Congratulations! You’ve been promoted! On your first day as a new B2B exec, your company’s Director of Public Relations wants to chat. Something about a press release. She says you’ll want to address stockholder concerns.  To provide hope despite the weak economy and sluggish sales. To give a reason to believe. A reason to have ... Read More

The world of B2B sales techniques can be a confusing landscape. “Confusing” because it’s hard to know when to rely upon traditional B2B sales techniques and when to embrace newer approaches. Certainly, B2B sales are more complex than B2C sales – and despite the information revolution – this complication persists. Many of the current challenges ... Read More

These 5 practices help you succeed in the first step of Blueprinting… selecting a target market and project scope: 1) Define the boundaries. 2) Seek diversity. 3) Schedule enough time. 4) Sync with your strategic plan. 5) Get key stakeholders on board. ... Read More

Many companies struggle trying to enter new markets or introduce new technology. You can apply a new “de-risking” methodology to identify those "landmines” that could blow up your project. This approach not only gives teams a detailed roadmap to follow… it allows them to clearly communicate risk to management. ... Read More

If you are using older voice-of-customer methods (e.g. DFSS or QFD), you’re sub-optimizing. For B2B your methods must achieve 3 goals: 1) collaborate deeply, 2) pre-sell your innovation, and 3) maximize “value capture.” Four B2B approaches are explored here. ... Read More

If we bring a prototype to a customer, this is “concept testing.” Something different from voice of the customer research.  But when definitions are not understood, these become conflated and we fool ourselves into believing that we’re more customer-centric than we really are. This confusion results from how innovation and new product processes have evolved. ... Read More

Product managers are critical along the journey to become customer-centric. To that end, few investments are more important than product manager training. Before diving too deep into the product manager training strategy, let’s discuss this title, “product manager.” Since titles don’t always mean the same thing from company to company, let’s be precise in our ... Read More