"You are Not Your Customer - How to market better by learning the custmers' perspective."
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This document summarizes a presentation by Bob London, Chief Listening Officer, about how to better understand customers' perspectives to improve marketing. It discusses how listening to customers can reveal that the problems companies aim to solve and the features they promote often don't match customers' true priorities. The presentation encourages marketers to have open-ended conversations with customers and prospects without selling, leaving biases at the door, and asking questions like what most annoys them about vendors or what would make them a customer for life. These conversations provide insights that can help companies pivot their marketing messaging to better address customers' real needs and problems.
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"You are Not Your Customer - How to market better by learning the custmers' perspective."
- 1. You Are NotYour Customer Bob London, Chief Listening Officers April 26, 2017 Washington Executives Association How to Market Better by Learning the Customer’s Perspective
- 2. 2012:Whose map is bigger? $500M IN AD SPENDING @chief_listener
- 3. Day 2 Senior Marketing & Sales Staff Meeting “Our network sucks” Day 4 Day 1 T-Mobile Hires John Legere as CEO Day 3 Senior Technical Staff Meeting “Our marketing sucks” 4th place US wireless carrier Rapidly losing subscribers Commodity @chief_listener
- 4. “None of the technology mattered.” “A plethora of hatred for this industry… a list of things people wanted to change.” @chief_listener
- 5. “Why not?” “Contracts!” “You can’t do that”“Let’s not have them!” @chief_listener
- 7. McKinsey Consulting: “Companies are talking past their customers” “The themes that many companies consider important appear to have minimal influence on buyers’perceptions.” @chief_listener
- 8. 8 SO MUCH MARKETING IS FORGETTABLE & INEFFECTIVE BECAUSE WE USE THE WRONG PERSPECTIVE:OUR OWN
- 9. IT Vendor “They keep things running…but I’m anxious about missing the next tech wave.” Rant “Every year, we’ll brief you on the top 3 tech trends and how they impact your business.” New Pitch “What sets us apart is our commitment to service. And our people. We partner with our customers.” Pitch
- 10. JUST ASK & LISTEN WANT TO HEAR WHAT YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE REALLY THINKING? @chief_listener
- 11. Relax. It’s a conversation. You’re seeking their insight. Leave your ego & biases at the door. Never be defensive. No selling. A MIX OF CUSTOMERS & PROSPECTS@chief_listener 20-MINUTE CALLS
- 12. 1 “What are your top 2 or 3 priorities for the board?” @chief_listener 2 “Does our industry have a reputation (good or bad)?”
- 13. 3 “Name something annoying that vendors do.” @chief_listener 4 “What do we do better than anyone else?”
- 14. 5 “What would make you a customer for life?” “No one’s ever asked me that!” Wait, we all want customers for life but never ask what it means to them?@chief_listener (the killer question)
- 15. Cloud Management Software “No thanks. Is there one specific problem it solves really well?” Rant “One feature is like a programmable light switch that turns off your cloud when you’re not using it. This reduces your monthly costs by 20 – 60%.” New Pitch “Our platform helps you gain visibility & control over your cloud environments. You can improve governance and run your cloud more efficiently.” Pitch
- 16. Pivoted to Very minimal marketing No dedicated sales resource 70 Enterprise Customers $1.7M in New Funding
- 17. FREE Customer Re-Discovery E-Book www.chieflisteningofficers.com/free Listen more. Market better.
Editor's Notes
- You aren’t alone.
- “Twice a year, we come out and brief you on the top 3 tech trends and how they will impact your business.” “We carefully manage the number of searches we accept so each client gets our full attention.” “First, we learn what’s important from your customers’ perspective, then we can create more relevant marketing.”
- GROUP A: WHAT DOES THE WORLD LOOK LIKE FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE? What are your top 2 – 3 priorities for the next board update? If you stop someone on your team in the hall and ask him or her, “What’s the big mission you’re working towards?” what would you want the answer to be? What’s the one thing you wish you and your team was doing better right now? Don’t ask about their pain points or what keeps them up at night; they’ve heard these questions before, so they’ll typically give standard answers they’ve given before. And those won’t be useful or insightful. Instead come at the issue from other angles. For what are they accountable to the Board of Directors? What are the 2 – 3 major initiatives on which their organization needs to be laser focused? GROUP B: WHAT DO THEY THINK OF YOUR INDUSTRY IN GENERAL? Does my industry have a reputation—good or bad? What’s your worst fear about investing in (product or service)? Name something vendors do that annoys you. If you happened to meet someone in our space, what’s the first question you’d ask him or her? What are you not getting today that you wish you were getting? When your prospect gets a sales call from a rep in your industry or walks past a trade show booth, an immediate thought usually pops into their head. What is that thought? Is it positive? Negative? Skeptical? Exasperated? Glowing? Their answer is often the elephant in the room when you’re pitching—and you need to know what your audience is thinking before you walk in the door. GROUP C: HOW ARE YOU POSITIONIED IN THEIR MIND? What do we do better than anyone else? What would you lose if we went out of business? What’s the business value of what we do? What would make you a customer for life? You need to know the perception of what your sweet spot is. That’s your base of strength and the foundation on which you can build new initiatives or make important adjustments to your value proposition or positioning. We refer to question #12 as our “killer question,” because it is the one customers and prospects say they’ve never heard before—which is likely why it has produced so many insightful answers. Ideally you can tie answers in Group C to those in Group A.
