It may be that your customers’ customers’ opinions matter more. Somewhere in your downstream value chain, there’s a “drive sprocket” that’s moving the rest of the value chain. Find it, uncover all their needs, quantitatively isolate the critical ones, and pursue these like there’s no tomorrow.

More in e-book, Reinventing VOC for B2B (page 26)

You develop your customer’s new product. It’s like this: “Mr. Customer, we’ve assembled a team aimed at developing something you’ll love. As you can see, we even brought a top R&D expert with us to listen to you. So can you tell us everything you think we should know before we go into our labs? We want to get this right so the innovation makes you a hero at work.” THIS is the approach that drives unprecedented organic growth for you.

Watch 2-min video, How Blueprinting Drives Organic Growth

This can super-charge your organic growth: Don’t let your R&D conduct any product development work without unbiased, unfiltered data on what customers do and do not want. Market Satisfaction Gaps—based on importance and satisfaction scores for customer outcomes—provide this. You’ll free up enormous resources by working on only what matters.

More in white paper, Market Satisfaction Gaps

What else is there besides hearing customers’ needs? Impress them so they’ll want to do business with you. Incorporate your insights into a value calculator to optimize pricing. Use customers’ precise interview language on your website to improve SEO. Uncover unspoken needs in a post-interview customer tour. Understand their next best alternative. These are the reasons VOC training delivers ridiculously high ROI.

Watch 2-min video, How Blueprinting Drives Organic Growth

Is your rep eagerly listening to the customer’s problems vs. over-selling in the “broadcast mode”? When a problem surfaces, does your rep probe to learn when it happens, how often it happens, where it happens, the impact of the problem, and the value in preventing it? Does your rep draw special attention to each customer need in their call report vs. co-mingling needs with a mish-mash of other information? Can your product managers mine your CRM to detect weak signals of market needs before competitors?

Learn how to answer “yes” to the above with Everyday VOC® training.

When you say you want to pursue a “new market,” do you mean the market is truly embryonic? Or is this just a new market for you? If so, it’s better to call the latter an “unfamiliar market.” The customers were already there. It’s you—not the market—that’s new. This is just one example of supplier-centric thinking that permeates B2B innovation. Customer-centric thinking will take you much further.

More in white paper, Innovating in Unfamiliar Markets (page 2)

In either case you should ask, “What was I thinking when I started this?” Especially if you are a B2B supplier with knowledgeable, interested, rational customers, who want you to know their needs. And a science already exists for completely understanding these needs. Maybe it’s time to stop throwing salt and begin learning a better approach?

Learn more about B2B innovation at www.newproductblueprinting.com