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The three conversations you need to hear

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How will we solve this problem? Who will we hire? How’s it going?

There are three conversations your customers have that you really need to know about. Unfortunately sellers are rarely privy to what gets talked about and so are unaware of the things they really need to understand. Without knowing, they are operating in the dark.

So what’s so important about what gets talked about? Well, sales and marketing need to be ‘present’ when prospects are looking for suppliers, value propositions s need to be salient enough to get to the shortlist, brands must be trusted more than the competition to be selected and, reputations only get built if brands  keep their promises and deliver what customers expect.

How will we solve this problem?

  • Who’s involved: who’s driving the conversation, who’s responsible/accountable/consulted or informed; how are decisions taken? What’s the role of other departments like IT?
  • What’s the problem: how is it framed, where’s the urgency, what’s the risk of doing nothing, where’s the pain and where’s the expected gain?
  • What are their experiences to date and what expectations do they have about tools and suppliers? How dissatisfied are the  way they have done this before?
  • How do they feel about it: what’s their emotional  state and what’s the emotional benefit of solving the problem?
  • Who else is involved in the decision making (internally and externally)?

Who will we hire?

  • What tools did they consider hiring and which sort did they choose?
  • How does it need to fit in with their way of working?
  • Who made it to the shortlist and how do they compare (costs, reputation, innovation etc?
  • Which one did they hire?

How’s it going?

  • What’s their experience of the supplier?
  • What emotional and functional value did they get?
  • What are the key things that seem to drive these experience and emotions

There are many ways to go about understanding prospects and customers but it’s not easy. They may not want you to know, may not be able to explain their actions or, you may misunderstand what they say.  These three key barriers to understanding others mean we have to  do the hard work of perspective getting using behavioural analysis techniques.

And if you’d rather hire an expert to help you define your brand, your value proposition or your route to market, give me a call.

Francis Wyburd 

Where You Stand is my London based growth strategy consulting firm. My ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and market advisory services helps entrepreneurs go to market with sharper propositions and smarter market activities.

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Why do we put up with this forecasting nonsense?

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The Brexit vote predictions, up until around 3am this morning, were that the ‘Remain’ camp would win. Over the past few days the FT100 index had risen sharply as did the £:€ exchange rate in anticipation of that eventuality.

But as with the Scottish referendum in 2014 and the UK General election in 2015, the prediction industry has once again failed to grasp some simple truths. Namely, many people don’t know how they will act in the future. However, if asked by a pollster, many will provide an answer irrespective of what they actually end up doing. Of those that think they know, some will change their minds in the run up to voting day. And some people will just provide a wrong answer becuase they don’t want you to know their mind.

Asking people to predict their future behaviour using crude polling methods is a waste of time and money. And as the we discovered today, the economic and social effects of such a surprise result surely merits a more intelligent approach to forecasting?

Francis Wyburd 

Where You Stand is my London based customer insight and strategy firm. My ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and market advisory services helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses faster..

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How corporate accounting obscures the truth about your business

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Traditional ways to account for performance (profit and loss account) and financial health (balance sheet) command all the attention of managers. Yet it is the qualitative ones that actually drive productivity. So why is that the qualitative health of a business is not measured when it is so material to performance?

An obsession with numbers

Managers obsess over quantitative measures. Key performance indicators involve financial, market or satisfaction measurements, anything, frankly, which is  easy to collect and analyse and is related to the bottom line. But how many managers can tell you about the relative happiness of their people or customers?

The problem is partly to do with how hard it is to relate feelings to performance. But the truth is the former drives the latter so simply recognising that they are interconnected is an important step. The next issue relates to accounting – how should firms recognise these intangible assets (or liabilities)?. My contention is that modern accounting practices do not reflect the true health of a firm because such assets and liabilities are not recognised at all on the balance sheet when they in fact are more important than tangible assets and liabilities.

A failure of marketing

Behavioural sciences are pretty categoric; if you want productive relationships with customers and people in the market, engage their hearts and minds meaningfully; staff productivity is no different either. In both cases, emotions are crucial.

Marketers are the ones best placed to represent the emotional health of a business but they don’t. Marketing lost its way about 40 years ago, as practitioners obsessed more with promotion and communications than with strategy and management. And as they did so, they lost their financial and commercial skills, struggled to communicate with FD’s and lost their place in the boardroom.

Changing the game

It doesn’t have to be like this. If you want to grow a business, numbers can only help you understand historic outcomes and tell you little about the future. What customers and staff (and others in the market) feel about your firm explains more about your profitability than an accountant ever can. So start finding out today what the hidden assets and liabilities are that drive your profitability and growth.

And with that knowledge about where your business really stands in people’s minds, you can take much better control of your future.

