Research

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As a revenue coach, I do not consider my work successful until sales start going up. And sales will not go up until the CEO and other top managers make the mental shift from company-centered to customer-centric. 

Traditional methods of customer research do not flip that switch. I know, because I’ve seen them all fail: focus groups, online surveys, email surveys, and so on. 

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The customers I interview for my clients range from engineers to programmers to CPAs to physicians to store owners to sailors to dealers to system integrators to women who buy skincare and makeup to salespeople to marketers to CEOs to...well, you get the picture. Just about everybody.

They always have something interesting to say. In fact, you'd be surprised - shocked, even - if you heard how much your own customers have to say about your product and company.

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The president of a small company recently sent me an email. "We've done well in a lot of areas of business, but what we haven't done is sorely inhibiting our growth. We need to master marketing and are committed to doing just that. Will you point me to the best learning tools?"

I'll bet you can guess where I pointed him…right back to his own customers. Here was my reply:

Well, my next book would help you. It will be out next year.

 

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The CMO Council and MarketBridge just conducted a study to determine how marketing is perceived and how marketers think they're doing. The results agree with what I've observed for many years: the very nature of marketing has changed and many marketers haven't changed with it.

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I don't normally post "news" here, since you can get that from so many other places. But I thought you might want to know about the joint study being undertaken by the CMO Council and KnowledgeStorm, especially since you can participate.

The CMO Council consists of marketing execs from 1,300 tech companies, controlling $45 billion in global marketing expenditures. KnowledgeStorm defines itself as "the largest online index of IT solutions," and says that 1.5 million IT buyers and solution providers visit KnowledgeStorm each month.