When operating in a B2B environment, you must focus on making your customers’ journey memorable – well, that is how you can boost your sales and grow as a company. Customer experience and satisfaction play a very important role in the customer journey.
Meeting customer needs and demands is a way of ensuring a good customer experience. But if you wish to deliver a great customer experience, you have to get into the skin of your customers and understand why they want your product and what value it provides them.
By saying that you need to get into your customer’s skin, we imply that you need to understand who your customers are. Knowing your customers’ customers helps you serve them (your customers) better.
Let us break it down for you
As a B2B business, say A, you sell your products/ services to another business, let’s call it B. Now, B uses your product and uses it to better its efforts when serving its own customer, and let’s call them C.
So when you, i.e., A, understand C, you can better meet B’s needs and expectations.
But that is not the only benefit; B2Bs can profit from understanding their customers in several ways. The benefits include –
Understanding your customer’s requirements even before they do
When you understand who your customers are targeting, it becomes easier for you to anticipate YOUR customer’s needs and requirements. This information is very useful for preparing yourself to give them what they need. You can provide them with an appropriate solution even before they identify the problem or need. As you understand their customers and the marketplace where we offer their products, you will be able to work with them as a team rather than as an external vendor.
Alignment with the client’s business
Well, businesses, especially the ones operating in the SaaS environment, tend to pay a major chunk of their attention to their product. This could also distract them from the actual focal point – their client’s needs.
But when you understand your customer’s business and target audience, it becomes much easier for you to align your business with theirs. By getting a better understanding of the customer’s audience, you will be able to work to address the customer’s needs.
Drives sales
B2B’s invest a lot in customer retention and customer success to boost their sales. The good news is that businesses that try to know a client’s business and customers can boost their sales.
There are several reasons for this. One of the reasons is that when you try to understand more about your customers, they acknowledge it through customer retention. This leads to more sales.
Secondly, by understanding the customer’s customers, you will be able to improve your product and solve customer problems better. This customer-focused culture improves your brand value and drives more sales.
Boost your innovation
You may have designed your product for your customers, and it fulfills their needs. This is satisfactory. But when you try to understand your customer’s customer, your approach broadens, and you develop new perspectives. Thus, you can be more innovative in your approach, which can be beyond satisfactory, and there are chances you can come up with a product that solves more complex problems.
Customize your marketing and advertising campaigns
When you know your customer’s target audience and their markets, you will have more perspectives in terms of the product and w.r.t marketing and advertising. For instance, you can talk about the end customer’s pain points. You will also be able to make your efforts more targeted and account-based.
Personalizing your offering
Understanding the customer of your customer is also a great way to personalize your offerings. When you understand what your customer does and to who they are aiming to sell their product, you will be able to understand where you fit. Thus, it becomes much easier to customize your offerings for them (your customer).
The benefits look quite promising, but do you understand your customer’s customer? Well, you can get started by talking to them. Ask them what the target segment is, what they wish to do for the target segment and what are the problems they face, and finally, how your product helps them. The answers to these questions will give you a decent idea of the exact target audience.
Next, you can use the available customer research mechanisms to know more about them.
Concluding thoughts
To conclude, identifying and understanding your customer’s customer is time and effort worth investing. However, doing this can prove to be invaluable for B2Bs. We have already listed out the benefits you can reap from it.
So, what are you waiting for? Start researching your customer’s customer…