Francis Wyburd 

whereyoustand is my London based insight and advisory firm. The combination of my ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and marketing advisory services helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

Did you like this article? Do subscribe to our weekly digest of articles about B2B technology marketing by clicking here

How insights into customer expectations will shape your growth

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A customer’s experience of a product or service is in part determined by their expectations. Measuring the former without understanding the latter tells managers nothing about their  organisation’s strengths or weaknesses. Which makes it much harder to diagnose what’s in the way of growth.

Expectations determine experiences.

Think about it. The promises a business makes, the packaging and pricing of its service, its reputation and your perceptions of the firm and its industry, all shape customer expectations. So when they actually experience the service they judge it against their prior expectations that formed in their head. For instance, the reported pain relief of a branded aspirin vs a cheaper unbranded one is higher even when the pill is exactly the same.. Why? Because the expectation created by the higher price and  glossy packaging determined the pain relief experienced. Which is why customer satisfaction without understanding expectations reveals very little insight into how to improve

Customers expectations are not just shaped by you

People are different which is why their expectations vary. Socio economic factors lay a part but segmenting them in this way disguises more complex attitudes. For instance, parents of school children fall into three types (according to DFES research): those who feel the school is 100% responsible for their child’s educational performance; those who see it as a 50:50 partnership and those who see it as entirely their responsibility. Now, imagine how satisfaction scores would  differ across these three types? Without understanding their attitudes, their responses would tell you nothing about how to improve.

Learning

Luckily most firms don’t do this and so don’t know how to improve their performance. Which presents a great opportunity to those who want to grow an unfair share of their market. All you need to do is to understand customer expectations, recognise attitudinal segments and then measure their relative satisfaction.  That would tell you everything you need to improve loyalty and find new customers

Francis Wyburd 

whereyoustand is my London based insight and advisory firm. The combination of my ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and marketing advisory services helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

Did you like this article? Do subscribe to our weekly digest of articles about B2B technology marketing by clicking here

 

How to get prospects to believe your claims and improve conversion rates

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What conversion rates depend on

You can claim as much as you want about your product’s performance but without credible evidence, you won’t convert prospects as quickly as you should. But the techniques to make claims credible are not as straightforward as this seems.

What goes on in the mind of prospects

Buyers always have choices available to them. Evaluating new suppliers means they compare your value and risk against the alternates available to them. Credible evidence is what you need to provide to support the former and reduce the latter. Simple telling them is just your word against theirs and carries little weight “Of course you’d say that” they think, why should i believe you? The reality is that the less associated you are with providing the evidence for their claims, the more likely they are to believe you.

What this means for your communications

  1. Develop independent authorities. Industry accolades and awards; editorial coverage, blogs, social media are highly effective. But beware, if prospects know that money has changed hands or mistrusts the authority, then their efficacy diminishes dramatically
  2. Celebrity endorsements. Can have a powerful effect especially if they are genuinely a user. But the price for borrowing other people’s credibility is they need to maintain theirs. Nevertheless, prospects understand that money has changed hands but the stature of the celebrity you choose can have a significant impact
  3. Point them to satisfied customers. Bulletin boards and review sites are great places to get a feel for how others experience a brand. Prospects often use these anyway in their research but help them form a  balanced perspective.  But beware using fake reviews or incentivising positive reviews
  4. Introduce them to happy customers: a case study or a testimonial are common practice but allowing a prospect to talk to a customer shows confidence and belief. Often times prospects don’t take up references but making the effort and showing you have nothing to hide is very effective at building trust.
  5. Give them first hand experiences. Non verbal (or meta) communications are a powerful weapon. The senses –  touching, seeing, feeling, smelling, hearing, tasting – play a valuable role in engaging prospects.  Applying the relevant ones to help prospects experience your promise effectively converts your promises into first hand experiences. For instance, if “ease of use” is a key differentiator, get them to use it for themselves; if “engineering quality” show them the factory or bring along the components and let them ‘feel’ the quality.

 

Francis Wyburd 

whereyoustand is my London based insight and advisory firm. The combination of my ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and marketing advisory services helps tech entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

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How to engage prospects at a trade show

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Five ways to make your next trade show the best ever

Exhibitions are expensive investments for technology firms. But many fail to capitalise on the opportunity because they don’t engage prospects intelligently. Here’s five ways to improve your impact

  1. Think like a retailer

    Many retail services businesses rely on walk-in business. They design their exterior and interior layouts to make it easy for strangers to come in and engage with them. So should you. The layout of the interior is critically important to attract people in and make them feel comfortable as is the exterior signage and how it ‘speaks’ to people from afar. This is how you maximise walk-in business. NB: I’ve yet to come across a stand designer who understands this.

