We researched this question with a survey of 300+ B2B professionals, examining these VOC skills: 1) Secure interviews, 2) Proper interviews, 3) Impress customers, 4) Uncover all needs, 5) Probe for meaning, 6) Probe for value, 7) Quantitative VOC, 8) Virtual VOC, 9) VOC debriefing, 10) Prioritize needs, 11) Segment market, and 12) Business case.
Can you guess which skill most differentiated the winners and losers in terms of new product development success? It was #10, Prioritize customer needs. The #2 skill wasn’t even close. So if you’re not conducting quantitative interviews to prioritize customer needs with confidence, you’ve got some serious “upside” to pursue. See 2-minute video, Quantitative interviews are a must.
More in white paper, Market Satisfaction Gaps.
In B2B-optimize quantitative interviews you ask customers to rate importance and current satisfaction for key customer outcomes. Without these convergent interviews, you’re essentially “guessing” what customers want. You simply cannot trust qualitative insight alone, as we all tend to “hear what we want to hear.” This is called confirmation bias… and the only antidote is to ask customers to think in a structured manner, giving you quantitative data in an unfiltered fashion.
More in Preference Interview Research Report
We recently compiled a dozen short case stories of B2B clients doing impressive front-end work. (See www.aimcasestories.com.) What surprised us was how different each case was. The NPD project teams all used their quantitative Preference interviews to construct Market Satisfaction Gap profiles… and we were struck with how unique market segments can be. Truly, each one tells a story: Until you do quantitative interviews, though, that story goes untold.
More in article, Market Satisfaction Gaps… your key to B2B organic growth
