As a Product Manager working in B2B space, I had been repeatedly asked how to understand customers at scale, especially from people new to the industry. In this post, I want to share a few tips on how to think about working with stakeholders in your company to gather customer insights. Complement this with data analysis and user research, this can make you highly effective as a product manager.
Refer to the diagram above, you can engage with key stakeholders depending on the product work you’re doing, which you can almost always map to the following product funnel:
acquisition - sales and marketing;
activation - sales and marketing, customer support, solution engineers, integration partners;
retention - account managers, customer success managers, solution engineers, integration partners.
How each role can help
Sales and Marketing
Product Marketing Manager (PMM), Presales, Enterprise Sales, etc. fall under this category. They are particularly helpful when it comes to understanding the buyers’ personas, and can relay the following information to help craft a compelling go-to-market (GTM) messaging that’s consistent with your product value. In particular, they can help you understand:
buyers personas
try intents of buyers
Customer Support
Customer or technical support fall under this category. They receive first-hand information when your customers run into an issue and can provide the followings:
common product problems
issues leading to churn
use cases that your team didn’t previously anticipate
Solution Engineers
Solution engineers are the knowledge expert in a particular industry, and generally have a good understanding of the business challenge. They can help you relay key insights on the ground and connect you with customers for interviews. Other inputs they can provide you are:
what businesses care about
trends of the industry
adoption of competitors products in your target market
how key customers are using your product
Account Managers
Account managers are the point of contact for some of the key accounts and can help you dive deep into their pain points. This is especially effective when you’ve narrowed down the customers you’d like to engage with. In particular, they can deliver the following insights:
cross-sell product opportunities
adjacent users/customers
issues faced by existing customers
Customer Success Managers (CSM)
CSM help ensure your customers are extracting as much value out of the product as possible so that they’ll renew their contracts. They can help you understand:
why certain verticals/industries are not renewing their contract
any unsatisfied needs of current customers
repeated requests across various customers they’re in touched with
Speaking to a CSM is a great way to help you narrow down the type of customers or personas you want to engage in a 1:1 interview with.
Integration Partners
Integration partners build on top of your platform to grow their businesses, and generally have a vested interest to help serve your customers better. They can help you understand:
how your product can make it easier for them to build on-top
things they care about being part of the ecosystem
their target customers (is it consistent with the customers your product is serving?)
In conclusion
This is only part of the puzzle to understand your customers effectively in the context of B2B software. Do bear in mind that it is also important that you marry this approach with data analytics and other user research methods to understand what your customers and users need.