Like many sales and marketing executives, you probably receive an influx of data from marketing research, focus and/or user groups, and other customer contact forums. The question is: have you been able to effectively turn this information into results? 

How familiar do any of these situations below feel to your team? 

• “According to our latest market research report, our new branding campaign has yielded us a majority share in recognition and awareness, but this campaign hasn’t increased inquiries, interest, action, or sales.”
• “We have just spent the last two years developing our next major offering.  Unfortunately, customers yawn at the launch and sales are falling short of forecast.  Now we must scramble to fix it, but how?”
• "Our industry is changing dramatically, and we find our organization just reacting and losing major opportunities to our traditional competitors and new upstarts.”

These illustrations are real-life lessons, often times learned at the cost of millions of dollars in product development, lost revenue, and shattered customer loyalty.  What went wrong?  Each organization neglected to add one essential ingredient…the customer’s first-hand perspective!

Where Was the Customer’s Voice, and How Was it Used?
Each organization would argue their good intentions, dollars, and resources focused on market research, focus groups, and other statistics were geared at deciphering what customers really wanted. But like static on the phone line, somewhere along the way the true voice of the customer got lost. By the time the information reached decision makers, it had been filtered, interpreted, positioned, adjusted, and summarized. As a result, executives set the strategy, approved plans, and allocated organizational resources based on this second, third, nth-hand information. 

So how do sales and marketing managers get a clear and accurate picture of the marketplace?  How do they align their products and services to exploit industry changes, or position messaging to hit the market’s “sweet spot”?  How do they increase the success rates of their products?