Blog Category: Product Development

In his book, The Statue in the Stone, Scott Burleson describes Jobs-to-be-Done philosophy as “an ideology to help a person accomplish a job perfectly by removing every imperfection.” Over and over we’ve seen this simple fact when our clients interview their customers: Teams that focus on their products, technologies and hypotheses struggle. But teams that focus on customers’ jobs-to-be-done–and the outcomes supporting those jobs–are much more successful.

More at Dan Adams interviews Scott Burleson about his new book, The Statue in the Stone

Quality control inspectors made sense for manufacturers… until statistical process control. High-pressure closing techniques made sense for salespeople… until consultative selling. Payback periods made sense for financial decision-making… until discounted cash flow methods. Think of these as “awkward realities.” Today, it seems to make sense for B2B companies to “ideate” new products… without first having intelligent conversations with B2B customers. The ones who could tell them precisely which outcomes to improve.

More in article, Own the Future with B2B Customer Insight

When you launched your last product, did customers start buying it right away? Or did they take a while to evaluate it because they were swamped with other matters? Why not start engaging their decision-makers and -influencers before you launch your new product? Start this engagement during voice of customer interviews, and continue it all through your development. You’ll find they evaluate—and start buying—your product sooner. Rapid “time to market” is good, but fast “time to money” is better.

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

1) Everyone on the leadership team—HR, Finance, Legal—understands your project de-risking plan and progress. 2) Because you’ve explained potential landmines early, management is confident you aren’t “hiding something.” 3) Management sees you’re investigating critical assumptions fast and cheaply, so they don’t second-guess or micro-manage. 4) When it’s time for investment decisions, they are made quickly and wisely… because these leaders have been on the journey with you. (See 2-minute video, How to manage transformational projects.)

More in article, How to de-risk projects and overcome management doubt

In the landmark book, SPIN Selling, Neil Rackham’s research on 35,000 sales visits found the best salespeople engage customers in discussions about their problems. Consider your own stage-and-gate process: After Concept Development, Feasibility, Development, and Scale-up, your best salespeople ask customers, “What problems are you facing?” Why not pull this question to the front end and ask it before developing your product? This engages customers in a genuine manner and starts the “selling process” before you have something to sell. See video at www.vocforb2b.com.

More in article, The Missing Objective in Voice of Customer Interviews

It’s pretty obvious that one objective is customer insight—understanding customer needs so you can develop the right product. The oft-overlooked objective is customer engagement. This is conducting your voice of customer interviews in a manner that “primes” customers to buy your product when you’re done developing it. Do this well and you sell your product before it even exists. Learn more about customer engagement in the 2-minute video, Engage your B2B customers.

More in article, The Missing Objective in Voice of Customer Interviews

First, ask what “job-to-be-done” you want to help customers improve. Then ask who these customers are. There’s more to the second question than many realize: a) Which point of the value chain is key? Our customers? Our customers’ customers? b) Which job functions should we interview at these companies? c) Who else in the ecosystem should we interview? Industry influencers? Co-suppliers? Regulators? The more diverse your input, the more likely you are to uncover an exciting market need your competitors missed.

More in article, Elevate Your Success in New Product Blueprinting Step 1

If your new product eventually reaches sales of $5 million/yr with average profits, accelerating its launch by one month boosts NPV by $80,000. Speed matters! Virtual voice-of-customer helps you move faster for 2 reasons. 1) Instead of finding 1-2 travel days for your team that align with the customer’s schedule, you just need 1-2 hours… letting you pack in more interviews earlier. 2) You can schedule multiple interviews per day. Employing more virtual VOC can easily trim a month or two off your timeline. See 2-minute video, Conduct virtual customer interviews.

Download our white paper at www.virtualvoc.com

How do you know if you’re accepting too much commercial risk in your new product development? You know if Joe answers, “Not sure. Guess we’ll find out next month when we launch it.” Future B2B innovators will think this is nuts. When you innovate for a B2B market, nearly everything needed to eliminate commercial risk is “knowable” in the front end of innovation, before development begins. That’s because your B2B customers have high knowledge, objectivity, interest and foresight (as explained in 2-minute video, Understand your B2B advantage.).

More in article, Target Customer Needs and Win

If you conduct the right kind of B2B quantitative interviews, you don’t need to show customers a prototype to see if they’ll like it. You’ll already know what they want if you use the methods in this 2-minute video: Benchmark Competing Alternatives. However… prototypes can still be helpful to a) further engage customers, b) understand the value your new product delivers, and c) make refinements. But if you’re serving a B2B market, you can stop lobbing prototypes to understand what customers want.

More in article, Predict the customer’s experience with modeling

You’ve covered a lot in 50 video chapters: Where do you start? This video covers 3 suggested steps on a roadmap to greater growth (and also covered in “Organic Growth Roadmap”).
b2bgrowth.video/50 Video length [2:28]

The Vitality Index (% of sales from new products) is a helpful, but lagging indicator. Here are two new leading metrics: Growth Driver Index (GDI) and Commercial Confidence Index (CCI).
b2bgrowth.video/49 Video length [2:57]

If your sales force was also a “learning force,” you would have an “early-warning system” to focus your R&D on market needs before competitors. We call this “market scouting.”
b2bgrowth.video/47 Video length [2:13]

It’s more important than ever to study your business’s future: Change can be swift and punishing. Download 16 future trends sheets to help your team see “what could be.”
b2bgrowth.video/46 Video length [2:17]