calculators to establish pricing

Consider this logic chain for growth: A) Your only path to profitable, sustainable growth in in creating customer value. B) The only way to create customer value is by improving important, unmet customer outcomes. C) Most companies do a poor job today of identifying which customer outcomes to improve. D) Proven methods are now available to confidently target a market’s important, unmet outcomes. ... Read More

“The Voice of the Customer”, an article by Abbie Griffin and John Hauser from 1993, joined the parallel worlds of academic market research with the practical discipline of new product development. As such, “The Voice of the Customer” built upon the leading framework at the time for building new products, QFD. (“QFD”, or “Quality Function ... Read More

Most B2B companies waste millions of dollars in failed product development. This often isn’t because their scientists can’t come up with good answers… but rather they’re working on the wrong questions. Good customer insight lets you move into the Non-Obvious zone, working on customer problems your competitors miss. ... Read More

More than anything else, short time horizons restrain B2B organic growth. And this leads to “internal friction” in your growth machine, specifically in 4 areas: 1) available time, 2) required skills, 3) team motivation, and 4) organizational disruptions.  ... Read More

If you sell into a concentrated B2B market (one with just a few customers), your voice-of-customer interviews should have two goals: “insight” plus “engagement.” The latter is important: You want these big customers to be impressed and eager to work with you, not your competitors.

These 10 approaches help you engage your customers when interviewing them to understand their needs: 1) Kill the questionnaire. 2) Let customers lead the interview. 3) Discuss their job-to-be-done. 4) Project your notes so they can see them. 5) Focus on customer outcomes. 6) Learn how to probe deeply. 7) Don’t sell or solve. 8) Get quantitative in your VOC. 9) Use triggers to generate fresh ideas. 10) Use B2B-optimized interview tools. (See the 2-minute video, Engage your B2B customers.)

These are explained in the article, The Missing Objective in Voice of Customer Interviews

Portfolio management links strategy with execution for new product development. A Voice of the Customer program maximizes ROI for all new product initiatives, whether incremental or breakthrough. ... Read More

To move from supplier- to customer-centric innovation, B2B producers should shift their thinking in four areas: 1) new markets to new supplier, 2) validating hypotheses to uncovering outcomes, 3) competitive products to customer alternatives, and 4) competitive pricing to value creation. ... Read More