A great way to better understand the buying and using criteria around your current solutions is to talk with new customers. You can ask them questions like:
- What first led you to buy our product?
- What other products were considered in your evaluation?
- What problems does our product solve for you?
- What do you like most about our product?
- What do you like least about our product?
- How can we improve our product?
But you can also broaden your focus to try and find new opportunities—whether it’s new products, incremental offerings or solution bundles—with questions like:
- How did your organization prioritize solving this problem over other problems in your business? The responses will help you better understand buying drivers, the budget process, total elapsed timelines and buyer personas.
- What do you think about our company? The answers will help you identify the positive perceptions that exist—which you may want to amplify—and unearth less positive sentiments, which you may need to address.
- What are some of the best products you’ve seen lately? These answers will help you identify emerging competitors, potential acquisition options and potential partners.
- As you think about the company as a whole—not just our current offering—what additional problems can we solve for you? This question helps move the discussion beyond the constraints of current implementations or services to identify potential products you could develop or extend in your current portfolio.
In my experience, once you start getting feedback, more questions easily pop up. Here’s hoping these questions will encourage other ideas and new areas to explore.
