This document discusses the emerging trend of B2B customer reviews and provides strategies for companies to leverage reviews. It defines B2B customer reviews as peer reviews similar to consumer review sites. Reviews are validated by humans and reviewers are authenticated. The document recommends 11 practical ways companies can reuse customer review content, such as in marketing. It also provides criteria for selecting a review company, such as prioritizing quality over quantity of reviews. The conclusion is that B2B reviews will continue growing and companies need to find ways to repurpose review content for sales and marketing.

1. Leverage Value from B2B
Customer Reviews:
AMPLIFY CUSTOMER VOICE
SANDEEP SASTRY

2. Table of Contents
• What are B2B Customer Reviews?
• How do B2B Customer Reviews work?
• Why B2B Customer Reviews is a popular emerging reference asset?
• 11 Practical ways to re-purpose your customer review content?
• 3 Criteria to use to select a review company?
• B2B Review Industry Analysis
• Summary and Conclusion

3. What are B2B Customer Reviews?
• B2B Customer peer reviews are like Amazon or
Trip Advisor reviews for consumers.
• Multi-sided business model that serves both
vendors as well as their prospective buyers.
• All reviews are validated by a human being and
reviewers are authenticated by Linkedin or user
profile ID.

4. How do B2B Customer Reviews work?
VENDOR
Conducts campaigns consisting
of 2-3 emails over 7 to 10 day
period
OR
Does in person interviews at
company/ trade events or
phone interviews.
Interviews are transcribed and
approved by reviewer before
publication.
Authenticates every reviewer,
optimizes for content quality and
data integrity
Creates custom questions on key
topics to ask customer to address.
Informs customers that review
company is engaged to get
customer feedback.
Provides their customer contact list
to the review company.
Hold challenges in their advocacy
platform or their customer success
managers reach out to their
customers.
Thanks or asks additional follow up
questions to the customer to get
deeper insights.
Writes about their product
experiences.
Can choose to be anonymous
or disclose their identity and
company they work.
Gets incentive of $25 to $50
in form of gift card or swag.
The response rates are
between 3% to 5% despite
incentives.
REVIEW COMPANY CUSTOMER

5. Why B2B Customer Reviews is a popular
emerging reference asset?
27%
28%
32%
33%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
Review websites
Industry experts, analysts
and influencers
Prior experience with the
vendor
Peers and Colleagues
Resources used to learn about
vendor offerings
% of Total surveyed
Source- Demandbase 2019 B2B Buyers Survey

6. Case Studies versus Customer Reviews
Pros
• Comprehensive, evidence-based, and focused on the big
picture.
• Help understand the business problem and results achieved,
vendor’s positioning, and finding prime examples from the
buyer’s own industry or use case.
• More influential with executives.
Cons
• Buyers often question the credibility because the information
is usually collected, compiled, and presented by the vendor
themselves.
• Often inherently biased as it favors the vendor.
• Expensive, time consuming and takes on average 3 to 6
months to publish as it needs to pass through legal hoops on
both sides for approvals and this causes considerable delays.
Pros
• Provide more authenticity and trustworthiness.
They have good and bad experiences and are more
candid.
• Can be leveraged in the sales and marketing
channels to win rate.
• Opportunity for Product Management to release
new features based on customer feedback.
• Engage the buyer earlier in sales cycle than later.
Cons
• Getting the internal buy-in from sales teams to
provide their customer lists.
• May take time to build a critical mass but once
done then scales easily.
• Need to work with multiple B2B Peer companies.
Case Studies Customer Reviews

7. Expert Quote
"B2B reviews is an important emerging
customer reference asset, especially when the
reviews are in-depth with substantial content.
What enterprise tech buyers want is smaller
number of reviews relevant to them, that they
can actually believe and get unbiased insights."
Russell Rothstein
CEO, IT Central Station

8. 11 Practical ways to re-purpose your
customer review content?
1. Custom Review Quote widgets in your company website
2. Social Media Posts and Blogs
3. Review Company Accolades & Reports
4. Reference Candidates Program- participate in advocacy/reference activities
5. Building an internal Quote repository
6. Email Nurture Campaigns
7. Inside Sales/ Sales Development Reps (ISR/SDR) leveraging Reviews Webpage Visitor Intelligence
8. Retargeting Ads in Review Company’s website
9. Training Sales team to use competitive intelligence features
10. Track Customer Reviews Revenue Influenced $ value
11. Customer Reviews drive Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

9. 3 Criteria to use to select a review company?
1. Select Quality of Reviews rather than Quantity of Reviews
2. Ask about the type of campaigns offered to collect reviews
3. Tools and functionalities to repurpose the review content

10. B2B Review Industry Analysis
GoliathDavid
Suggested Reading:
How does David take on and become Goliath? Startups disrupting industry leaders
https://sandeepsastry.com/david-take-become-goliath/
Gartner owned websites

11. Expert Quote
“Smart companies don't just accumulate reviews online -
they weaponize them in their own marketing and sales
channels! But the value of reviews extends well beyond
engendering trust and removing friction with buyers.”
“Long-form reviews can provide authentic feedback as to
how you can improve your product. Feedback is
unvarnished, immediate, and statistically significant, if a
program is run at scale.”
Vinay Bhagat
CEO, TrustRadius

12. Summary and Conclusion
• B2B Reviews is going to continue to gain traction and vendors will invest in Review programs.
• The independent review companies will be able to succeed if they are able to create market
categories with sizable number of reviews where the 3-5 major leading competitors are present.
• The independent review companies also need to have provide sound value proposition/ training
for repurposing the review content to the vendor sales and marketing teams.
• Gartner needs to provide more offerings to the vendor to repurpose the review content as well.
• The other big research and advisory firms such as IDC, Forrester or Ovum may acquire the
independent review companies. Time will tell as they have stayed away from reviews so far.

13. THANK YOU !!
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