How to do b2b customer research & understand ideal buyers?

To effectively understand your B2B customers, it's crucial to go beyond the surface-level insights typically gained from surveys, sales calls, G2 reviews, and Reddit threads. These sources can provide a glimpse into your customers' thoughts and opinions but lack the depth needed to truly comprehend their needs and decision-making processes. Here's a comprehensive approach to gaining a deep understanding of your ideal buyers:

Business Model and Budget Priorities

1. Understand Their Business Model:
   • How do they generate revenue?
   • What are their primary products or services?
   • Who are their end customers?
2. Budget Allocation:
   • How do they prioritize spending?
   • Which areas receive the most investment (e.g., R&D, marketing, operations)?
   • Are there any seasonal or cyclical budget changes?

Core Challenges and Anxieties

3. Core Challenges:
   • What are the main obstacles they face in their industry?
   • Are these challenges related to technology, market competition, regulatory issues, or something else?
   • Why do these challenges exist?
4. Anxieties and Worries:
   • What keeps them up at night?
   • Are they worried about economic downturns, technological disruptions, or other risks?
   • How do these worries influence their

Sales efforts will fail unless a company truly understands what buyers value, how they gather information, and how purchase decisions are made. To succeed in today's market, companies must prioritize the b2b buyer experience.

Building the wrong product is the NATURAL RESULT of "validating" your product via customer discovery interviews

This insights on customer discovery and the pitfalls of over-relying on interviews are valuable. It highlights a common struggle among startups and provides actionable advice for avoiding these traps. Here’s a detailed breakdown of your points and some additional thoughts:

1. Interviewees Have No Skin in the Game

Challenge:

• Interviewees often provide feedback that may not reflect their true intentions or future actions since they have no financial or emotional investment in your success.
• This leads to misleading data and false confidence in the product's potential success.

Solution:

• Instead of relying solely on interviews, seek ways to engage potential customers in more meaningful ways.
• Examples: Offer a pre-order option, pilot programs with limited features, or discounted early access to gauge real interest.

2. Customer Discovery Interviews Can Be Misleading

Challenge:

• Interviews can result in gathering a lot of data that feels useful but may not be directly applicable to creating a successful product.
• This "learning" can lead to building features or products that no one actually wants.

Solution:

• Immerse yourself in the customer’s environment to understand their true pain points and workflows.
• Examples: Shadowing customers, taking on roles within target industries, or directly engaging in the tasks your product aims to improve.

3. Selling as a Validation Method

Challenge:

• Many startups delay sales activities until they feel their product is "ready," missing out on critical early feedback.
• Sales activities force a reality check on product-market fit much earlier in the process.

Solution:

• Begin selling early, even before the product is fully developed. Use sales as a tool for validation and refinement.
• Examples: Pre-selling features, offering consulting services related to the problem your product will solve, or creating a landing page to test interest and gather leads.

Practical Steps to Implement These Solutions

a. Start with Small-Scale Sales Efforts:

• Approach potential customers with the concept of your product and offer to solve their problem in a hands-on, customized way.
• Use these initial interactions to refine your understanding of their needs and validate your solution.

b. Integrate into the Customer’s Workflow:

• Spend time working alongside your target customers. This could mean temporary roles, internships, or simply shadowing their daily routines.
• Document their challenges and the context in which they operate to better tailor your product.

c. Measure Actions, Not Words:

• Focus on customer actions such as pre-orders, signing up for early access, or committing to pilot programs.
• These actions are stronger indicators of genuine interest and need than verbal affirmations in interviews.

First step when conducting B2B buyer research

Start by clearly defining your objectives:

• What specific insights are you looking to gain?
• Which aspects of your business are you aiming to improve, and why?

Remember, B2B buyers interact with your business in numerous ways, and understanding these interactions can offer invaluable insights. For instance, you might want to explore:

• Brand perception and market share: How is your brand viewed in the market?
• Competitive analysis: Why are you losing deals to a particular competitor?
• Buyer acquisition process: What is the typical journey of your buyers?
• Business processes: Which processes are most important to your customers?
• Onboarding experience: How do new customers perceive the onboarding process?
• Value identification: Where do customers find the most value in your product or service?
• Experience issues: What challenges are customers facing?
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): How likely are customers to recommend your brand?
• Customer churn: Why did a customer leave or express dissatisfaction?

These are just a few examples, but they illustrate the kind of depth you're aiming for.

One common mistake B2B teams make is trying to cover too much in a single conversation or survey. Instead, focus on gaining depth rather than breadth. Without this depth, you risk missing out on the critical insights needed to drive meaningful improvements.

In a B2B environment, customer discovery should indeed be a collaborative effort

In a B2B environment, customer discovery should indeed be a collaborative effort involving multiple teams across the organization. Here’s why each of these customer-facing departments plays a crucial role:

1. Marketing: Marketing teams gather insights into market trends, customer behavior, and pain points through research, campaigns, and feedback from content engagement. They have an in-depth understanding of the customer journey at the top of the funnel, which helps refine messaging and target the right audiences.
2. Sales: Sales teams are directly in touch with potential customers, understanding their immediate needs, concerns, and decision-making processes. They gather real-time feedback during negotiations and product demonstrations, providing valuable insights into what customers truly value.
3. Customer Success: Post-sale, the customer success team works closely with clients, ensuring they derive maximum value from the product or service. They understand the long-term pain points, challenges, and opportunities for product enhancement based on customer feedback and usage patterns.
4. Product: Product teams rely on feedback from all other departments to continuously iterate and improve the offering. They need insights from sales, customer success, and marketing to ensure the product roadmap aligns with customer needs and expectations, ensuring long-term satisfaction and retention.

In B2B, customer discovery isn't a one-time process; it’s an ongoing, cross-functional effort to gather insights from every touchpoint with the customer. Without this holistic approach, understanding how each department contributes to the overall customer experience and product offering becomes fragmented, leading to missed opportunities and misaligned strategies. Success in B2B requires this interconnected view of the customer journey.

Conclusion

Customer discovery is crucial, but relying too heavily on interviews without real-world validation can lead to building products that don’t meet market needs. By immersing yourself in your customers' environment and starting sales efforts early, you can gather actionable insights and create products that truly resonate with your target market.

This approach not only saves time and resources but also increases the likelihood of achieving product-market fit sooner. By emphasizing real engagement and measurable actions over theoretical understanding, startups can navigate the early stages more effectively and avoid common pitfalls.