  2. Come up with a powerful theme

    Our new software brand was the easiest one to use in the market. So we focused on that differentiator and came up with a theme around the idea of  “it’s a piece of cake”. The stand was branded as such and we gave away cup cakes to visitors, both helping us stand out from the crowd. We frequently heard visitors in other parts of the show talking about the cup cakes.

  3.  Start marketing well before the event

    Most of the hard work should happen months before the event. Understanding your stand location and the footfall around it (see point 1) means you know how hard it will be to get people to it. Advertising, leafleting and other media opportunities at the venue  are tools to do this. But as they are also available to the competition, its hard to get noticed. For the new software firm, we handed out cup cakes with the stand number and a leaflet as people arrived at the show. This drove visitors to stand and for an unknown brand we were remarkably busy. There are a host of other techniques to think about but I’ll leave them to another post.

  4. Run a disciplined ship

    At the show, you’ll have teams of people working long hours, sometimes in shifts and often several days. Ensuring they are well briefed, well trained, well dressed, well behaved and well looked after is essential. Just like a retailer does (see point 1).

  5. Follow up opportunities

    You know that as soon as everyone gets back to the office, they soon settle into the day job. That’s why opportunities don’t get followed up and you don’t fulfil your potential. But if you know this will happen, put in place measures to ensure it doesn’t like holding follow up sessions and holding people accountable.

Francis Wyburd 

whereyoustand is my London based insight and advisory firm. The combination of my ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and marketing advisory services helps tech entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

Did you like this article? Do subscribe to our weekly digest of articles about B2B technology marketing by clicking here

Why talking to your customers is a waste of time

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I was introduced to an entrepreneur who was struggling to get his business off the ground. “I took your advice” he said “and spoke to my customers and prospects. They didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know.” He told me what they had said and indeed it was devoid of anything interesting.

The problem of doing it yourself

The problem you’ve no doubt spotted already is that he tried to do it himself. This is problematic for three reasons:

  1. Firstly, if you have a business (or personal relationship) there are some things you can’t easily talk about head on with the other party. Dissatisfactions, frustrations, and weaknesses are hard things to bring up especially if there is no perceived benefit in doing so. Thus is of course why counsellors and therapists exist.
  2. Secondly, people often can’t explain why they did or didn’t choose you, (notwithstanding the above). Memory starts to be a problem after about three months is one hindrance; asking someone to rationalise a decision obscures the emotional drivers is like seeing the world in one dimension; finally, it’s hard to ask the important contextual questions after the event when you should have asked at the point of sale.
  3. Lastly, even if you did overcome the above, you would still filter the information you receive, basing it on whatever contextual framework you believe is true about the relationship.

What customers can show you

Understanding other people is hard. Very hard. Their behaviour is a crucial guide to understanding others but is an activity we normally leave to our unconscious mind. Gut feel and and non verbal communications are powerful indicators but “feelings” are hard to turn into strategy. So watching behaviour and having conversations to contextualise it is vital but only if you know what questions are worth asking (for them and you). But people ask the wrong questions and fail to contextualise the answers with behavioural reality which leaves them with anodyne nonsense that they can do nothing useful with.

Whats the learning?

An objective outsider, independent of your industry, skilled at uncovering, explaining and contextualising behaviour is one asset. One who goes on to link market outcomes with your organisational behaviours means you then have the insights you need to change how your business goes to market. Which has a transformational effect on performance if you can execute the things you need to address.

Francis Wyburd

whereyoustand is my London based insight and advisory firm. The combination of my ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and marketing advisory services helps tech entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

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What’s your new technology worth to customers?

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What’s your new technology worth to customers?

Price is one of the most important ways to position a new technology. So how do you decide?

One simple way is to look at similar types of technology and price your offer relative to them. But should you be the same, more expensive or cheaper?  Or what if there’s nothing out there comparable to your offer? And what pricing formula best suits your business model? How can you work it out?

Pricing is positionng

Customer expectations are determined by the exchange on offer: what they get vs what it costs. Their experiences are shaped by these expectations and in turn, shapes the way they feel about the exchange. This is what establishes a brand’s positioning, literally shaping it in their minds.  So if you want to rapidly establish the value of your offer, its important to find the optimum price

Customers are good at comparing

The value of anything depends on which customer segment is buying and why. Understanding the alternates available to them, the value on offer, their expectations and experiences and their purchasing behaviour is a tremendous way to understand pricing. And not only that, you get see to which business models are in play and their relative strengths and weaknesses. Finally you get to understand where your brand stands relative to the others.

A real example

A new hardware brand entered an old market with some 40 competitors. In the early days it priced itself at a discount to the market leader in its segment. This made less margin for resellers and less for the distributor. But customers highlighted material advantages based on their usership. So we repositioned it, priced it at a premium to the market leader and three years on it had grown share from 0% to 19%.

