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B2B Brand Research: Don't Skip the Qual

B2B Brand Research: Don’t Skip the Qual

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Applying a B2C approach to B2B brand research just doesn’t work.

With B2C, it’s of utmost importance to make sure that general awareness of the brand is really high. (Think product placement for Coca-Cola on movies and TV, billboards, etc.)

But with B2B, it’s much more important to make sure the right people are aware of the brand. Often, it doesn’t matter whether the general population is aware of a B2B product or service. Only a handful of very specific professionals would ever use the solution anyway.
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Message Testing: Because Intent ≠ Interpretation

Message Testing: Because Intent ≠ Interpretation

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Somewhere between intent and interpretation, a lot can get lost in translation.

Many B2B marketers suffer from this problem. Some focus heavily on one buyer persona and ignore the other key figures in B2B purchase decisions. Others fail to communicate what sets their product apart from the crowd. Buyers balk at cocky messaging or jargon that goes over their heads.

Make sure you’re leaving target customers with a favorable impression. Read on for the most common problems revealed by our message testing research for B2B technology companies.

You Have Buyer Personas. Plural. Woo them all.

Research shows that B2B tech purchases tend to be group decisions. Your messaging should target each buyer persona involved in the purchase.

Don’t just focus on the big guns. There are more people involved in B2B buying decisions than the executive signing the purchase order. Messaging that only focuses on C-levels or VPs is doomed to fail, as it ignores other important decision-makers such as end users, department heads, and business group leaders.

Your Differentiators Should Be…Differentiated.

How different is your messaging from your competitor’s? Are both websites a list of the same “itys”? Do both websites boast of fantastic reliability, security, manageability, and usability?

Instead of trying to score on every possible differentiator, pick one and nail it.  Perhaps you uniquely meet a target persona’s “job to be done.” Maybe you can boast of exceptionally smooth integration. Or perhaps you offer pricing models that are far more attractive than those provided by your competitors. Speak to your real strengths.

Don’t Pretend To Be Buyers’ Only Hope.

Most business problems existed before your company appeared on the scene. Be cautious about claiming to be the only solution capable of solving a problem.

Instead, strive to convince buyers that your solution is the best at solving the problem it was designed to solve. That way, you won’t inadvertently insult buyers who have been tackling the problem in another way.

Don’t Skip The Basics.

Address user experience in your messaging. Ease-of-use, integration, and adoption rates nearly always factor into B2B buying decisions.

These elements don’t need to be at the forefront of your messaging, but it wouldn’t hurt to weave them in (when you can back them up).

Use Acronyms Smartly and Sparingly.

Make sure you’re not using acronyms that are alienating to your audience.

Yes, use acronyms that are common knowledge within the vertical or business group you’re targeting. This helps to demonstrate a shared expertise in the buyer’s field.

Be very careful that you’re not using acronyms that are only common knowledge within your own company or amongst isolated groups of market analysts.

Know the difference before you flood your messaging with acronyms.

Anticipate “Too Good To Be True” Concerns.

There may be a downside to the benefit of your product or service. Buyers will be looking for one.

Do you offer a flexible platform?  Customers might worry that implementation will take too long. Are you providing a point solution to a single problem? Buyers may fear that the challenge of integrating with their other solutions outweighs the benefit.

Sing the praises of your solution’s benefits. Then address concerns about tradeoffs.

Answer The FAQs.

Make sure your marketing answers obvious, initial questions. Front-load your home page with answers to questions like “what does it look like?” and “how much does it cost?”

If buyers can’t find answers quickly, they probably won’t work very hard to figure it out.

That said, strong messaging should raise enough intrigue to make potential buyers want to learn more.

Are They Getting The Message?

While these guidelines will help you to convey the message you intended, it’s important to learn how your buyers are interpreting your marketing.

Market research, to the rescue! Message testing compares the “message received” to the “message sent,” diagnoses disparities, and provides insights to correct strategy.

This blog post is brought to you by Cascade Insights. Our research helps marketers craft messaging that resonates with target buyers.

customer satisfaction research

People-Centric Marketing: Wisdom From Tom Shoemaker

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Large companies lose touch with their customers all the time.

Search for B2B Revealed on your favorite podcast player (iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and more) to subscribe.

Luckily, you can reconnect one conversation at a time.

Without investing in customer conversations, marketing will be off message, sales will say the wrong things, and product sales will suffer.

Virtually or in-person, have those conversations. It’s worth it.

