Primary Intelligence’s Research & Development division was tasked with developing new solutions that allow our clients to understand and act on the insights we gather through our Win Loss and Customer Experience programs. Plus, anything else we think sounds interesting.
To succeed, our lifeblood is customer insights. We want to hear how they spend their days, their problems, what they like most about our services, where they want us to improve, and everything in between. We also talk to plenty of non-customers (or, to use the marketing euphemism, “potential customers”) to identify new problems we might solve.
We’ve worked with plenty of sales leaders, and their need for customer insights was just as urgent. In fact, there are probably few jobs in an organization that wouldn’t benefit from customer insights. We all want to understand our customer better. So, how do you do it?
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Do Your Buyers Have A Sense Of Urgency?
/0 Comments/by John Hollandin Buyer-centric marketing, Buyer-centric selling, Customer experience analysis, Improving win and retention ratesWhen trying to get to the end of sales cycles, sellers always seem to be in a hurry. In stark contrast, buyers frequently drag their feet before making decisions to spend money. Consider how often close dates slip for opportunities in the forecast. This discrepancy in decision time frames can cause sellers to close prematurely, offer discounts to accelerate decisions and pressure buyers. In extreme situations, deals can be lost. It often comes down to the seller’s or vendor’s agenda of needing to book orders at month, quarter or year-end.
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They’ll Be Here! Will You? Meet our Experts at Outcomes 2016!
/0 Comments/by Connie Schlosbergin Customer experience analysis, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisAccess some of the best sales and marketing experts at Outcomes 2016! Primary Intelligence’s conference is the place to connect with our program consultants and partners, sharpen your skills, and explore new best practices.
What happens when experienced, highly-skilled experts get together? Ideas get shared, challenges are discussed, new strategies are explored, and outcomes become real. And that’s what our conference is all about.
Join us at Outcomes 2016 to find the expertise that can help solve your most complex challenges and discover new proven solutions for your business needs.
We’re thrilled to have five of our partners who will be sharing their sales and marketing wisdom at Outcomes 2016:
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Don’t Miss Hearing From Your Peers at Outcomes 2016!
/0 Comments/by Connie Schlosbergin Customer experience analysis, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisAre you getting ready to elevate your outcomes? Outcomes 2016 is just a few weeks away.
Primary Intelligence is excited to have three of our clients – your peers – as our special guests at Outcomes 2016. They will be sharing best practices and insights on how they use Win Loss and Customer Experience to close more deals, grow revenue, and improve customer success.
The following special guests will be co-presenting with our Program Consultants at Outcomes 2016:
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Elevate Your Outcomes 2016 Conference! A Q&A with Ken Allred
/0 Comments/by Connie Schlosbergin Customer experience analysis, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisWith our first customer conference just weeks away, I asked Ken Allred, CEO of Primary Intelligence, about Outcomes 2016. Here is a selection from our conversation.
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Join the Conversation! Share Your Business Stories at Outcomes 2016!
/0 Comments/by Connie Schlosbergin Customer experience analysis, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisDo you love sharing your stories and knowledge about your Win Loss and Customer Experience programs? Are you interested in hearing successes and struggles with improving sales and revenue? All in a casual setting?
Why not join us for roundtable discussions at our Outcomes 2016 conference in Park City, Utah this October?
A roundtable discussion is the perfect place to meet your peers and learn from their expertise and experience. Roundtable participants enjoy the informality that a panel presentation can’t supply and appreciate the candor from colleagues.
Primary Intelligence will host four roundtable discussions at Outcomes 2016:
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Outcomes 101: Turning Data into Revenue
/0 Comments/by Connie Schlosbergin Customer experience analysis, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisAs with everything in life, having goals is important. Without a destination in mind, you could wander aimlessly for months or even years without really accomplishing anything. The same holds true for strategic Win Loss and Customer Experience programs.
Data may be interesting but if it’s not actionable, then it’s ultimately useless. At Primary Intelligence, our mantra for Win Loss and Customer Experience programs is to deliver outcomes – not just data.
Think of data as your roadmap to revenue through organizational change.
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Elevate Your Win Loss and Customer Experience Programs
/0 Comments/by Connie Schlosbergin Customer experience analysis, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisYou made the wise choice to implement a Win Loss or Customer Experience program. Now you’re ready to take it to the next level. You want to see outcomes – real goals reached from the findings gathered. But how?
Primary Intelligence has helped your peers with the same struggles elevate their outcomes with amazing results.
Elevate Your Programs
We’re sure you are interested in replicating success experienced by those who have achieved outcomes. Attending Elevate Your Programs at our Outcomes 2016 conference will guide you through the ins and outs of a successful and elevated program. You’ll walk away inspired and ready to put it all into action.
Here’s a preview of what to expect:
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Understanding Why Good Sales Teams Lose in Competitive B2B Opportunities
/0 Comments/by Carolyn Galvinin Buyer-centric selling, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisSales losses are hard. And they’re especially hard when the engagement has been long, difficult, and complex. Sales teams often feel as though they’ve given their best proposal, their best price, their best value proposition. But sometimes, that just isn’t enough to seal the deal.
After a loss, it’s tempting to walk away and not look back. After all, looking back can be painful. Better to start over with a fresh opportunity, right? Not necessarily.
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Does Your Sales Team Need to Love Your Product to Sell It?
/0 Comments/by Primary Intelligencein Buyer-centric marketing, Buyer-centric selling, Win loss analysisThe short answer? Yes.