Learning

Pricing is not as simple or straightforward as it seems. Which is why talking to customers about their behaviour can provide crucial insight that could make you more margin and faster than you already are. Worth finding out?

Francis Wyburd

whereyoustand is my London based insight and advisory firm. The combination of my ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and marketing advisory services helps tech entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

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A simple process to define a brand that resonates with everyone

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How to brand a B2B technology firm

Branding is a powerful tool for customer marketing. But for B2B firms, this is futile if the people delivering the promise – operations, product teams, customer services – aren’t like that. Which is why many firms define their brand personality on what they think it is (or should be) based on internal beliefs. But often this fails to resonate with customers because customers weren’t involved in the process.

Why B2B firms struggle

Branding is a complex process but one which happens infrequently. It  gets left to internal marketers to run many of whom have never done it before and often involves external marketing agencies.

The highly expert brand design specialist firms like Interbrand are mostly focused on consumer markets because that’s where the money is. Most B2B agencies will however get involved in branding even though they are not specialists. Furthermore, they depend on the brief they are given to create a resonating brand but often this does not include customer insights nor gives them enough time or access to the wider organisation. Which is not only frustrating for them but leads to suboptimal outputs and often more expense.

What customers can tell you

Customers have a very clear idea as to what they expect from you and what they experience. Crucially they know how it makes them feel and what aspects of your proposition works best for them. They also know your weaknesses and how you can improve. These opinions matter because they are what drives the value exchange between them and you. Your brand’s position in the market is only defined by how customers see you relative to others and their stories will show you the relative personalities they encounter.

An effective process for branding a B2B technology firm

  1. Find out where you stand in the market by running customer insight research
  2. Assess your own organisational culture and behaviours and get insights into their experiences of customers
  3. Workshop the findings to decide a) what market position you want and b) what brand behaviours you need and get internal buy-in
  4. Use a Jungian archetype system to define the personality that best exemplifies these behaviours. I use Carol Pearson’s system
  5. Develop internal programmes to embed this internally and use this as the basis of your creative brief to an agency.

I worked recently with an international software firm and their agency. They who did exactly this and it started a transformational process for the owners and their management team. It was amazing how well this worked at creating organisational cohesion, energising their people to behave in a way that made a real difference to customers.

Francis Wyburd

whereyoustand is my London based insight and advisory firm. The combination of my ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and marketing advisory services helps tech entrepreneurs brand their firms brilliantly

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Five strategic marketing tips for getting B2B technologies off the ground

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Its never too early to talk to prospects

I have a friend currently marketing a software concept that doesn’t exist. They have spent nothing on logos or patent attorneys but are actively talking to very senior individuals around the country about what it does and postulating the value to the prospect. They know how to build it and intend to use pilot revenue as ways to fund its development. So they probably won’t need outside investment either. And best of all, customers are essentially designing the application that suits them best founded on the same software engine so it’s scaleable. Its never too early…

Focus on narrow markets

The best definition I ever heard of a market was as a ‘self-referencing group’. Young firms either don’t make a distinction at all or talk about one or more   sectors, vertical or horizontal, that they see as their market; rarely do they ever think in terms of individual buyers and the job they do. But successful companies are those whose brand dominates the mind of a buyer when hiring technologies like yours. So it makes sense to build a business on market segments rather than sectors and to conquer each one in turn rather than all of them together. After all, you just don’t have the resources to address them all at the same time.

Follow the money

Cash-flow is key so unlocking wallets is the name of the game.  But rather than focus just on the commercial exchange itself, it’s smart to understand  the origin of the money. Companies and their executives don’t spend money on new technologies without a motive but often this is invisible to sales people. Understanding these motives and what internal and external factors led to them becoming customers will yield enormously valuable insight into your market. Which in turn helps you shape your go-to-market strategy

Fail fast fail cheap

It’s obvious really but holding on when we should have let go earlier is a common human problem. So it is with marketing early stage tech as they have to learn about their market and their place in it. Investing in technology and investing market activities are your two priorities but making sure you invest in the things that make a difference to customers and yield a return without risking too much is often a problem. Setting clear goals and timeframes helps teams manage the learning process

Be clear about the long-term

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.” (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)

Companies get built by people who know what they want to achieve, why and how. Strategy is about making choices about how to get there but this requires discipline. Knowing when to say ‘no’, knowing who to hire, knowing what sort of business it needs to be, how money works, where and when to invest all these key decisions rely on you knowing. Living off short-term actions without a framework for the long-term will not only confuse your colleagues but the market too.

Francis Wyburd

whereyoustand is a London based insight and advisory firm. Our combination of ‘hidden voice of the customer’ research and strategic advisory services helps entrepreneurs get new technologies off the ground

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Francis Wyburd
francis@whereyoustand.co.uk

Tel: +44 (0)7979 594093

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32 Stradella Road
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