We asked this question of new-product teams that had conducted a total of 875 B2B-optimized customer interviews. 96% said these interviews would have a moderate, significant or great impact on their company’s organic growth rate. Only 4% said the impact would be “slight.” About the same amount also felt such interviews would positively impact their company’s culture.

More in white paper, Guessing at Customer Needs (page 10)

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)

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