During diligence, it is most critical to learn from those who have business needs directly, are ‘sitting in seat’ either 1) using a good or service (or working to better solve perceived needs), or 2) driving and/or influencing decisions and managing budgets.
The experts are the prospective and current customers – who choose to address a need, suppress a need, and drive opinions and choice.
If you make investment decisions – investments in companies, technologies, go to market strategies and product – to meet the needs and behavioral preferences of the most attractive segments of the market – investment returns improve. That’s the most fundamental of business facts – and is what drives P&L and Balance Sheet performance (and thereafter investor ROI) more than any other factor.
Every exercise should be one is custom sourced – actual users and decision makers bespoke to the case, and for B2B taking a multi-function approach given that many decisions multi-function in character and somewhat subject to significant influencers.
Honing best in class capabilities is paramount to the exercise and better and more relevant inputs make far better analyses and conclusions.
Matters Graph does not just gain insight on customer satisfaction, NPS, and conjoint views on decision making and choice preference, Matters Graph develops far more accurate views on sizing exercises (the TAM, SAM and SOM) because we use carefully measured voice-of-customer data to calculate the measures. This approach, instead of using the common and all too simplistic modeling method of applying speculative assumptions to top-down population data prevents the dangerous overstatement of the opportunities at hand. Likewise, projected growth, adoption, share and switch rates, segment analyses, and value gen opportunities should all based on bottoms up, robust, high n voice-of-customer compiled behavioral segmentation, not demographic segmentation. Again, better and more relevant inputs make far better analyses and conclusions. Make the hard work, a Matter of Fact.
Genuine voice of customer is not a deck with a few dozen quotes from a handful or so of experts from expert networks. Rather voice of customer is a research methodology that requires getting high sample size (n) for each relevant segment in a market – and calls for current customers, competitor customers, and non-users. Genuine voice of customer requires cross functional inputs when decisions are made in a cross functional manner (and most B2B decisions are) – which itself is hardly ever a homogenous story across the prospective customer base.
True investigative interviews that allow these users and decision makers to drive the conversation relative to the learning agenda is where you uncover the trends, underserved and unmet needs, and true competitive positioning that synthesizes the voice of customer. The insights found during these investigations are the result of deep listening, real-time processing of information and resetting investigative paths - a process that is a great contrast to the majority of diligence decks. Matters Graph refines and evolves its investigation in the course of each discussion to unearth what truly matters, noting and drilling into clues, identifying patterns and discovering the answers to “why”, “why not”, “how,” and “what if.”
