Do You Know Who Your Customers Are and What Problems They Need Solved?

This month's BrandingWire posts look in the mirror at those of us who are B2B consultants. For the sake  of continuity, here is the background information that we use to solve the challenge facing the made up consultancy. It is: A small marketing firm is losing contracts to lower pricing and to bigger firms. The consultancy after three years has stopped growing and most of its clients buy one project and don’t return for more assistance for several years, if at all.

Here is the background driving the consultancy:

Consulting Firm’s Client Base Profile:

• Revenues: $1 million to $25 million
• Employees: 150 or fewer
• Verticals: High-tech and health care
• Location: North America
• Challenges: Consumers and other businesses have so many choices that high-tech businesses as well as their other target audience made up of clinics and hospitals are either showing stagnant growth or they are losing market share.
• Client’s Problem: They don’t know how to differentiate themselves from their competition.

The key to differentiating this consultancy stares them in the face. Unlike most businesses, small or large, this consultancy completed the most important task any business faces, and that is to identify their ideal clients and customers. Without that knowledge, businesses cannot differentiate themselves or compete against those businesses who have targeted a specific customer base and use all their marketing and sales budget and time to go after those businesses.

To differentiate ourselves, we have to know our customers and clients problems and then offer a solution. Our consultancy knows the problem, as the backgrounder above demonstrates. To repeat, the consultancy's clients, "clinics and hospitals, are either showing stagnant growth or they are losing market share." To differentiate itself, the consultancy needs to study their customers and clients challenges and then they need to discover what their competitors are offering to solve the challenge. Once they have that information in hand, they can create solutions that drive growth and increase market share that will differentiate them from the solutions offered by their competitors.

In conclusion, the answer to differentiating ourselves lies in first understanding who our ideal customers and clients are and what they look like, then discovering what their problems are, and finally coming up with innovative and targeted solutions to those problems.

Get more high-voltage ideas at BrandingWire.com. This month's marketing and branding experts on BrandingWire are:

Lewis Green

Martin Jelsema

Kevin Dugan

Valeria Maltoni

Steve Woodruff

Drew McLellan

Patrick Schaber

Gavin Heaton

Becky Carroll

Olivier Blanchard

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Comments

[Martin Jelsema]

Right on, but I'd add another essential to understanding our customers and prospects. Not only do we need to know "who our ideal customers and clients are and what they look like", we need to know what their "hot buttons" are. What motivates them to act and for this company, to keep coming back.

Martin

[Drew McLellan]

Lewis,

I think we all agree that you have to know your customer. One concern I have for this company is that I don't think they've narrowed the field enough. The spread in both capabilities, culture and needs between a $1 million and $25 million dollar company are staggering.

I think one of the things that has this organization on the ropes is that they've cast too big a net.

Drew

[Kevin Dugan]

Lewis - To add onto Drew's note, I think the toughest part is not deciding who your clients are but rather who they aren't. It's tough for firms to reign in that focus for fear they'll miss some business. But it's critical.

[Loredana Niculae]

Lewis,

I agree. Knowing your customer is the key. In b2b there are many challanges wen identifying your key audinece. I had a well debated post on and the challanges that coem with it.

[Patrick Schaber]

Lewis,
Identifying customer base and competitor activity is huge - for any business. Great post!

[Lewis Green]

Martin,

Great point! At the end of the day, we are dealing with emotional responses as much as we are intellectual ones.

Drew,

You are absolutely correct. While this firm understands its client's challenges, it is unlikely to understand and execute on all the possible solutions because their client base is so large and diverse that a firm would have to be huge to address all the various scenarios needing an application.

Loredana and Pat,

Thanks for stopping by.

[Lewis Green]

Kevin,

Yep. The size of the audience and its wants and needs are too much for a firm to truly understand how to meet those wants and needs.

[Becky Carroll]

Lewis, I agree with much of your post. If the consulting firm truly understands who their ideal customer really is, the field will already be narrowed! Getting inside the head of those customers to understand their business challenges is a great way to sell a solution, not just sell a "package of services". Good post!

[Lewis Green]

Becky,

Thank you. The business has made a good start on identifying its ideal customers, but the job of doing so is never finished. We need to keep plugging away at narrowing our market and understanding their wants and needs.