How often do we truly listen? To our co-workers, customers, and most importantly – customers prospects? Even further, how often do we absorb what we just heard and use it to our benefit? Sometimes we’re moving so fast that information goes in one ear and out the other.

In B2B Marketing, listening is our most powerful weapon. We B2B marketers most likely listen in one of three ways. How you improve your listening in those facets is the true test!

Photo credit: Orin Woodward Leadership Inc.

In-Person
It’s not every day that you get face-to-face time with a customer or prospect these days. Face-time to me also includes email, phone and Skype.  All are considered real-time situations where you have their direct attention. Take this as the perfect opportunity to improve your listening skills.

You might have perfect eye contact or the best e-mail voice, but if you’re not genuinely listening to what they’re saying, you’re only diminishing your chances. You need to make them feel most important. I really like these tips to improve your listening – I’ve also found them to improve my memory retention!

Online
Improve your listening by being where your customers are – online! There are an endless number of conversations happening online that impact your business that you should be listening to and monitoring. Go where your customers are and follow their conversations – listen to their challenges, opinions, and questions.

You can rely on social media networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, and Facebook to see into the minds of your customers and prospects and conduct custom, keyword/phrase searches.  Contribute as you see fit, but mainly just spend some time online listening and tracking what people are saying, particularly about your brand.

Another great tool that I use daily is Google Alerts. Set up an automatic alert when your brand name or company is mentioned online. It actually gets pretty addicting and the conversation comes to YOU.

Post-Sale
Are you asking your customers/prospects to share their feedback with you? And if so, how frequently? Most importantly, how are you showing them that you’re listening?

Make surveys or focus groups a part of your strategic marketing plan. You can conduct these in person, online or even via video conference. After you decide on the channel, decide on the frequency – monthly, annually, after every sales experience, etc.

By asking them questions and showing them that you care about their opinion, you can listen reactively to your customers while simultaneously proving that you’re trustworthy because you value their input.

Ultimately what will you gain from listening better?

• Trust – it’s rather important
• Knowledge – insight into your customers’/prospects’ behavior, decision-drivers, needs and opinions
• Perspective – what do people think of your brand? What is the state of the industry?
• Ideas – listening might spark something you never knew you or your company needed

I’ll now leave you with four great quotes from Dale Carnegie on listening:

• “Learn to listen more than you talk.”
• “Many people listen, very few actually hear.”
• “If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener”
• “To be interesting, be interested”

Which Carnegie quote speaks to you the most? What social networks do you use regularly to listen or what are some of your most useful listening tips?

Our success in this field over the past two years with these programs have been based on adapting our programs to the latest web strategy/technologies, our clients’ business needs and, of course, market trends. But the lowest hanging fruit for adapting and improving our programs has been customer feedback!

It simply goes back to basics.

Canyon Communications swears by program surveys to adapt, improve and continue enablement program success. But surveys aren’t just for enablement programs, they can also provide eye-popping insight into your current product/solution offerings.

Want to know what your customers like, don’t like, what they would like more of, how you are perceived, how you compare to other competitors, etc.? Just ask!

Before you begin to implement surveys for your business/programs, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Know your audience and develop a survey that you know they will have time/interest
• Provide an incentive to your customers if their time is extremely limited
• Try to keep it to 10 questions or less for higher conversion rates
• Opt for a mix of open-ended, multiple choice and yes/no questions for a maximum insight
• Let them know you are conducting a survey to simply improve upon their experience with your solutions/products
• For every question you ask, be sure there is every available option for someone to answer the question accurately

Need help with your customer surveys or have questions on what survey software to use? Contact Canyon and we can help you gain the insight you need.

Market research can be incredibly valuable to your company whether you are dealing with consumers or the b2b world. While GigWalk is specific for consumers, there are numerous market research options for businesses that target other businesses.

Market research is often considered an unimportant step in product development. Yet, companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars investing in concepts, brands and identities that may not have failed if they had just asked their audience what they thought up front. Let me ask you this – how many readers out there purchase or believe in insurance? IMHO (In my humble opinion for you non-texters out there), market research is merely a form of insurance that protects your company’s investments.

While Gigwalk takes this approach with consumers via mobile devices, we at Canyon could help you conduct your market research in a multitude of ways:

• Online surveys
• Telephone surveys
• Focus Groups
• Social media surveys
• Mail-in questionnaires
• Product trials…and more

It’s also important not to limit market research to your physical brand or products when you can also use market research to perform gut-checks on your company’s employees, processes, programs and more. Recently, Canyon and our sister-company Loop Demand Gen conducted a market research survey with more than 400 of our clients’ ‘best,’ ‘existing’ and ‘dormant’ customers, and what they found both confirmed their concerns regarding one program but pleasantly surprised them on another. And yet, asking your customers what they want and are looking for is a step many of us forget.

Unfortunately for me Gigwalk is a startup and not yet available in Phoenix, but I plan to take advantage of this tool as soon as I can. Do you think an app like Gigwalk would work in the B2B space? Have I convinced you to engage in market research?

Image credit: GigWalk

I recently read an article titled, “Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design” in which the authors, Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey F. Rayport, discuss the importance of observing customers when innovating a new product or service. According to the article, the problem with listening to customers through traditional approaches, such as surveys and focus groups, is that customers don’t know what they want. Therefore, they don’t know how to improve what they currently have. Consumers are so used to current conditions that they don’t think to ask for new solutions.

This is where observation comes into play. Observing customers in the act of using your product or service before conducting quantitative research can provide an in-depth view of their thought processes and can unearth needs they didn’t know they had. 

So the next time you’re launching an exciting new product line or improving upon an existing product or service, try observing your customers before having them fill out a survey.

Have you ever used observation techniques? Did it help you discover ways to improve your product or service?

Most B2B2B’s are manufacturing companies who market through distributors (sometimes even more than one) before their product reaches the end-user, which is yet another business. Of course these layers add complexity to the marketing strategy.

One thing I’ve also noticed is that the further the manufacturer is from the end-user of the product, the less likely they are to fully understand the needs of their ultimate customer. Market research can help you ask the questions and get the answers.

We’re not talking major studies that are costly and time consuming. We often recommend budget-conscious, timely techniques such as surveys done via e-mail, online or by phone. Marketers can get a wealth of information (mostly qualitative, some quantitative) that is essential for making good marketing decisions.

Do you really know what your final B’s think about your product?  Would your marketing programs improve if you knew? Could you significantly boost ROI just by asking customers a few questions?

photo courtesy of ihtatho http://www.flickr.com/photos/ihtatho/627226315/

I have conducted many focus group recruitment campaigns for various b2b clients at Canyon. When taking on a new focus group recruitment campaign, I constantly remind myself that recruiting qualified individuals is crucial for success. The only way to get accurate, valuable input is to recruit the person that would be most familiar with the product/service.

Recruitment 101:

• Explain to the participant how they will benefit
• Attending a focus group should never be about incentives, but rather about what a person can learn and how they can contribute
• Be able to explain what a participant will learn by attending
• A participant will be providing valuable input on ways to improve customer service, products, services and marketing campaigns
• Play up to their ego and remind them that they will have an affect on the strategy behind a marketing program
• Assume the contact is NOT qualified for the focus group until they meet the requirements on the qualifying screener
• Last but not least, be honest!

If you want to learn more about focus groups and market research, download the “Find New Prospects with Market Research” white paper from our partners at Loop Demand Gen.

Happy recruiting!