A remote company’s account of applying and being selected as a “Top 100 Business to Work for in Oregon”
For the second year in a row, Cascade Insights has been selected as one of Oregon Business’ 2022 Top 100 Businesses to Work for in Oregon.
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COVID-19 threw organizations into a blender, with significant repercussions for the B2B buyer’s journey.
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Consider the last SaaS app that was implemented at your company. How was the onboarding experience? The day-to-day usage? How well did it integrate with other technologies? Unfortunately, if it’s anything like so many SaaS apps, the software may have been clunky, hard to operate, required a lot of training, onboarding, and well … tested patience.
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This is the second blog in our multipart series where we assess what it means to have a high-quality panel, how to develop a great quantitative survey, and where panels and panel firms come from. This article focuses on developing the right research questions to create a strong quantitative survey. To read the first article in the series, click here.
You can’t write an effective B2B quantitative survey if you don’t care. Yet, unfortunately, that’s how many surveys are created today, by folks who don’t give a damn. Today, many surveys business professionals engage with look more like a dumped-out can of hash than something well thought-out, carefully crafted, and full of empathy for the respondent.
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B2B decision-makers spend at least an hour consuming thought leadership content per week. This content can offer insights that help them to keep pace with current trends, issues, analysis, and research relevant to their industry.
While high-quality B2B thought leadership content can give decision-makers information they need to make smarter business decisions, poor-quality thought leadership can do the opposite.
If readers don’t immediately recognize the signs of untrustworthy thought leadership, they may inadvertently use some of that information to make misguided business decisions. Therefore, it’s critical that readers are able to quickly assess the credibility of a B2B thought leadership piece.
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Customer satisfaction research is an essential tool business leaders use to understand their buyers. Companies that use customer satisfaction research effectively can quickly fix sales, marketing, and product problems that are causing customer pain.
Unfortunately, too many companies wait until they get to a crisis point before considering customer satisfaction research. It may take a drop in leads or high churn rates before these companies wonder what’s scaring off their customers.
Being proactive with customer satisfaction research is a smart move. Conducting this research on a regular basis can keep your customers from entering the graveyard of dissatisfaction and missed opportunity.
Customer satisfaction research allows an organization to determine how happy customers are with a company’s products, services, and capabilities.
The most common types of customer satisfaction metrics are the Customer Effort Score (CES), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Some of our clients come to us after an attempt to work with a different research supplier or a DIY effort. In the spirit of Halloween, we sat down with a few of our internal experts to uncover some of these scary stories. Hopefully, this bit of knowledge will help you avoid the same traps in the future.
Organizations have raving fans and they have hellacious haters. Building out a customer satisfaction research program that focuses on these two subgroups is unfortunately easy to do.
There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is the 90-9-1 rule, which states that in any internet community 1% of the people contribute and 99% of the people lurk. Hence, a poorly thought out survey effort may only grab those who feel most passionate about your brand, either positively or negatively.
For example, your research might reveal that the customers who purchase your products tend to complain more. But in reality, it could be that the only customers who are driven to respond are the ones who have complaints. Even if this is the case, your data is going to appear as though all of your customers dislike your products.
Remember, a poorly structured sample may not represent your customers. A great customer satisfaction research effort needs to dig deeply into the 99%.
Just because a customer says something bad doesn’t mean you have to fix it. In fact, companies regularly make decisions that generate short-term negatives but long-term benefits.
Do you remember when Adobe moved from an annual price model to a monthly subscription model for Adobe Photoshop? This announcement was met with a lot of pushback from users. Fortunately, Adobe decided to stick with the change because Adobe could foresee a future where subscriptions would be the norm.
Businesses have to make tough decisions like the one Adobe did all the time. Yet, it’s equally true that making these tough decisions without a sidekick can be incredibly difficult.
