You can know what made your customers buy from you and use that info to attract and close more customers. You can know what your competition is doing and the trends in your industry, so you are never blindsided.
Customer Experience Research
In hundreds of B2B companies in dozens of industries, revenue coach Kristin Zhivago would ask the company’s leaders: “What is important to your customers? What drove them to buy from you?” The answer would be a list.
Then Kristin would interview the company’s customers. The customers’ list was always different than the company’s list.
In other words, the customer’s desires and buying experience were not in sync with the company’s assumptions.
She came to think of this situation as a “gap” between what customers really wanted from the company and what the company thought the customers wanted.
She set out to close that gap, to increase the number of sales each company could make through its marketing efforts.
Buyers won’t tell you what they’re really thinking when they are buying from you, but they will be more than happy to tell you about their desires, concerns, questions, and experiences after they’ve made the purchase. They now have a vested interest in your success, so they are motivated to reveal their thoughts.
Kristin has conducted thousands of customer interviews for hundreds of companies selling all types of products or services, in all industries. ” Her method is documented in her 5-star book, Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy.
She has developed a set of open-ended questions that she asks during audio-only Zoom calls with customers who have already bought from the client company.
Kristin has found that by the 5th or 7th conversation with customers of a given type (you might have several types of buyers), the trends are clear. Customers who have never spoken to each other will even use the exact same phrases to describe their experiences and impressions of the company as they went through their buying process.
In these interviews, Kristin uncovers:
- What they expected from you and how (and how well) you met those expectations
- Other companies they considered and what they thought of them
- The search term they would use if they used a search engine to either find you or see who else provided similar products or services
- How they feel about your company overall, what they think you do right, and what they think you could improve on
- Their own challenges in their work
- Trends they see in their industry
- The specific terms and phrases they use to describe their desires, concerns, and questions
The conversations are recorded (with the customer’s knowledge), transcribed, and anonymized. The result is a word-for-word Conversation Report that will reveal the realities that we can use to close the gap—and grow your revenue.
We also provide a Summary and Recommendations Report that begins the process of strategizing and building the campaigns that will attract highly qualified leads and increase your sales.
This process doesn’t take long and is worth its weight in gold. It will ensure that all of your marketing messages and expenditures are on target.
