Do You Truly Know Your Buyers?

Do you look for market insights from your most trusted customers? Do you poll them regularly for their unbiased viewpoint regarding their needs and behavior. Do you test your messaging with them before it is released? If you do, you may just find there is a wide gap between what your best customers say and what the market would tell you. Long-standing customers have established a close professional relationship with you.

They like you. It is human nature to tell you what they think you want to hear. Moreover, it is quite normal for you to ask questions in a way that will impact their response. You don’t want them to call your baby ugly, and they don’t want to say it!

The senior leadership team of a well known global consulting firm wanted to gain a sincere and unbiased understanding of its reputation in the marketplace. As a part of that process, we paired them face-to-face with a group of very impressive would-be buyers. One of those, the chairwoman of a Fortune 1000 corporation, stood to address our client. In as professional a manner as possible, she stated, “While I’m very aware of your firm’s brand and history of remarkable work, I have to tell you that your reputation within my circle of executive contacts is you often come across as arrogant, condescending, and can be very difficult to work with”. One member of the client team leaned forward in his chair with a look of disgust and quickly remarked. “That’s Bulls**t!” A deafening silence filled the room for several seconds, then the visiting board chair smiled, looked the firm’s chairman straight in the eye and said, “See what I mean?”

Learning and understanding everything you need to know about your organization from the buyer’s perspective is the very foundation of revenue performance. Surveys, third-person perceptions and focus groups can lack thought and candor. Polling existing customers alone can result in a biased outcome. Getting face-to-face with a relevant number of potential buyers to ask their honest opinion is not only useful, but critical if you expect your marketing strategy and execution to be on the right track. Carefully crafted questions that do not influence or solicit a response is paramount to the validity of the outcome.

Same With Win/Loss Analysis

Having conducted literally thousands of win/loss interviews, the vast majority give our clients a different response when asked why they were not selected. Oddly enough, our clients actually send the losing sales professional to ask the questions. The person that has the most vested interest in prompting a response that vindicates them is sent to ask a buyer who doesn’t have any desire to “hurt their feelings”. How could you possibly not question the output?

Preparing For Honesty

When we source a sample of buyers from a market segment for our clients, we want them to state their opinions and share their behaviors, what they care about and how to best approach them. We spend a considerable amount of time in advance with them to make sure each participant feels comfortable to provide the truth. When we approach a buyer that has de-selected our client, we make sure they know we have no agenda whatsoever. The buyer feels very comfortable in providing their true thoughts, and they leave with the impression that our client truly cares about them and values their input. Our client is able to safely consider this feedback as they make marketing and sales decisions. Further, we are able to re-connect and involve these buyers to discuss thoughts and ideas as we go forward. They are usually eager to help out, and many of them feel a sense of ownership in our customer’s offering and ultimately become customers later.

As you look for candid feedback from the market, look for decision-makers that are not only representative of the market you serve, but feel no kinship to your organization. Take care to apply an unbiased process to select and prepare these representatives and develop questions and content that promotes thoughtful discussion. A skilled third party can often gain access to individuals whom you might never be able to approach directly. During win/loss analysis, craft questions that elicit truthful and actionable insights, rather than the socially acceptable answer, "it was all about price". If you need help in gathering the right people that represent your market and coordinating and facilitating the event, or developing and executing an unbiased win/loss review process, get in touch with us and we’d be glad to assist you.

Motum is a market leader in revenue performance consulting, working with clients from large enterprises to entrepreneurial organizations across five continents to create sustainable revenue growth and develop an “unfair” competitive advantage for the long term. Please connect with us on LinkedIn and get services details at www.motum-us.com.

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