The best discussion we’ve seen of how this plays out in real life comes from the book, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” written by Ben Horowitz. In the book, Horowitz describes a matrix that highlights how decisions must be made if a company is going to succeed. It includes 4 quadrants on a 2×2 grid.
| You are Right | You are Wrong | |
|---|---|---|
| You Decide Against the Crowd | Few remember that you made the decision but the company succeeds. | Everyone remembers the decision and you are downgraded, ostracized, or fired. |
| You Decide With the Crowd | Everyone who advised you remembers the decision and the company succeeds. | You receive the minimum blame possible for getting it wrong, but the company suffers. |
Using Horowitz’s grid, it’s easy to see how important it is to have a strong set of research insights in hand when you’re about to make a decision against the crowd. Without it you’ll have to win the day on your instinct and your persuasive abilities. If those skills fail you, scary outcomes are the result.
Yet, with the right research insights in hand, it can become very clear whether that decision to ignore the crowd is the right one. Plus, you’ll have at least one sidekick at your side to share in the glory of a well made decision.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when conducting customer satisfaction research is to focus on quantitative approaches alone. Quantitative research helps us answer the who, when, how and where, but frequently fails to answer the why.
Consider this scenario: You’ve received a lot of negative feedback about your sales process, so you conduct a quantitative survey. Imagine a sales pipeline where a customer first fills out a contact form, then talks to a business development representative (BDR). The BDR is pleasant and doesn’t ask too many questions, so the customer then meets with an account manager for an in-depth conversation. It’s at this phase where the customer realizes your company isn’t a good fit for their business goals. The customer then goes out to rate their experience with your sales team as a poor one, implying you wasted their time.
If you looked at this scenario only from a quantitative perspective, you might think there is an issue at the account manager stage based on the survey results. You might only be looking at the what, when and how. But, upon further examination and the use of qualitative research, it turns out the BDRs aren’t properly qualifying new leads.
Picture this: You find an automated service like Satismeter or Delighted to assist with gathering customer feedback. This is your dream! Now you can just sit back and read the reports.
Wrong.
Pop-up customer support bots can do some things well. These services are excellent for analyzing and capturing quantitative feedback. Some bots can do clustering and comparative analysis. However, while these tools can collect the data, they can’t always tell you why customers are upset. They can only tell you the what, when, and how. Therefore these tools tend to leave you with a ton of unanswered questions.
It’s a well-known fact that actors in horror movies make stupendously bad decisions. Whether it’s splitting up the group, hiding in obvious places, or simply failing to fight back these actors never avoid their doom.
As a company though, it’s easier to avoid a horrible end game. First, listen to your customers. Second, put that feedback in the right context. Third, make solid decisions on what you’ve learned.
Finally, don’t wait until your customers get spooked to consider customer satisfaction research. When it comes to knowing how your customers feel about you, you should always be one step ahead.
With more than 15 years of experience in the B2B technology sector, Cascade Insights understands how customer satisfaction research can improve the customer experience and lead to improved customer loyalty. Visit B2B Customer Satisfaction Research to learn more. For more information on all types of B2B market research, visit What is B2B Market Research.
Special thanks to Scott Swigart, President and Chief Research Officer, and Philippe Boutros, Chief of Staff, for advising on this piece.
“Quality, quality, quality: never waver from it, even when you don’t see how you can afford to keep it up. When you compromise, you become a commodity, and then you die.”—Gary Hirshberg
The market research industry has struggled for years to recruit the right respondents and ensure the best research panel quality. It’s a well-documented problem, as evidenced by the small sampling of online articles below:
We’ve talked about issues like this on our blog before, but we figured it was time for a more in-depth exploration of the problem. So, we’re writing a multipart series where we’ll assess what it means to have a quality panel, how to make a great survey, and where panels and panel firms came from.
A product or solution’s messaging can make or break its success in the marketplace.
Great messaging will instantly capture a potential buyer’s attention and inspire them to learn more. It highlights the relevant pain points that the solution can solve, embodies the voice of the customer, and includes a clear call to action.
Conversely, poorly constructed messaging can alienate a potential buyer. Bad messaging may be filled with buzzwords, vague descriptions, and terminology that doesn’t resonate. These mistakes can instantly repel a prospective client.
Poor messaging is an especially acute problem in B2B technology companies. Inside these organizations, a typical messaging framework is filled with buzzwords, look-alike phrases that mirror competitor’s language, and hyperbolic statements about capabilities.
