15A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 2

Evaluating How Your Customers Evaluate Stuff

The individuals in my segment are B2B. When it comes to alternatives they are at the mercy of what agreement their company has with a vendor that supplies the business cards. Knowing this I was very limited in the general questions to ask since they all follow a similar, if not the same, purchase experience. The experience as follows: Order is sent to a secretary or purchasing agent, style is already selected based on company style guide, and paid for by the corporate account. Not very exciting. Therefore, I had to approach my interviews with an “if you could” statement to break them out of the normal mold and provide insightful information.

One out of three of my interviews preferred to stay with the status quo on ordering business cards. The process to him seemed easy. He would send an email and a box of business cards showed up on his desk a week later. The other two, one from sales and one from marketing went along for the ride with me to define alternatives. Both admitted that what they do today, albeit easy to achieve, is a waste of money. The reason being is that they do not see any return. They have tried QR codes and alternative ways to pass along their information, but nothing seems to stick on a large scale. The Marketing VP indicated the best performance she saw was when she hand wrote her information down with an inspiring quote. All three indicated the post purchase experience was nothing to get excited about. In my own words, not much more above getting your electric bill each month.

As non-productive as this exercise seemed at the beginning it was the exact opposite and probably the most learned of all. The opportunity in front of me is more difficult to solve that I originally imagined. Based on the interviews the two key takeaways I gathered was to solve:

1. Determine when to pass contact information to a potential lead

2. Determine how to define the success of passing the information along to a potential lead

As trivial as they may seem, these are complicated problems to solve. As the class progresses, these are the two questions I hope to answer.