I suspect you’d rather look at a map first, and then start your journey. So why do many B2B companies develop a new product and then show it to customers? With intelligent B2B voice-of-customer interviews (see e-book, Reinventing VOC for B2B), your customers are drawing a map for you: “Yes, go here and work on this outcome. No, that outcome isn’t important so don’t bother.” Granted, it’s more “daring” to ignore a map. But if you want to get to the right destination as quickly and efficiently as possible, it’s better to talk to your cartographers first.
See 2-minute video, Stop leading with your solutions
If you bring a prototype to a customer, this is “concept testing”… which is different than voice of the customer research. Prototypes are fine later in the process, but for many companies this is their first discussion with customers. B2B concept testing should occur after front-end voice-of-customer interviews. If you start with concept testing, you’ll incur confirmation bias, less-engaged customers, and the false impression you’ve acted in a customer-centric fashion. See 2-minute video, Stop leading with your solutions.
More in article, Don’t Confuse Concept Testing With VoC
Your growth rate has three hidden components: Inherited Growth (from past employee’s innovations), Market Growth (from matching market growth using average innovation) and Earned Growth. You only accomplish the latter by doing a better job than competitors in understanding and meeting customer needs. Every year, purchasing agents and competitors work hard to commoditize your products. So every year you need to earn your growth. It’s the only way to rise above “mediocrity.” And who wants that? See 2-minute video, How much growth did you earn?
More in article, Own the Future with B2B Customer Insight
Surely nobody would brag about using VOO to develop new products. But if you aren’t having intelligent conversations with B2B customers before developing your new products, isn’t this what you’re doing? A good test is to add up your hours of internal conversations and compare with your voice-of-customer (VOC) hours. If you are not happy with the ratio, this might explain why customers are not happy with your new products.
More in e-book, Reinventing VOC for B2B
It wouldn’t be hard to do. It often takes 2 or 3 decades for industry to broadly adopt new practices. This has been true for statistical process control, lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, Stage-Gate®, consultative selling, and others. What if your company identified and quickly mastered the next high-impact business practice? A good candidate is reinventing VOC for B2B: Before developing a new product, conduct B2B-optimized voice-of-customer interviews, so customers can tell you precisely which outcomes to improve.
More in e-book, Reinventing VOC for B2B
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
