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Market Smart: How to Gain Customers and Increase Profits with B2B Marketing

conference. If everyone is going to be in the same city
for a major industry event, you can often get people
together for a two-hour session. You may need to offer
them an incentive. You may hear different things in a
group than you would one-on-one, because group-think
can be a problem if your focus group isn’t moderated
properly.

• Surveys can be quick and easy, especially through
online survey tools. However, the response rates are
often low, which limits their value. You also must be
cautious that the respondents are the people that you
want to hear from. Another challenge is that many
companies are not experts at developing effective
survey questions, so you can end up with results that
actually hurt your understanding of customer needs
rather than enhance it.

Consider a third-party research company for customer and
prospect research. Customers will be more truthful about
your performance if they’re speaking to someone outside of
the company and can be confident that confidentiality will be
kept.

Include satisfied customers as well as former customers in
your process. And don’t forget prospects—those people and
companies who have never bought from you. Hearing what
they know, or don’t know, about your company is extremely
useful. Include a spectrum of potential buyers across industries
and functions to get the best possible range of perspectives.

I remember a project Mezzanine did a number of years ago
for an early-stage software company. They had designed a
system that allowed corporate marketing executives to manage
their campaigns more efficiently and have better transparency
of where cost overruns were occurring. It was an amazing
system. Problem was, the company was having a very hard
time selling it to the corporate marketing leaders; they just

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© 2012 Lisa Shepherd