- Listen intentionally Go into the conversation relaxed but know that effective listening requires intention and concentration. Push aside any nagging thoughts about today’s weather, your life, family, car, pet or vacation plans. Close unnecessary documents and browser windows to reduce distractions. Remember: this is not about you. Introduce yourself briefly and don’t lapse into a long monologue because, a) time is limited, and, b) you'll inhibit your chances of getting to the participants’ perspective. This is not the time to show off your intelligence or stellar resume. Smile through the phone—even though they cannot see you, research shows that your body language affects your tone of speech. Give off a positive, comfortable vibe to ensure an engaging, atmosphere. Be eager and curious about their comments. After all, “curiosity” comes from the Latin, “to care”—it is a quality related to inquisitive thinking, exploration and learning. Showing interest helps the participant open up so you can engage at the deepest possible level. 2. Conduct non-directive interviews with open-ended questions Go with their flow and let them focus on what they think is important. Do not try to abruptly redirect them. Ask open-ended questions vs. those that allow just a “yes” or “no” response. Remind them that there’s no wrong answer. You're not trying to narrow their thoughts but to broaden and build on them. Do not interrupt or reflexively cut them off, saying, "Okay got it, next," and move on. In contrast you’ll want to say things like, "Okay just a second. I need to go back and make sure I understood that." It’s helpful to “play back” what you’re hearing. Repeat what you heard to make sure you got it right. This helps you connect their thoughts. Look for ways to build on what they said to see if your thoughts resonate. When you playback or drill down and ask for clarification, just be mindful of not interrupting their flow. 3. Scrap your “agenda” Before every call, let go of preconceived ideas. Don’t jump to conclusions or skip ahead and worry about a particular customer rant or problem or how you can solve it. Keep the slate blank. Go into it saying, “I don't have to fix any problems or respond to any complaints on this call.” If they bring up a problem, make sure to tell them at the end of the call that you’ll get it resolved—or that the right person contacts them. You also don’t know in advance which business areas the problems or solutions impact. They might be at what I call the “pixel layer,” which requires you to change your messaging. Or the solution could relate to your product or service—it needs to be re-tooled, refined or repositioned. 4. Be iterative and agile The beauty of having a series of human-to-human interactions is that you can formulate concepts and ideas based on your first several conversations and then get reactions to them on subsequent calls. This is a uniquely effective way to get “real time” validation for new ideas—or rule them out if participants react to them negatively. Ultimately you’re looking for ways to tie their answers in Group C to those in Group A—aligning the value of what you do with their top business priorities. 5. Keep your guard down Defensiveness can end the conversation or render it unproductive. Even if you hear criticism, don't defend current business processes. Resist the temptation to explain, "Well, what you just said is hard to do." They don't care it's hard to do, that's not their problem. Don’t go into the history of why you conduct business a certain way. It’s never appropriate to explain or defend your business processes, because they might wonder, "If they think THAT’S hard I'm not even going to bring up the other ten things." That's the opposite of open-ended, agenda-less listening. Do not rationalize or share details, as in, "Oh yeah, product management’s been a sore spot for years." Even if that’s the case, keep it to yourself. As always, just take a deep breath. Always bring the focus back to your goal of learning their perspective, be it positive or negative.
- Old questions give you old, obvious answers. Don’t ask about pain points or what keeps them up at night. Use other angles. Tie your product or service to their goals & budget priorities. What value do you add to their business? +++++++++ Everyone has a thought bubble when they go by a trade show booth. What is it? Positive? Skeptical? Exasperated? Excited? This is the elephant in the room that your positioning needs to address.
- Drill down for specific complaints. There’s always at least 1 juicy industry complaint you can position against. You don’t need names, just rants. Like, “The partner sells me and then hands off to a junior person to do the work.” ++++++++ ] Buyers don’t want all things to all people. They want “a job done right.” Your sweet spot is the foundation of your positioning. If you lose a sweet spot customer or deal, always find out why.
- Which is why those who do ask are going to get many thoughtful and insightful answers.
- “Twice a year, we come out and brief you on the top 3 tech trends and how they will impact your business.” “We carefully manage the number of searches we accept so each client gets our full attention.” “First, we learn what’s important from your customers’ perspective, then we can create more relevant marketing.”
- Forrester: independently validated the market feedback as part of a large trend among skeptical software buyers—don’t sell me a swiss army knife when all I need is a hacksaw or an icepick.