Customer-Centered Market Discovery - General Business Questions
- Sam Klaidman
- Jun 23
- 4 min read
This blog post is from GenAlpha partner, Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Advisor of Middlesex Consulting. At Middlesex Consulting, they help the post-sales (aftermarket) service and support team of mid-market B2B capital equipment companies grow revenue and profit while increasing customers, employees, stakeholders, and owners' long-term value.
In a recent post by Kristina Harrington, CEO and Founder of eCommerce software company GenAlpha, Kris wrote:
“I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard, ‘Our customers don’t want to buy online.
’But a new article from Manufacturing.net tells a different story.
- 74% of B2B buyers are already making purchases online.
- 65% start their product search with a search engine.
- 40% of buyers are frustrated by inaccurate pricing and shipping costs.
That doesn’t sound like a group resisting digital.”
This raises the critical question: if experts can be mistaken about digital purchasing, what else might they be wrong about? In my experience, I have observed business leaders misjudge customer (and employee) needs and desires in every aspect of their business. This understanding inspired the development of our Customer Centric Market Discovery (C^2MD) service.
We developed our C^2MD methodology long before GE Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp Jr. included this quote in his February 27, 2019, Shareholder letter:
“We need to shift our lens back to the customer and work backward to improve what matters to them. If we can do this successfully, our growth and performance will follow.“
We used C^2MD to answer such questions as:
Do you consider company X to be a vendor or a partner?
How easy is it to do business with us?
Ask at different levels in the customer’s customer - How satisfied are you with our product? How likely are you to recommend us? How likely are you to buy from us again? Always follow the question with WHY.
What can we do to create more value for your business?
What problem are you solving with our product? How successful are you?
We Focus Here on Customer-Centered Market Discovery Projects Designed to Answer a Variety of One-Time Business Questions
Our C^2MD Methodology consists of three steps and usually takes less than three months from project start to the beginning of your ROI:
Step 1 – Define the target audience and prepare to collect customer data.
We collaboratively define the target audience and gather insights about your existing Voice of the Customer program, employee feedback, and other areas you wish to explore.
Step 2 – Typical customer segmentation.
We develop a survey instrument with you for each segment, which includes a core set of questions, as well as questions specific to each category.
We conduct telephone interviews with 12 to 15 of your customers who fall into unique homogeneous groups, such as:
Identical or similar markets served, or products used
Identical or similar territory or region
Identical or similar business or activity level
Same or similar Go to Market strategy
Step 3 - Interviews, Analysis, and Recommendations.
Once we've finished our interviews, we create a comprehensive report containing analyses, customer feedback, and recommendations. After that, we present the findings to the executive team.
You receive all of our data so you can easily begin creating improvements.
Examples of Results from Recent Customer-Centered Market Discovery Projects
This chart, prepared for a $75 million medical device company, helps to determine whether they should implement remote diagnostics on their physicians’ office equipment.
Slightly more than half of the respondents thought that remote diagnostics would be valuable.
A $1 billion+ industrial equipment manufacturer sought to understand why very few customers had signed up for their on-site as-built labeling service. We asked, “Did you know that XYZ can add labels post-installation? This is what we discovered:
It's challenging to receive an order if
no one knows what you're selling!
Most business leaders believe their company has strong relationships with dealers and/or end-users. We surveyed 24 customers of a packaging equipment company to determine whether my client identified as a supplier or vendor. Here are the results.
Only 30% of customers viewed them as a partner; one customer categorized the people they deal with into two groups: sales and service. The executive team struggled to accept this result until they spoke with two in-house salespeople. They were then very disappointed that no one ever brought this issue to the team’s attention.
The Benefit of Correcting a False Impression Quickly
After conducting a customer satisfaction survey for a software startup that’s less than five years old, we attended their annual user group meeting to present our results and facilitate discussions. During the presentation, we took a brief break and asked the attendees to tell us, “If you have $1,000 to spend with our client, how much would you give them to clean up bugs in the current software, and how much would you pay for new features?” The findings indicated that approximately 90% would be allocated towards bug fixes, while the remainder would be allocated towards new features.
When the CEO heard the results, he informed the audience that they would adjust the rest of the day’s program to reschedule the product roadmap discussion for the next day.
The following morning, he presented the product roadmap and said, “Based on your feedback yesterday, we will hold this program and deploy all our programmers to address the open problems. Thank you for your feedback." The user group applauded the CEO, and their return on investment (ROI) began to grow.
Next Step
If you haven't recently validated your key business assumptions, it’s time to reach out to Sam Klaidman (Founder and Principal Adviser) for a 30-minute, risk-free conversation. We usually discuss how we can help you understand the context and issues related to your business questions, as well as how to use this information to achieve your desired business outcomes.
+1 774.217.4247 Sam’s phone number in the Eastern U.S.
Sam on LinkedIn
