B2B Organic Growth Blog

A persona is a hypothetical archetype used to represent customers in a given market segment. Follow 4 practices for B2B growth: 1) Design for just one person, 2) be specific, 3) remember precision is more important than accuracy, and 4) separate user personas from buyer personas. ... Read More

“Jobs-to-be-done” (JTBD) is a powerful way of thinking that 1) provides a longer time horizon than a product focus, 2) guides you when conducting pre-interview market research, 3) naturally integrates with New Product Blueprinting, and 4) helps you separate the core, focal job from consumption chain jobs. ... Read More

Traditional VOC relies on questionnaires, tape recorders and post-interview analyses. That’s fine for B2C, but your B2B customers are insightful, rational, interested and fewer in number. They’re smart and will make you smarter if you engage them in a peer-to-peer fashion, take notes with a digital projector, skillfully probe, and let them lead you.

More in 2-minute video at 14. Understand your B2B advantages

Survey data shows three benefits of using The AIM Institute's Discovery interviews: 1) Gain insight into customer needs, 2) engage and impress customers, and 3) develop life-long skills. ... Read More

Within every new product initiative, we must create a product spec.  As a result, engineers need to know what to “build to.” Meanwhile, modern innovation methods begin with customer needs as the input to the process, leaving an important, and too-often unanswered question, “How do we get from a customer need to a product specification?” ... Read More

Are you launching one breakthrough new product after another? Or are your new products evoking yawns from customers? Research shows the most likely reason for the latter is failing to properly 1) uncover, 2) understand, and 3) prioritize market needs. Here’s how to correct this in your B2B new product development. We shouldn’t be surprised ... Read More

After presenting conclusions from months of VOC research, a marketer’s boss said, “No… I think customers want this instead.” A terrible reaction, but why did it happen? The marketer had no hard data—just quotes, impressions and anecdotes. You’ll be more believable, confident and correct—with unfiltered, quantitative customer data.

More in 2-minute video at 27. Quantitative interviews are a must

Problem 1—What’s the right question?—focuses on market needs. Problem 2—What’s the right answer?—is all about your solutions. Most companies put 90+% of project spending into Problem2, yet Problem 1 causes most new product failures. Hmmm… are you sensing a possible competitive advantage here? Will you explore it further? Will you seize it?

More in white paper, www.catchtheinnovationwave.com (page 4)

Donald Rumsfeld described “unknown unknowns,” but B2B innovators, marketers and new product developers should also consider the dangers of untrue beliefs. It’s quite destructive when we build business cases, draft risk assessments, and plan projects on the basis of something that simply isn’t true. ... Read More

Some would say that investments in Voice of the Customer are “too expensive and time consuming.” After all, does it really make sense for employees to spend time on VoC projects? For them to be on the road, interviewing customers? Instead, shouldn’t they be doing things that “drive sales?” Like working more shows? Assisting sales ... Read More