In this episode of B2B Revealed, Cascade Insights CEO Sean Campbell and Tom Shoemaker, CMO of itslearning, explains why customer conversations should be at the center of your marketing efforts.

Don’t Let Your Marketing Be a Monotone. In This Episode, You Will Learn:

  • Key questions to ask during customer conversations.
  • Why you should double or triple the number of customer conversations you’re having.
  • Tips for adjusting your marketing strategy for enterprise and mid-market.
  • Warning signs that you’re taking your customers for granted.
  • The real-world strategy PTC used to effectively regain touch with their customers and build stronger relationships.
  • How to make a value roadmap and why it’s important.
  • Why aspiring marketers should strive to pass “The Beer Test.”

Notable Quotes:

“Don’t be afraid to raise your hand, jump in, and do what needs doing.” – Tom Shoemaker on maintaining career success.

“Regardless of how many customer conversations you have, you should probably have twice as many, or more.” – Tom Shoemaker discussing how to properly conduct customer satisfaction research.

“What are the things they care about, what are their drivers.”– Tom Shoemaker on focusing on the customer’s story.

“We systematically talked about the things that mattered throughout the process of going from design to manufacturing to service. Then we articulated the things that companies ought to be looking for in a technology provider.” – Tom Shoemaker explaining his company’s change in their outlook as a true process-oriented, customer-oriented and value-based selling, consultative selling B2B software company.

Subscribe to B2B Revealed on iTunes, Soundcloud, Google Play, or Stitcher.

Want more B2B brilliance? There are lots of ways to follow us.

an open letter to b2b sales leaders

An Open Letter To B2B Sales Leaders

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Are you losing deals because of your sales team’s actions?

After more than a thousand market research interviews in the B2B tech field, we’ve collected some of the most common mistakes that sales reps make. These insights have been gathered from hundreds of interviews with B2B tech decision-makers, product evaluators, customers, and partners.

Here’s how to recognize and avoid these common sales blunders.

Listen to the B2B Revealed Podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Overcast, and SoundCloud

1. Not getting up to speed. 

An Open Letter to B2B Sales Leaders

No prep, no win.

At least half of the lost deals we investigate are due to sales teams demonstrating a lack of knowledge of the buyer.

B2B customers need to know that the company they’re buying from understands their industry. Sales reps need to show either first-hand experience or extensive book knowledge of the customer’s industry.

Actually, B2B sales reps should be so knowledgeable that they could easily skip the first few days of training if the customer were to hire them tomorrow.

Sales reps should also be able to speak their customers’ industry jargon fluently. Sure, it’s okay to ask what an acronym means but no more than once or twice in a sales meeting. More than that and customers will be seeing red flags.

2. Oblivious to why the customer is looking to buy. 

Importantly, B2B sales reps need to know what jobs buyers need a solution to solve.

We often see sales reps who can sing the virtues of their product but have no idea what job customers will use it for. Not good.

B2B sales reps need to be able to explain how their product can satisfy customers’ “jobs to be done.”

3. Over-reliance on the pitch deck.

Real-world sales conversations don’t fit neatly into a PowerPoint or script. B2B salespeople should be confident enough in their knowledge not to panic if the dialogue deviates from the pitch deck.

Great B2B sales reps are always ready to dive right into the demo. We’ve literally never heard a complaint that a vendor gave a proof-of-concept or demo too early on.

Quite the reverse, actually. We often hear grumbles that sales reps spend way too much time on the slide deck before getting to the good part.

Though some customers may enjoy the PowerPoint view of a product, others consider it as a waste of time. Adjust accordingly.

Always assume that the competition is proving their product’s worth in an attention-grabbing, mind-blowing demo. If that’s the case, how much time do you want your sales team to spend droning on about the product before showing off what it can do?

4. Not knowing the buyer personas. An Open Letter to B2B Sales Leaders

Far too often, we suspect that B2B buyer personas never get shared beyond the marketing team.

Trust us, the rest of the company needs to know those buyer personas too. Especially sales.

So many sales teams go-to-market with one pitch targeted at a single buyer persona.  This automatically eliminates all other potential customers. It’s not wise to have such a limited sales approach.

B2B sales reps need to know whether they’re talking to the CFO or IT admin and tailor their message accordingly. Obviously, these two personas care about different things. Don’t get into the weeds with an executive but dismiss the IT admin’s questions around configuration by flashing screenshots of dashboard reports at them. Instead, a successful pitch would carefully address both persona’s concerns.

Speak to all the buyer personas in the meeting.

5. Forgetting to talk about ease-of-use. 

It’s fair to assume that all potential customers care about how easy the product is to use.

