Imagine a fellow on a date who just talks about himself for an hour. His only questions are, “What’s your income? What’s your educational level?” Then he closes with, “Will you marry me?” Does this sound like an old-fashioned “qualify-and-then-close” sales call? As with a good date, you should be genuinely interested in your customer and their needs.

Watch 5-min video, Reinventing VOC for B2B

Your CRM will never reach its full potential until three steps perform well. AI can now help all three… often in unexpected ways. 1) Move needs from customers’ brains into your salesperson’s brain using expert probing. 2) Move these needs from the salesperson’s brain into your CRM. 3) Use advanced AI (now built into all CRMs) to mine your database to create market foresight.

Download the white paper, Transform Your CRM with AI

You can miss an important customer need… pursue the wrong need… over-design and add unneeded costs… measure customer success the wrong way… overlook a competing alternative… over-estimate what customers will pay… under-value your product… use improper messaging. So many chances to err. Fortunately, B2B producers can use a “science” to avoid all of these. And this science delivers a truly outsized return on investment.

Watch 2-min video, How Blueprinting Drives Organic Growth

You’re probably familiar with VOC for innovation. B2B suppliers use methods like New Product Blueprinting to understand market needs before developing their new products. The “other” type is Everyday VOC®. This acknowledges your company has thousands of customer interactions every year which shouldn’t be wasted. All your customer-facing staff—sales, marketing, technical service—use B2B-optimized probing to truly understand customer needs. Every day.

Download white paper, Everyday VOC

Many B2B suppliers consider competitive pricing as they plan new-product pricing. Or worse, cost-plus pricing. Both are irrelevant if you deliver real value to customers… not a “me-too” product. Competitive pricing just helps you judge initial customer reaction, and cost-plus just sets the pricing floor. Neither tells you what customers will pay. For that, you need customer-value pricing.

Watch 2-min video, Use Value Calculators to Establish Pricing.

Most sales professionals are rewarded for one thing. Selling. This year. But if you want to sell a lot more in 2-3 years, better learn today what customers really want. Who better to do this than the people you’re paying to meet with customers daily? Perhaps future companies will unleash sales-and-learning pros… not just sales pros. Maybe it’s time to complement your “VOC for innovation” with “Everyday VOC.”

Learn about Everyday VOC® at Everyday VOC Training.

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)