Earned Buyer Insights Are Critical to Being Relevant to Buyers
At the start of the year, I elaborated on the idea that empathy is derived from a place of deeper understanding. In today’s business climate, the right to gain this deeper understanding must be earned. For leaders, it is easy to say to their teams to have empathy or be empathetic. Without deeper understanding as a foundation, attempts to display empathy will ring hollow with buyers and customers. This same principle applies to buyer insights. Buyer insights are not just handed over by buyers and customers. They are earned.
Earning the right to gain deep buyer insights from your buyers and customers is something that does not happen overnight. I have seen several SaaS companies and startups get tripped up in this area. Thinking access to insights is primarily data-driven. And they’ll know everything they are supposed to know. What several have learned, the hard way is that their lack of relationships with buyers and customers led to very little trust. And in turn, very little true insights.
Trust is the vital currency to earn access to critical buyer insights. Trust is the embodiment of all that an organization does to understand the goals and problems of its buyers and customers. And deliver value by offering a pathway to help them resolve specific goals and problems. The more this intent is demonstrated, the more access to critical insights an organization can earn. The key here is the acknowledgment that buyer insights are to be earned.
Organizations need to earn access to insights both at a market and customer level. The market-level trust allows for gaining access to critical insights from new buyers, new markets, and new product development efforts. While at the customer level, organizations can gain access to insights on how to enrich the experience, develop strategy, and expand markets.
Why do earned buyer insights matter? They matter plenty when you can get the deep insights that allow you to make better-informed decisions in several areas:
- Investment in resources
- Go to market strategy
- Marketing strategy
- Sales strategy
- Product and design strategies
For each of the above, just collecting analytical data on buyer and customer activities online is no longer good enough. They will give you good information and activity-based intelligence. But not the deep insights that only come from earned buyer insights.
In today’s environment of business uncertainty, the need for insights has never been higher. Important decisions are forthcoming for many business leaders. The shift to digital b2b buying, new global commerce patterns, and changing buyer, customer, and consumer behaviors all demand strategic decisions. Decisions that are rife with investment and market risks.
Such risks will demand deeper engagement with buyers and customers. And earning access to a deeper level of buyer and customer insights. Going forward, this will be one of the most important issues leaders will have to address.
The pandemic has significantly raised the value of trust currency. If your organization is not evolving and earning trust currency that gains access to earned buyer insights, you will be operating in the deep unknown. As opposed to being guided by deep insights.