Usability concerns are often responsible for lost deals. Two especially common culprits are:

  • Fear that the product is too complex to implement.
  • Worry that user adoption will be low without significant training.

Ease-of-use should receive a lot of attention in your sales team’s pitch decks and demos.

6. Lack of transparency on total-cost-of-ownership.

It may be tempting to “estimate” a lower price for your customers than is realistic by neglecting to factor in related costs.

Don’t do it, though. It will destroy any chance of brand loyalty. Omitting related costs from the estimate may win today’s sale, but it will kill tomorrow’s.

B2B sales reps should:

  • Be upfront about professional service fees.
  • Give a realistic estimate of the implementation timeline.
  • Explain any additional infrastructure customers will have to purchase.

Failing to mention these costs may just create a new customer for the competitor.

Be honest and direct to keep the customer coming back.

7. Not sending enough sales reps.

Say a customer arranges a half-day demo with an account rep. They ask three of their colleagues to clear their schedules to attend. Then a single sales rep shows up and is unable to answer anything beyond the most basic questions. From the client’s perspective, this is a huge waste of time.

To sell to important stakeholders such as senior IT managers and business leaders, sales reps need to be capable of thoroughly answering each of their questions.

However, it’s unusual for a single sales rep to have enough knowledge and context to do this well all on their own. That’s why it’s smart to bring a team.

The sales entourage should include:

  • A strong account rep who understands the buyers’ needs and how the product can address them.
  • An expert in industry context and jargon.
  • A solutions architect who can demonstrate how the product will be used in a real-world environment.

8. Being slow to respond. 

An Open Letter to B2B Sales Leaders

Obviously, being responsive to leads is extremely important.

Unfortunately, sales teams don’t always know about the lead right away. Large companies especially struggle with this problem.

In many cases, it’s far too difficult for potential customers to interact with B2B tech sales teams.

Sure, the website probably has a “contact us” form but potential customers have no way of knowing who is on the receiving end of that form.

Same issue with the phone. There’s no telling who will pick up that general number listed on the website.

With no clear and easy route to a sales rep, potential customers may leave in search of a more accessible vendor.

Further, even if customers make the effort to leave their email or phone number, large companies often take way too long to get back to them.

This state of affairs puts upstarts at an advantage.

Big tech companies may have larger sales forces than startups, but startups sales reps are often way closer to their companies’ contact us forms, emails, and phone numbers.

In our win-loss studies, we’ve found that upstarts typically get back to potential customers within a day. Whereas large companies may take a week or more to respond.

It’s not hard to guess who will win the deal: the company that responds within hours or the company that responds in a week.

How To Do Better

These B2B sales mistakes may be upsettingly common, but they are also easily avoided.

Market research can help you figure whether one of these common pitfalls is tripping up your sales team and how to adjust to win more deals.


This podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights. Special thanks to Senior Research Analyst Colleen Clancy for contributing to this piece.

 

 

 

Your Favorite 2016 B2B Market Research Posts

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Reflection is at the heart of success. You need to know what was working in the first place to be able to keep building on your achievements.

This article is based off a B2B Revealed episode.

You can listen to the episode or read the article below.

B2B Revealed – ON: iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play

With that in mind, we decided to look back at our top content of the year. We used a combination of podcast plays, article page views, and social shares to determine our top 10 posts. I’ll give a quick summary of each topic and then consider why it resonated with our B2B tech audience. I’ll also highlight a few unique resources that we’ve shared in 2016.

For each of our most popular posts, you can check it out in either an audio podcast format or read our article on the topic.

#1 Ask Your Rivals’ Customers.

Our most popular B2B Market Research Podcast episode was “Post-Sale Questions for Competitor Customers.”

Competitor customers are treasure troves of insight. If you conduct in-depth interviews with them, you’re likely to learn why you missed out and how you can have the winning solution the next time around.

They can tell you:

  • How satisfied they are with the competitor’s product or service.
  • Why they picked the competitor in the first place.
  • What could persuade them to come back to you.
  • If there is a need that is not being satisfied by any current solutions in the marketplace.

In this podcast, I shared the questions that can uncover these insights. I think the questions were what made this podcast so popular. Most people who have been exposed to market research probably have an inkling that it’s important to hear from competitor customers. Interviewing them is only effective when you know what to ask though.

#2 Take The Pulse of #Mrx.

Coming in at second place was the podcast titled “Market Research Today: The GRITty Quirky Details.”