To set your messaging on a firm foundation, it is vital to test it. Message testing research helps companies develop content that resonates with potential buyers and inspires them to take action. Without it, companies risk losing out on potential sales by delivering messaging that fails to connect with buyers.
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Thought leadership is one of the most effective types of content that a B2B marketer can deliver. When done right, B2B thought leadership content offers readers new and relevant information and helps them to make smarter decisions.
Successfully creating an effective thought leadership piece is no easy feat, however. Data and research findings need to be presented in a way that is transparent, credible, and trustworthy. The data then needs to be woven into an engaging narrative. Finally, this narrative has to drive the prospect to take action.
As the term “thought leadership” has grown in prevalence and popularity over the years, marketers have gradually taken on their own interpretations of what it means and how it can work for them. Worse yet, many marketers have started to call any content thought leadership, regardless of whether it includes an independent and data-backed viewpoint.
Given the existing confusion about thought leadership efforts, it’s important to take a second to formally define what thought leadership content is.
The 2020 Annual Report on B2B Thought Leadership describes thought leadership content as “free deliverables that organizations can produce on a topic they know a lot about and feel that others can benefit from having their perspective on.” Such deliverables can include:
Creating this type of content allows companies to position themselves as the go-to resource on a particular subject. It elevates their brand awareness and improves the overall perception of the company.
Developing thought leadership content is a long-term strategy that takes significant time and effort to successfully establish. Once it’s set in place, however, companies can begin to see substantial business benefits.
B2B buyers love to be educated. Because the solutions B2B buyers purchase are complex and expensive, these buyers are also risk-averse. These same characteristics lead these buyers to distrust typical marketing and instead turn to thought leadership content, which is inherently less biased (when done correctly).
For example, almost half of B2B decision-makers spend at least an hour consuming thought leadership content per week, according to the 2020 Annual Report on B2B Thought Leadership.
Additionally, about half of B2B decision-makers say thought leadership content influences their purchasing decisions. These decision-makers say that strong thought leadership content not only strengthens a company’s reputation, but also “positively impacts RFP invitations, wins, pricing and cross-selling that occurs post-sale.”
These same decision-makers report that there is very little high-quality thought leadership content that is actually being produced. In fact, only 17% of B2B decision-makers rate the quality of most of the thought leadership they read as very good or excellent. This poorly-executed thought leadership content can actually lead decision-makers to remove a potential vendor or partner from consideration.
Clearly, there is a substantial discrepancy between the amount of time that B2B buyers spend consuming thought leadership content vs. the amount of high-quality thought leadership content they feel is available. This discrepancy creates an opportunity for companies to become truth tellers simply by producing thought leadership content that is centered on real-world research.
Creating high-quality thought leadership content that is both compelling and credible can be a delicate balancing act. First, you must be able to share your opinion in an engaging way that captures people’s attention.
At the same time, you must also present any research findings in a way that is ethical, transparent, and credible. Maintaining such credibility is critical to establishing your company as a legitimate thought leader within any industry.
Here are five suggestions to help maintain this balance throughout a thought leadership piece:
Your opinion and actual truths about the market are different. Readers always know when you are trying to turn an opinion into a fact. It signals to them you may have ulterior motives: to simply convince them to agree with your opinion, rather than to be presented with interesting and relevant research. Your attempt to twist an opinion into a fact undermines your trustworthiness, negating any benefit that could come from publishing thought leadership.
For example, you may believe that product managers would benefit from utilizing a particular software tool. Stating that opinion as a fact, without any data to support it, can come across as untrustworthy.
Obviously, opinions aren’t a bad thing to have. You may have a unique perspective on the market that is experience-based. Just don’t confuse that opinion with a fact. If you do, readers will make you pay for that mistake with fewer clicks, conversions, and leads.
Readers understand which percentages are significant and which are not. They can tell if you are drawing strong conclusions based on a number that really just doesn’t justify your claims.
For example, if 19% of people indicate that they’d like to see a particular solution come to market, that’s not a substantial enough percentage to state that there is a need to bring such a solution to market.
