Metrics Are Not Enough – You Need Buyer Stories Too

Rowan Noronha of Product Marketing Community speaks about Alan Armstrong's leadership and contribution.

As a Product Marketing Manager, you want to measure every aspect of your customer’s experience with your product and company. You want to know what’s working and what’s not, so you can improve your strategies, retain more customers, and drive more sales.

There’s no shortage of analytics to focus on as you pursue this goal. 

You can look at key metrics like customer acquisition cost and average cost per lead. You can study web traffic data, email open rates, click-throughs, free trial conversions, usage analytics, and event reports. You can calculate win, loss, retention, and churn rates, and you can pore over reason codes in the CRM.

All of these are useful and necessary in your product marketing toolkit. However, data alone won’t give you the full story. 

To get a deep understanding of how your customers experience your product, or why you win or lose deals, you need to hear their stories. Analytics data reveals what happened, but not why it happened. To get to the why, you need a candid conversation.

Listening to your customers was an important theme at the Product Marketing Community conference on November 22, held at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. Nearly every speaker emphasized the need for regular, ongoing conversations such as win/loss or churn/retention interviews. 

“Win/loss is not something you do once a year,” said Rowan Noronha, head of the PMC, as he kicked off the event. “It’s something you do on a quarterly basis.”

Lauren Kersanke of Crayon advised: “Make sure you’re doing win/loss analysis on a regular basis to understand who you’re winning against, who you’re losing against, why, and to surface trends.”

“Are you company- and product-focused, or are you looking at things through the lens of the buyer?” asked Katie Fabiszak of Sirius Decisions.

In fact, “until you understand your buyers and understand their journey, you won't be able to implement the things we've talked about today,” said Steve Gaylor of Pragmatic Institute.

Regular customer listening will empower you, as a Product Marketer, in important ways, including:

• You will better understand your buyers’ goals and what they want to achieve by engaging with you.

• By keeping a finger on the pulse of the market, you’ll be able to adapt quickly and proactively in the fast-moving SaaS world.

• These conversations are an opportunity to gather stories -- a powerful marketing tool -- to help sell your product.

Even if you don’t have a formal interview program in place, you can start with a few phone calls and a few interviews. Follow these general guidelines to interview effectively and elicit meaningful insights:

• Approach the conversation from a buyer-centric point of view rather than a company-centric one.

• Book the call for 30 minutes to have enough time to get the full story.

• Expect to see trends after 10 conversations, and clear themes emerging at 20. 

• If possible, isolate a market segment to interview, as this will make your results more cohesive.

As a Product Marketer, you can bring forward this customer-centric data within your company to influence decisions, align teams, and build a culture centered on the voice of your buyer. 

Our commitment to customer listening is inspired by Alan Armstrong, former CEO and founder of Eigenworks, a win/loss analysis firm. We are appreciative of the tribute paid to Alan at the PMC conference, and encouraged that his passion for the buyer voice continues to resonate. 

Since Alan’s passing, many former Eigenworks team members have formed IcebergIQ to continue the mission of empowering companies to listen to their buyers’ and customers’ journeys … and to carry on Alan’s legacy.

“Talk to your buyers,” Alan used to say. “They have so much to tell you.”