Voice of customer feedback is invaluable to companies large and small. There’s simply no substitute for hearing directly from the buyers and users of your product or service.
Capture B2B market intelligence at all lifecycle stages
Ideally, B2B organizations should capture customer insights at all lifecycle stages, from pre-sales to post-purchase. This direct input from your customers and prospects plays an important role in everything from developing new products to executing marketing messages to providing world-class customer service.
Yet market research often takes a backseat to other initiatives, whether it’s because of lack of resources, time or budget.
One way to remedy this is to inject market intelligence gathering into your regular cadence of sales prospecting calls. This is a simple way to keep tabs on your position in the market while simultaneously qualifying and generating leads.
Live conversations reveal far more than online surveys
Live, two-way conversations are one of the strongest methods for accurately capturing voice of customer insights. Phone calls, facilitated by trained, professional callers, establish rapport and a genuine connection. They make the most of your customer’s valuable time and reveal far more than online surveys, email or digital methods.
On the phone, your customers know their feedback is valuable based on your tone and the conversation. This encourages them to open up and discuss a variety of topics, especially when asked the right questions. Interviewers can also probe for specifics and ask follow-up questions to truly understand an issue—something that’s difficult with online tools.
Obtain valuable insights during B2B lead generation calls
Let’s take a closer look at some of the voice of the customer information you can gather easily during your regular sales prospecting and lead generation calls. This is another place where the power of one-to-one engagement trumps digital methods. When you take the time to have a meaningful conversation during a prospecting call, you gain valuable, actionable information—even if prospect does not immediately advance in your sales cycle.
When you connect with B2B decision-makers or those who influence the sales process, you can find out what prompted their interested and their motivation for moving forward. This could be specific product features, a contract expiration, a market expansion, an attractive price—or a number of other reasons. Asking open-ended questions will help you gather these important voice of customer insights.
For example, the decision-maker might be new and looking for a solution that can drive organizational changes that align with their vision for the company. Or, maybe the company is in a growth stage and now needs a product or service they didn’t in the past.
This qualification information serves dual purposes. It helps you prioritize hot, warm and cool leads for appropriate follow-up by marketing or sales. It also informs future marketing and product development efforts when shared with those departments.
Sharpen your services with lost sales information
One of the most important pieces of voice of customer feedback comes from leads that don’t close and customers that move to a competitor’s solution. This lost sales information reveals areas where you can strengthen your product, your customer service, your communications or other areas of your operations, in order to maximize sales, revenue and future customer satisfaction.
When you find individuals who are not interested in your product or service, you have an opportunity to ask why. Follow-up questions like these flow naturally in a lead generation or sales conversation, and provide data you generally can’t obtain from other lead generation channels.
For example, if a lost sale says they just implemented a competitor’s product, you can follow up by asking which one and why they made that choice. Or, perhaps the company is going through an organizational restructure and it’s bad timing. Both provide actionable data that can inform future marketing, sales and product development efforts.
When it comes to creating the best possible offering in your marketplace, live two-way phone conversations yield valuable voice of customer insights. Let us help you reach your target audience with a campaign designed specifically to identify insights.