5 Ways to Get to Know Your Customer

2. Ways to Get to
Know Your Customer
in Business-to-
Business (B2B)
Sales
Tom Walker

3. We call it business-to-business, but at the
end of the day, there’s always a human
being at the other end of every B2B sale.
That person—the human who is actually
going to be using the product or service
that you sell—is your customer.

4. While no entrepreneur or
company has the resources to
get to know every single
customer personally, the
best entrepreneurs roll up
their sleeves, pick up the
phone, and figure out ways to
get to know some of them.

5. Imagine a
prototype of the
ideal person to
use your
solution.
What jobs are they doing in
which companies?
What are their hours?
What kind of education do
they have?
Who do they report to? (Hint:
These people are not the C-level
managers of the
business.)

6. Figure out ways to
connect with six
or eight of these
individuals face-to-
face.
The goal of these conversations
is to make sure you understand
the problem. You can bet you
don’t have it even 70 percent
right.

7. Remember that you
came to ask
questions and
listen to answers,
not to talk about
how wonderful
your solution is
going to be.
You can’t walk just walk into Boeing
and ask to meet with someone working
on the production line, but you likely
know people and have connections—
through business, school, sports, or
other social activities, or social media.
Consider a Facebook or LinkedIn post.
“Is there a design engineer out there
who will tell me first-hand how having a
stronger lighter material than steel
could improve her prototype?”

8. Seek out the
people who are
doing the jobs
today and that
your solution will
improve tomorrow—
not the jobs that
might disappear.
Companies implement new
products and services because
there are tangible benefits.
Innovation creates jobs in
startups. Innovation changes
the way work is done and
sometimes causes jobs to be
eliminated.

9. relationships.
People like to be on the ground floor
of something new. They like to help
“the little guy or gal” succeed. Your
company will need early adopters.
One or more of these early contacts
could become the champion that
helps you gain a foothold in a
department or a company. If you’ve
ever been anyone’s “first customer”
you know how enduring that
connection can be.
Companies implement new
products and services because
there are tangible benefits.
Innovation creates jobs in
startups. Innovation changes
the way work is done and
sometimes causes jobs to be
eliminated.

10. Companies aren’t
customers. People are.
Some of the most effective investor
presentations we’ve ever seen were
those where the entrepreneurs
described what they learned by
talking to real people doing real work.