The Touchy-Feely Thing That Makes or Breaks Strategy

𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘺-𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦.

In B2B SaaS we tend to use filters such as headcount, geography, champion buyer persona, depth of hierarchy, regulatory constraints, etc. to discriminate among customers.

This is the easy and less-than-effective way of trying to understand customers. These are proxies many levels removed, and do not help understand “why” customers will choose one over the other alternatives.

The solution has always been to understand the “why” behind customer behaviours. Behavioral segmentation helps discriminate between different types of customers based on a deep-seated view that the customers hold about themselves. Their self-image shows up in the problems they choose to address and the problems they choose to ignore. The deep-seated logic is driven by how they choose to engage with the world and their own customers.

When companies figure out which behaviours they are going to target, it is the most confidential and proprietary knowledge in the firm. Very few companies actually speak about it so examples for use in coaching are always hard to come by.

So the following snippet is a rare example I found in Lenny’s podcast[watch from 7min 5secs onwards to about 9 mins] where April Dunford of the positioning fame talks about her work with HelpScout and their journey. They discovered that there are two distinct behaviours : (A) those who value customer service as a growth-driver versus (B) those customers who simply want to drive down the cost of customer support.

The implications for Product Managers are the following:

(A) The values and principles that permeate the two product organizations, one that targets customer-service-as-a-growth-driver versus the one that targets customer-support-as-a-cost-center, will be vastly different.

(B) Consequently, the resulting products will be wildly different even though at a superficial level, both products could be “categorized” under Helpdesk Software or Customer Service Solutions in “Industry” parlance.