Sure, we can all hold our noses and do things we don’t like, but few of us are also good at masking the discomfort. It’s obvious. You can’t appear engaged in that conversation while also thinking through tonight’s dinner plans in your head.
Of course, the long answer is it takes more than love. A sales rep also has to be confident in what they are doing in order to have the good intent, sincerity, and knowledge needed to close a deal with today’s B2B buyer (who has already Googled you for three weeks before calling).
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New CX Research from Primary Intelligence Finds B2B Firms Are Getting Serious About Customer Feedback
/0 Comments/by Carolyn Galvinin Customer experience analysis, Excellent data analysis, Excellent research methodologies, Improving win and retention ratesIn Primary Intelligence’s recently published 2016 State of Customer Experience research findings, we found some interesting data points to suggest that B2B firms are increasingly serious about collecting, analyzing, and responding to feedback from their customers. In this blog, we share three of the more interesting findings from our latest annual research on the Customer Experience (CX) market.
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Customer Phone Interviews: A Better Way to Gather Customer Experience Feedback [Infographic]
/0 Comments/by Connie Schlosbergin Customer experience analysis, Excellent research methodologies, Improving win and retention ratesWhen collecting feedback from our customers, we know we need to get the sincerest input from them if we want to provide customers with the most valuable experience.
While NPS surveys, on-site visits, one-on-one interviews are effective ways to collect feedback, they don’t fully capture the golden nuggets we’re looking for.
Companies often neglect the most cost-effective and beneficial way to understanding customers and their specific needs.
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Don’t Let Your Sales Pitch Go to the Birds
/0 Comments/by Suzanne Nightingalein Buyer-centric marketing, Buyer-centric selling, Win loss analysisSometimes there’s a common element between selling software and feeding the birds in the park. When birds gather around for your food, you have to make very calm, deliberate movements, so they know they can trust you.
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Why Do Sellers Lose?
/0 Comments/by John Hollandin Buyer-centric selling, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisOften times after a painful loss (large transaction/long sales cycle), sellers will be asked to find out why they lost in hopes of getting smarter about things to do or avoid. While that all seems to be logical, it is difficult for the sellers to find out why they are losing.
Informing sellers that they’ve lost in an odd way is analogous to trying to make a clean break from someone you were dating in school. The person who wants to end the relationship tries to leave little room for discussion. One of the more effective techniques in achieving this goal Read more →
Yes, You Can Improve Your Win Rate With Win Loss Analysis
/0 Comments/by Thomas Watkinsin Excellent research methodologies, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisA client asked me to compare its performance in fiscal year (FY) 2015 to fiscal year 2014. As I looked at the data, I quickly realized that the data showed a significant increase in their win rate.
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How to Grab and Keep Your Buyer’s Attention
/0 Comments/by John Hollandin Buyer-centric selling, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisA recent study funded by Microsoft reached what I view as a disturbing conclusion. It found that the average attention span of people has fallen significantly in the last few years. Since 2000 it has decreased by one-third and now stands at 8 seconds. To put that into context, we now have attention spans that are 1 second less than that of a goldfish!
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Announcing Outcomes 2016: Elevate Your Outcomes Conference
/0 Comments/by Jessie Edwardsin Customer experience analysis, Primary Intelligence, Win loss analysisOutcomes 2016 is the event to optimize your Win Loss and/or Customer Experience program. You’ll discover new ways to leverage intelligence, make the most out of TruVoice, and achieve program outcomes. It’s the place to be to ensure your organization is elevated through the use of Primary Intelligence solutions and services.
How to Differentiate Yourself with Senior Executives
/0 Comments/by John Hollandin Buyer-centric selling, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisIf sellers are unfamiliar with a vendor that they are competing with some companies have competitive analysis groups to help with positioning. They often arm sellers with “knock-offs” (specific features they feel are advantages). The danger of this approach is two-fold:
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Why Phone Interviews are Our Favorite Method for Collecting Customer Insights
/0 Comments/by Primary Intelligencein Customer experience analysis, Excellent research methodologies, Win loss analysisPrimary Intelligence’s Research & Development division was tasked with developing new solutions that allow our clients to understand and act on the insights we gather through our Win Loss and Customer Experience programs. Plus, anything else we think sounds interesting.
To succeed, our lifeblood is customer insights. We want to hear how they spend their days, their problems, what they like most about our services, where they want us to improve, and everything in between. We also talk to plenty of non-customers (or, to use the marketing euphemism, “potential customers”) to identify new problems we might solve.
We’ve worked with plenty of sales leaders, and their need for customer insights was just as urgent. In fact, there are probably few jobs in an organization that wouldn’t benefit from customer insights. We all want to understand our customer better. So, how do you do it?
Read more →
The Power of Post-Sales Discussions in Win Loss Analysis Programs
/0 Comments/by Vinay D Cardwellin Buyer-centric selling, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisBeing in sales, I am constantly bombarded with objections from company leaders on a variety of topics. After all, I am the first person they deal with in the organization. They think Win Loss Analysis is something they can do on their own, believe a third party can’t get information their sales reps can, or question why they need a Win Loss program at all. “We know why we lose, it’s the price!” is the typical mantra I always hear.
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Time to Revisit Your Sales Process
/0 Comments/by John Hollandin Buyer-centric selling, Improving win and retention rates, Win loss analysisOver the weekend I gave thought to changes in buying behavior. It prompted me to wonder if companies have modified their sales process milestones developed in the 90’s and imbedded them into their CRM software? I’d guess few companies have gone through that exercise. I was surprised to realize it’s probably okay but vendors should consider incorporating steps from customer buying processes into their sales processes.
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