The Voice of your Customer: Powering Go-to-Market Strategy
B2B product marketers are often tasked with creating a winning go-to-market strategy for their organization. But it can be more difficult than it sounds! If you want to know how to capture your buyers’ attention, who is the best person to ask? – Your customers! By leveraging the voice of your customer, you gain a better understanding of what your buyers truly care about. The voice of your customer provides strategic marketing direction while eliminating any internal biases from sales, marketing, product, or customer experience. Product marketers can tap into the voice of the customer to create an effective go-to-market strategy that improves win rates and creates informed buying decisions.
What is the “voice of your customer”?
The voice of your customer typically describes your customer or buyer feedback about their first-hand experiences throughout the customer journey. The voice of your customer can give insight into the entire customer journey, from discovery and purchase to implementation and renewal. The voice of your customer can be gathered automatically through Win-Loss Analysis, Sales Experience Analysis, Competitive Analysis, or Customer Experience and Churn Analysis with Primary Intelligence.
What questions does the voice of my customer answer?
- What do my buyers truly care about when making a purchase decision?
When creating a go-to-market strategy, it’s important to align your messaging to buyer needs. The voice of your customer gives a firsthand account of what’s truly important to your buyers when making a purchase decision. The time sellers have with buyers is shrinking. It’s estimated that only 5%-6% of the buyer’s journey is spent with sales, so marketing has an important responsibility to help prepare buyers to purchase before they get to the sales rep. When you analyze past deals – both won and lost – your buyers will tell you why they did or did not choose your solution. You can then use this feedback to improve your marketing campaigns, messaging, content, and sales enablement to better align with your buyers’ needs and wants. - What are my competitors doing to adapt and how can I stay ahead?
You can do your own research into your competitors. You can search review sites or stalk competitor websites. However, none of this secondary research is going to help you understand how your customers perceive your competitors like the voice of your customer. When you conduct the analysis of past opportunities and ask questions around the competitors your buyers were evaluating, you’ll get unbiased insight into your competitive strengths and weaknesses – according to your buyers! These competitive insights are compiled into battle cards to help your sales reps speak confidently to competitive claims, but they can also be used to optimize your go-to-market strategy. How powerful would it be to be able to understand why you really win and lose against competitors? How powerful would it be to be able to pull direct quotes from your buyers about why they chose you over your competitors? This takes competitive intelligence to a new level. - What are the specific win-loss reasons, both overall and by rep?
As mentioned, the time sellers have with buyers is shrinking. Sales reps must make the time they have with buyers count. In a recent study, we found that 36% of buyers said that a deal could’ve been won had the vendor made a change during the evaluation process. Most often, buyers attributed the loss to something in the sales experience – even above price or product feature! The sales experience is crucial to improving win rates, and the voice of your customer can help each rep uncover their unique path to winning more. As a marketer, you’ll also be able to tap into these win-loss reasons to align your go-to-market strategy, sales enablement, and sales processes. Alignment between sales and marketing is powerful and creates a winning culture in your organization. - How can I optimize my customer journey to create better buying experiences?
The voice of your customer can uncover the golden path for your customer journey. You can use insights from the analysis of your past opportunities in each phase of your customer journey including:
By leveraging the voice of your customer, you’ll be able to create and optimize your go-to-market strategy. If you’re product marketer looking to increase win rates this year, reach out to our team and we’ll set you up with 60 days of our automated win-loss platform – free!
Check out how one of our customers uses TruVoice to create alignment and a winning GTM strategy: Watch Now