Additionally, it is important to draw conclusions only from an audience that is actually relevant to the findings. For example, if 80% of people want a solution to come to market, but none of those surveyed are buyers with purchasing power, then that would not be a reliable indicator of a solution that the market is demanding.
Although you may be looking for certain data to back your opinion or hypothesis, don’t try to force it if the data simply isn’t showing it. Hiding behind a weak number or the wrong audience, and hoping the reader won’t notice, will only result in lost credibility.
One other way that this plays out is when companies use what some call “weasel words.” These are words that seem to imply that something is true, when it might not be.
Here are just a few examples to look out for in your own content:
Letting the world see real customer insights is one of the most captivating parts of a B2B thought leadership study. The thoughts of your leadership team are simply not as intriguing to readers as the thoughts of your customers, prospects, and competitor customers. For that reason, including quotes from prospective, current customers, and competitor customers are some of the most valuable pieces of insight you can include in a thought leadership study.
For example, a client of ours recently had a hypothesis that workers would prefer a hybrid model (working partially from home and partially in the office). Our research confirmed this hypothesis. Specifically, we found 79% of respondents reported a hybrid work model was important to them.
Since we conducted a number of in-depth interviews in addition to our survey, we were also able to include powerful quotes to reinforce the statistic. Interviewees not only shared that they would prefer this type of work model, but also why they liked it, how it benefited them personally, and other opinions on hybrid models. These quotes gave life to the paper, resulting in a more engaging final piece.
When creating and asking questions, never twist those questions around in a certain way to get the responses that you want. Questions should be asked fairly with minimal bias or leading on your part. Similarly, when participants answer the questions, their responses should never be taken out of context so that it is no longer an accurate reflection of what the person actually meant.
Understand your respondent’s intent and where they are coming from when they are making a point. Their claim should never be skewed to the point of no longer conveying their true intention.
Oftentimes, we hear clients deliver what they believe to be a differentiated opinion. In actuality, this opinion is somewhat of a generally accepted belief. As such, it wouldn’t be worthwhile to build a thought leadership piece around a concept that potential readers would already consider to be common knowledge.
For example, AWS isn’t delivering thought leadership pieces about how the cloud is replacing on-premises. That’s something that’s been known for over a decade now. This problem can affect startups as well. Startups often broadcast that they are doing something “no one has ever done before,” sometimes screamed in all caps on their site. Yet, that usually isn’t true.
In sum, the point of view you are trying to convey in a B2B thought leadership piece should be truly differentiated and unique in order to establish yourself as a thought leader in your space.
Sometimes you need to consult an expert outside of your organization to guide your thought leadership effort. This guide should be able to ground your thought leadership in research, providing credibility and relevance with real-world insights. Additionally, they should know how to mobilize it in an effective marketing campaign to engage your target buyers.
An ideal guide can help you:
John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Your buyers want you to be stubborn in the pursuit of the truth. They want you to be stubborn in the pursuit of the facts. And they want you to be clear about what is opinion and what is fact in everything you write.
So, here’s a homework assignment: take a look at the B2B thought leadership content on your site. How much is opinion, and how much is fact? Is it full of weasel words like “possibly” or “more”? How often is an insight bent so far that it no longer quite resembles the truth anymore?
Once you’re done, give yourself an honest grade. And if it isn’t passing, give us a call. We can help get you an A.
Cascade Insights is a hybrid market research and marketing firm that specializes in the B2B tech sector. We conduct powerful research that can be used to develop compelling B2B thought leadership content. For more information on thought leadership, visit What Is Thought Leadership.
Special thanks to Cascade Insights Co-Founder & CEO Sean Campbell and Chief of Staff Philippe Boutros for advising on this piece.
B2B partner enablement programs unlock new routes to market and product synergy opportunities. Even so, they can be more trouble than they’re worth without proper management.
Over the years, we at Cascade Insights have analyzed many different types of partner enablement programs in the B2B tech industry. Based on our research, we’ve discovered several strategies for building and improving partner programs and helping partner managers achieve success.
