Winning with Customers: A Playbook for B2B

Chapter 5. What Does Your Customer Think?

We are now ready to shift gears from the theory of how to win to understanding the detailed plays necessary to win with your customers.

After reading this chapter you should be able to:

• Learn the basic elements of the "Discover Play": Prepare, Conduct Interview, and Capture Data.

• Understand what it means to Prepare and why it is critical to achieving a successful outcome.

• Develop your own qualitative and quantitative differential value proposition.

• Develop a sense for the balance between the qualitative and quantitative nature of Winning with Customers.

• Achieve a general knowledge for how in-person interviews are conducted.

• Think critically for a moment about how to capture and manage data.

Get on the Field

Are you ready to get on field? I said, Are you ready to get on the field?? Let me hear ya! 1, 2, 3, win with customers! HOORAAAAAA!

Okay, enough of that. The point is that it is now time to move into action. Just in case you are nervous about getting on the field, remember that is natural and everyone has a few butterflies before the game. You are ready because in Chapter 1, "Why We Lose," we talked about losing and teed up the challenges we all face. In Chapter 2, "Define Winning," we introduced a few approaches that have helped us and others to win. In Chapter 3, "The Playbook," we described and positioned those winning approaches as plays in a game—okay, an American football game. We acknowledge the pain using a football metaphor may be creating ...