Key account managers have a HARD job: Members of the customer buying team are… HIDDEN (the person saying “no” may be completely unknown), ABUNDANT (on average, 5.4 people are involved in B2B buying decisions), RELUCTANT (stakeholders believe they’re “too busy to meet with a salesperson”), and DISAGREEING (they have different perspectives on what is needed). To overcome this, try Key Account Blueprinting… New Product Blueprinting applied to one large account at a time.
More in white paper, Key Account Blueprinting
Is your new product pipeline filled with blockbusters destined to amaze customers and drive profitable growth for you? Or is it filled with twaddle… incremental innovation aimed at “guessed” market needs? With AI as your pipe wrench, these 3 steps will unclog your pipeline. Then your best new products will flow freely. In our experience, ... Read More
Decades ago, Stephen Covey explained in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that we need to balance “P” (production) against “PC” (production capability). Today many companies just focus on this year’s results (P), without building the skills and capabilities needed for future growth (PC). Don’t just hit the reset button and start over again every year. Instead, build the future you want.
More in book, Business Builders, Chapter 9.
In the front end of innovation, though, there are just two ways to fail. An error omission is failing to uncover an unarticulated customer need. An error of commission is choosing the wrong customer need to work on. Funny thing about errors of omission: No one knows you erred… until a competitor launches a blockbuster product.
More in white paper, Guessing at Customer Needs (page 5)
To optimize your efficiency, innovate for the entire market segment. Usually. But some clever Blueprinting users have applied the same interview methods to one large account at a time to reap three benefits: 1) Retention: They work so closely with the key account that this customer doesn’t want to use competing alternatives. 2) Expanded business: Customers naturally want more of their focused help. 3) Pricing: They learn how to modify their products precisely in the ways the customer values most, leading to higher pricing.
More in white paper, Key Account Blueprinting
A new product development process with stages and gates provides helpful discipline. But most suffer from two limitations: 1) Internal focus… talking to ourselves instead of customers. 2) Analytical thinking… promoting a checklist mentality. You also need discovery thinking, with a focus on learning. Unlike analytical thinking, this is fragile and must be nurtured.
More in e-book, Supercharge your Stage-Gate® process
In both cases models are used to predict future behavior. Barometric pressure and other data are the “raw material” for weather models. For you, it’s quantitatively measuring key customer outcomes in the front-end of innovation. Your model lets you replicate the customer experience… so you can know with confidence how they’ll react to any of your product designs.
More in 2-minute growth video #36, Benchmark competing alternatives
For example, do you have a serious discussion about customers’ next best alternatives? What do we know about these alternatives, how do we know this to be true, how do customers measure their satisfaction, and how is our new product design stacking up? Without such insight, you’ll have to guess at your new-product pricing.
More in e-book, Supercharge your Stage-Gate® process
I love it when our clients have cool technology and clever ideas. But don’t mention these to customers during VOC interviews. From the customer’s perspective, the interview should look exactly the same whether or not you’ve got a great hypothesis. Give your hypothesis the silent treatment for now. Simply listen to the customer.
More in 2-minute growth video #21, Give your hypotheses the silent treatment
If any process in your company should be customer-driven, it should be the one developing products for customers, right? So try this at your next review: Ask team members how many hours they spent talking to customers… and how many hours talking internally. You may be surprised at how little time was spent understanding customer needs.
More in e-book, Supercharge your Stage-Gate® process
Can we use New Product Blueprinting to Test Product Concepts? YES. New Product Blueprinting normally assumes we don’t have a product idea yet. However, Blueprinting can also be leveraged to evaluate the viability of a product concept through a structured, needs-based assessment. This article explores a five-step process for using New Product Blueprinting to validate ... Read More
Your B2B customers have a long list of problems to be solved. But it’s not their job to carefully explain each one and deliver it gift-wrapped to your solution providers. It’s your job. When your sales professionals probe deeply and capture customer needs uniformly in your CRM, you’ll gain unprecedented market insight. And by probing well, your sales team will sell more. We call this Everyday VOC.
More in Everyday VOC white paper, www.EVOCpaper.com
When you validate your new product concept with customers, they may tell you if it’s a dud. Great… you’ve avoided the error of commission. But what about the error of omission? If you first enter the customer’s world with B2B divergent interviews, you might learn of unexpected needs that lead to a blockbuster.
More in white paper, Lean Startup for B2B (page 9)
Consider two new-product success modes. In Success Mode A you launch a well-protected, premium-priced product. In Success Mode B, you thoroughly search the market segment, but find no unmet needs you can address. So you walk. May not sound heroic, but it’s the only way to ensure enough resources for more Success Mode A. Market Satisfaction Gaps let you distinguish Mode A from Mode B.
More in white paper, Market Satisfaction Gaps
