What demand feels like
On refining demand & helping people become perfect buyers
Hi all -
Last week I wrote a deep-dive on what demand is, and what a demand-driven startup does. In short:
A demand-driven startup views its customers’ context as its biggest source of leverage. When you build a demand-driven startup, you spend your time figuring out how to tap into this source of leverage…
The forces you don’t control make 99%+ of the difference. Leverage these forces, don’t ignore them.
Last week, I experienced being on the demand-side when I was talking with an entrepreneur in the Customer Success space. He was asking about my experience as he explored a business idea.
In our conversation, I realized that experiencing the demand-side firsthand (aka, being “the potential buyer”) and observing how you interact as a potential buyer clears out a lot of the BS you THINK you know about sales.
Here’s what I observed:
I knew my problems, but only vaguely
We spoke about the #1 priority I have as I manage our company’s Customer Success function - successfully onboarding a ton of new customers and making them successful quickly.
Here’s the crazy thing: This is my #1 priority, and I’ve done a ton of work to improve the process, but I couldn’t really articulate what’s wrong with our current process.
In the end, I could talk about specific examples of symptoms I’ve experienced from our current suboptimal process. And I could walk through in detail the specific onboarding process we have. And I could express a vague desired end-state = “faster onboarding, really happy customers.” Or, in other words, “this not being a problem I have to focus on anymore.”
And I realized: This is crazy. I’m the ideal buyer, this is my #1 priority, and I can’t explain what’s wrong or what I need.
So what?
What I’ve realized is that at least one of two things are true:
I’m really bad at my job
Or, my experience resembles that of most “would-be” business buyers
Let’s assume the second, for my sanity.
This is what I call “unrefined demand”. It’s pent-up energy without a clear direction.
I assume most B2B demand exists as this “unrefined demand”. Because most B2B demand emerges like this:
Something happens in a potential buyer’s world that causes them to need to change; to need to make something new happen. But they don’t have a clear roadmap for change. They have a vague understanding of the symptoms they experience, the trigger for change, and the general desired outcome, but need help getting from the abstract to the concrete; from the “goal” to the “action”.
Then the goal of a B2B marketing and sales organization, then, is refining demand. Making each prospect’s abstract problems and vague goals more concrete and solvable. Then, positioning your solution as the best option.
Another way to describe refining demand: Helping people learn what’s wrong and what’s possible so that they can become great customers.
In SaaS, we tend to skip this in favor of templated discovery calls and feature-filled product demos.
Instead: Help me learn.
I need help understanding and describing my problem before I can imagine taking action to solve it. And before I jump into taking action and spend real $$ to buy software, I need to understand my options and why you’re the best option.
-Rob