Market research may be a niche field, but it’s an important one. Titanic shifts in the B2B tech industry can often be traced back to the findings of an explosive study and companies’ course corrections, innovations, or redirections in response.

However, with all the confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements tied to the field, researching the state of research itself is a pretty arduous task.

Fortunately, both GreenBook and Quirk’s are up to the challenge. Each organization publishes a yearly report that analyzes the current state of the market research industry.

During this podcast, I reviewed the findings from the 2016 GreenBook’s GRIT Report and the 2015 Quirk’s Corporate Research Report. (The Quirk’s 2016 report had not yet been released at the time of this podcast.) In this episode, we discussed some of the most interesting statistics from each report.

For example, we wrote that one of the most fascinating areas covered in the 2015 Quirk’s Report was focused on how suppliers fail to execute. The top three problems found by the report were:

  • “Vendor over promised and under delivered.”
  • “Project was handled by low-level staff.
  • “The vendor didn’t take the time to understand our business.”

Whereas the GRIT report revealed a delta between buyers and sellers of market research with certain approaches. It found that:

  • 55 percent of buyers were using big data analytics while only 35 percent of suppliers were.
  • 60 percent of buyers were using social media analytics while only 45 percent of suppliers were.

Everyone I talk to wants to know what it’s like outside of their own company, their corner of the industry, and so forth. These reports give us that kind of perspective. They allow us to see the research techniques that others are using, the relationship between vendors and suppliers, and so much more.

#3 Shun The Pie Chart.

My interview with Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic on her book, “Storytelling With Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals” was also quite popular.

We covered:

  • The importance of defining the audience of your presentation more thoroughly than just internal or external stakeholders.
  • Why graphs aren’t always the most effective way to communicate your point.
  • The best time to use line graphs, bar graphs, and tables.
  • Why Cole says that pie charts are evil.
  • How to structure an effective presentation.

Everyone wants to generate more impact with the research findings that they have, so it’s no wonder that this was a popular episode.

We’re going to be seeing more and more data-driven presentations in the years to come. The tools and tips Cole shares will help to fine-tune these presentations and ensure that data is used responsibly.

#4 Master The Buyer Persona.

In the fourth position, we have the podcast episode “How To Make Praiseworthy B2B Buyer Personas.”

In this episode, I covered the core questions you need to answer for a praiseworthy buyer persona. A few examples are:

  • What makes B2B buyer personas different than B2C ones?
  • How does the buyer persona self-educate?
  • How does the buyer persona develop a shortlist of potential vendors, products, or solutions?

If you don’t know your buyers, you aren’t going to get very far in business. Unfortunately, buyer personas are typically so high-level that sales teams and marketers can’t make good use of them.

Praiseworthy, useful buyer personas can be developed, though. They just need to answer the questions I’ve laid out in this episode.

#5 Is Your Team Proving Its Worth?

“Five Reasons Companies Kill Their Market Research Teams” also got a lot of traction.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve seen a lot of large companies’ internal market research teams come and go.

In this episode, I covered the five main reasons that I’ve seen client-side market research teams die.

  • The lack of a professional services mentality.
  • Absent or outdated buyer personas.
  • The prioritization of kingdom building over engagement.
  • Unclear team roles.
  • Leaders that smother innovation.

I received a lot of direct praise for this piece. A few different folks told me that they had been part of teams that had failed for one or more reasons we discussed.

I also had the opportunity to deliver the core themes of this podcast as a conference presentation at a major research conference. The attendees also said that they had faced and tried to surmount many of these same challenges as members of client-side teams.

While this podcast painted a dark picture, it appears that it hit the mark.

#6 Creative People Procrastinate.

At the sixth position, was the podcast “B2B Book Review: Get Original with Ideas, Risks and Procrastination.”

For this episode, I reviewed Adam Grant’s book, “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move The World.”

This book has great insights for researchers and stakeholders of all kinds.

I delved into a few key points from the book such as:

  • Non-conformity matters, even in a business context.
  • Even successful entrepreneurs pack a parachute, so to speak.
  • Some of the greatest thinkers in the world first produce tons of ideas before arriving at and honing their single greatest achievement.
  • Procrastination can lead to originality.

“Originals” has continued to generate a solid amount of good book reviews, so, obviously, that contributed to this episode’s success.

Plus, for our audience, the book is a particularly good read. It highlights how anyone, regardless of their position, can provide original ideas and help their company thrive.

#7 Suss Out the Secrets of SaaS Success.

“The Smartest SaaS Questions at Quora” was also a big hit with our audience.

