From Stalled to Scaling

Mature customer programs ask fewer questions. About 5% of customers answer surveys and client executives almost never do, but every customer reports every month through their orders. In the third of four episodes on the actions from Do B2B Better, I cover evaluating the flywheel and why cutting questions first earns you the standing to ask for order data. Your assignment is to cross out every customer question nobody can tie to a decision, then count what survives.

Three in four customer programs start from a score and hope it leads somewhere. The ones that can prove business results start with a financial number the business already owns and work backward. This is the first of four episodes on the actions from Do B2B Better, starting with pointing the flywheel. Your assignment is to put the financial number you're accountable for next to your program's headline number and see whether you can draw a line between them.

Growth goes to the supplier who shows up with the solution before the customer asks for it. In this first episode of From Stalled to Scaling, I make the case that too many companies wait to be asked and call it good service. A Winnebago story from the 1970s shows this was an engineering instinct long before anyone called it customer experience.

Here's your assignment. List the last five things you built for customers and split them into what they asked for and what you saw coming. Then count the second column.

Across 818 customer interviews, policy limitations came back 89% negative, the most negative category of all. The biggest reason customers cut spending is friction the supplier built itself. In the second of four episodes on actions from Do B2B Better, I cover how to accelerate the flywheel and why the emotion that drives growth is found, not chosen. Your assignment is to ask your next commercial review what a customer would have to feel for your number to move, in one word.

Laurie Englert, North American CMO at Legrand, joins me for the show's first interview. She shares how she's bringing 19 websites together so customers can see everything Legrand sells, what a rack builder nobody asked for taught her team about customer interviews, and how a plus one strategy got stagnant accounts buying more. We also debate customer satisfaction. Your assignment is to pick one healthy account, find the person who actually uses your product, and ask Laurie's three questions.

A bad purchase at home annoys you for three years. A bad recommendation at work can cost you your job for three years. That asymmetry is why B2B buying decisions look irrational from the supplier's side, and why satisfaction questions borrowed from retail miss what matters. Your assignment is to name everyone who touched one account's last real buying decision, mark the ones you've never met and count the marks.

Growth goes to the supplier who shows up with the solution before the customer asks for it. In this first episode of From Stalled to Scaling, I make the case that too many companies wait to be asked and call it good service. A Winnebago story from the 1970s shows this was an engineering instinct long before anyone called it customer experience.

Here's your assignment. List the last five things you built for customers and split them into what they asked for and what you saw coming. Then count the second column.