Takeaways:
- Lost customers generally only share what they want you to know, and current customers hold back too.
- You’re too close to your own business to see everything your customers see.
- Interview about 20 customers, current and lost, and don’t stack the list with your favorites.
- An objective observer who keeps answers confidential will hear more than you will.
- Ask open-ended questions, never help them answer, and when an answer feels thin, say “Tell me more.”
Ask a customer who left why they left, and you’ll usually get an answer. It may even be true. It’s rarely the whole story.
In my book, The B2B Marketing Revolution®: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes, I put it plainly: you likely don’t have full transparency into why lost customers left your company. They generally only share what they want you to know. Current customers hold things back too, often so they don’t make waves.
That gap matters. The reasons customers stay, leave and choose a competitor are the raw material for your positioning, your offers and your marketing plan. If you’re working from the polite version, you’re building on guesses.
You’re Too Close to See It
Battle 2 of my 12 Battles™ Framework is “You Acknowledge That You Don’t Really Know Thy Customer.” It can be the hardest one for a CEO to accept, because you live, eat and breathe your business. That’s exactly the problem. You are wonderfully biased and subjective. You helped build your sales process, so it’s hard to see the friction in it. You love your company, so it’s hard to appreciate why anyone would choose a competitor.
Your passion is an asset almost everywhere else. Here it gets in the way. What you need is objectivity.
What Your Customers Know That You Don’t
Some of the most important insights in Battle 2 can only come from customers themselves:
- Why lost customers really chose to part ways. The reason they give at first often just scratches the surface.
- Why customers choose you over competitors, and what would make them choose you more often.
- Current pain points they’re keeping to themselves so as not to make waves.
- What they really think about your positioning. What you believe is an important point of differentiation may not matter much to them.
That last one deserves a hard look, because it shapes everything you say in the market.
Who to Talk To
Plan on about 20 customer interviews. With too few, a single outlier can sway what you conclude.
Then build the list for range, not comfort. Include current customers and lost ones. Long-standing customers and new ones. Big spenders and small ones. Customers who buy only from you and customers who spend very little with you. Ideal customers, and customers who aren’t ideal yet but should be, based on their profile. If you can reach them, add prospects who chose not to buy.
The trap is stacking the list with your most profitable, most loyal customers. They’re the easiest calls to make, and a sample built only from them will skew what you hear.
Who Should Do the Asking
Customers are more likely to open up to an objective observer who commits to keeping what they say confidential. That’s why I recommend a third-party research firm for these conversations, especially with lost customers. If that isn’t possible, at least bring in an objective outside advisor.
Whoever asks, give each person context. Explain that you’re doing this to stay connected to what matters most to your customers, that their candor will be enormously valuable and that their individual answers will be kept confidential.
How to Ask So You Hear the Whole Story
- Plan for about an hour, with 10 to 15 questions. Start with a couple of easy ones.
- Ask open-ended questions. “Do you believe the most valuable benefit we offer is high-quality products?” invites a yes or a no and nudges toward the answer you’d like to hear. “What do you believe is the most valuable benefit we offer customers?” lets them tell you.
- Never help them answer. Your job is to stay an unbiased observer.
- When an answer feels thin, say “Tell me more,” as many times as it takes.
- Record the conversation, with permission, so you can listen and watch instead of taking notes.
- When you hear something hard, don’t get defensive. Get curious.
What to Ask
For current customers:
- Who do they believe you compete with, and why did they choose you?
- What share of their spending in your category goes to you, and what goes to competitors?
- What do they see as your real differentiators, and how do those stack up?
- What could you do to earn more of their business, and what would send more of it to a competitor?
- What problems do they have that you could be solving?
For lost customers:
- Why they no longer do business with you, including anything they were hesitant to share with your team.
- What you could do to earn their business back.
Treat What You Hear as a Starting Point
Interviews tell you what people believe and why. They aren’t the final word. Look for the themes that come up across your conversations, then test those themes with a customer survey large enough to trust the numbers. That’s how a hunch becomes evidence you can build a plan on.
Acknowledge What You Don’t Know
None of this is a knock on how well you know your business. It’s an admission that no one can see their own company the way a customer does.
Acknowledge that you don’t really know thy customer, then go find out. The answers are already out there. You just have to ask in a way that lets people tell you.
By Lori Turner-Wilson, RedRover CEO/Founder, Internationally Best-Selling Author of The B2B Marketing Revolution®: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes
Taking Action
The above insights are part of hundreds of best practices found in The B2B Marketing Revolution®: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes — the playbook that middle-market B2B CEOs and marketing leaders lean on to scale. Backed by a groundbreaking research study, this book offers time-tested best practices, indispensable KPIs for benchmarking, insights on where your dollars are best spent, and, above all, the proven 12 Battles™ Framework for generating guaranteed marketing outcomes. The B2B Marketing Revolution® is a battle-hardened approach to becoming an outcomes-first leader who’s ready to shake up the status quo, invest in high-payoff market research and optimization, and — yes — even torch what’s not serving your endgame. Download more than 50 templates, scripts, and tools from the book on the Battle Reader Hub.
If you’d like to talk about how to build a marketing engine that delivers predictable results — whether you want to build it yourself or tag in our team to lead the way — we’d be delighted to help you get started.