I’ve always been a fan of Q&A platforms. I co-own a firm that is all about asking the right questions of the right respondents. In this episode, I turned to Quora, one of the more well-known Q&A platforms, to gather some of the sharpest questions being asked about SaaS companies in a public forum. The questions I selected were the ones I found the most interesting, and that, in my opinion, were the most relevant to our clients.

I think this podcast was popular because while Q&A platforms are great, they can take a lot of energy to navigate. How do you find the best questions in a sea of questions? How do you sort the good answers from the cruddy ones? How do you recognize a great answer? How do you find insights that line up with your industry or area of expertise?

Answer: you have someone curate them for you in advance. We did that for our audience in this post.

#8 Leverage Your Channel.

With “Pump Up Your Partnership: Nine Questions For Your Channel,” I shone the spotlight on partners.

For many companies, partners are their lifeblood. Partners drive sales and generate new opportunities. However, their needs are often overlooked.

With that in mind, I walked through a series of questions designed to help companies better understand their partners as well as the partnership opportunities they should target in the future. Here are a few examples:

  • How should you keep your partners educated about rapidly changing cloud service features and capabilities?
  • How many of your partners are running with the enemy?
  • How do your partners want to hear about new opportunities?

There just isn’t a lot of insightful commentary out there when it comes to the relationship between vendors and partners. Most of what you see is high-level and based on ideas that are merely conventional wisdom. Meanwhile, the questions in this piece were based on those we’ve actually used in many real-world studies. I think that’s the reason that this post stood out.

#9 Will AI Ax Your Job?

“Will Market Research Jobs Survive The AI Revolution?” a newer episode, also made our top 10.

In this episode, I reviewed “The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts.” This book gives hope for staying relevant after the artificial intelligence revolution that will surely come.

Some folks in market research fear the machines and others can’t wait to work with them. This piece and the associated book are a worthwhile read for either audience. I think that’s why this post caught on so quickly.

#10 How to Win C-Suite Friends

“ How To Speak C-Suite: An Interview with Nic Read” was another great episode. I spoke with Nic Read, a managing partner at SalesLabs. He’s also the co-author of “Selling to the C-Suite: What Every Executive Wants You to Know About Successfully Selling to the Top”.

We covered:

  • How to engage with C-Level executives for B2B market research studies.
  • What happens to the buyer’s journey when B2B marketers rob their salespeople of conversation opportunities.
  • The distinct and separate roles that B2B marketers and sales teams should play.
  • How B2B market research vendors should respond to RFPs.

The popularity of this podcast is clear. Everyone we work with on the client side eventually deals with the C-suite. They’ll encounter the C-suite either as part of studies that target current or potential customers or because they have to deal with their own internal stakeholders. The C-suite always matters, so understanding how they think and how to relate to them is always going to be a good thing.

Bonus Stocking Stuffers

Before we wrap this year, I want to point out three great resources we recently launched as well.

  • 101 Market Research Questions. Over the last decade, we’ve done projects for scores of marketing and sales leaders, product and channel managers and C-level executives. As we looked back through our research, we began to see certain questions pop up over and over again while others gained importance with present day events. We found ourselves with a hearty collection of typical questions from various personas. So, we decided to create a new resource, a curated list of popular research questions.
  • One-sentence B2B book reviews. This resource covers a wide range of business books that you should pay closer attention to. We also helpfully let you know which ones you can skip. Each review fits into one crisp sentence. You won’t have to spend too much time figuring out why we considered a book a winner or a dud. We’ve also got links to our in-depth reviews and interviews with some of the featured authors.
  • Self-paced corporate research training packets. We just released training packets on topics such as the buyer’s journey, developing great findings, lessons from industry thought leaders, and asking stellar research questions. For each topic, listen to or read a collection of curated posts designed to keep you up to speed on the sharpest research practices and B2B technology business insights.

In closing, it’s been a great year for Cascade Insights. Our employee base has grown, we’ve moved into a nicer and larger office space, and we’ve expanded our client base by nearly 50 percent this year.

Finally, I just want to say thanks to each and every listener of this podcast and/or reader of this blog. I truly appreciate your support.

As the calendar rolls into 2017, I, along with the entire Cascade Insights team, will be working hard to provide the best insights, book reviews, and interviews that we can. Thanks for listening and reading and have a great New Year!

This podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights. We specialize in market research and competitive intelligence for B2B technology companies. Our focus allows us to deliver detailed insights that generalist firms simply can’t match. Got a B2B tech sector question? We can help.

Image used courtesy of Cara Slifka / Stocksy.