Market Research for Sales

A client came to us frustrated. They had thousands of website visitors per day, yet their sales were flat. No matter how much they spent on ads or SEO, the revenue just wasn’t growing. The problem? Traffic isn’t the goal - conversions are. After diving into their analytics, we found several hidden conversion killers: A complicated checkout process – Too many steps and unnecessary fields were causing visitors to abandon their carts. Lack of trust signals – Customer reviews missing on cart page, unclear shipping and return policies, and missing security badges made potential buyers hesitate. Slow site speeds – A few-second delay was enough to make mobile users bounce before even seeing a product page. Weak calls to action – Generic "Buy Now" buttons weren’t compelling enough to drive action. Instead of just driving more traffic, we optimized their Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategy: ✔ Simplified the checkout process - fewer clicks, faster transactions. ✔ Improved customer testimonials and trust badges for credibility. ✔ Improved page load speeds, cutting bounce rates by 30%. ✔ Revamped CTAs with urgency and clear value propositions. The result? A 28% increase in sales - without spending a dollar more on traffic. More visitors don’t mean more revenue. Better user experience and conversion-focused strategies do. Does your ecommerce site have a traffic problem - or a conversion problem? #EcommerceGrowth #CRO #DigitalMarketing #ConversionOptimization #WebsiteOptimization #AbsoluteWeb

Most marketers don’t know what an insight is. And it shows. We’re drowning in data, trends, and decks of charts. But most of it is useless. Here’s the brutal truth: Data = Numbers on a page. (OK) Observation = “Oat milk sales are up.” (Yawn) Trend = “Plant-based is growing.” (Blind Freddy could see that) Insight = “Shoppers are switching to oat milk because it feels healthier and more sustainable than dairy.” That one sentence? That’s where growth comes from. An insight is not something you read in Nielsen. It’s the sharp “why” behind behaviour. It’s rare, valuable, and worth millions when you get it right. Most marketers confuse data with insight. That’s like confusing a shopping list with a three-course meal. One feeds you, the other doesn’t. And let’s be clear: if your “insight” could be copy-pasted from a LinkedIn carousel with pastel graphics, it’s not an insight. It’s marketing wallpaper. Examples of insights that built brands: Coke Zero Sugar: Saw “diet” was toxic, so reframed the offer. Now worth billions. Dove: Saw women were alienated by beauty ads. Built Real Beauty, and built category leadership. Red Bull: Saw people didn’t want a drink, they wanted an edge. Created a whole new category.   How to actually find a real insight (not the fluff most marketers call one): 👂 Get out of the office. Stop staring at dashboards and start talking to consumers. Go into homes, watch how people shop, sit at the dinner table or go into a few stores. You’ll learn more from one hour in front of a consumer than from 10 PowerPoint decks. 🔍 Look for contradictions. Insights usually hide in tension: “They say they want healthy, but they buy indulgent.” “They say they care about sustainability, but only if the price is right.” That gap is where opportunity lives. 📊 Stop worshipping data. Data tells you what is happening, never why. Treating data like insight is like mistaking the weather forecast for a holiday. 🧩 Connect across culture. Insights don’t come from a single dataset. They come when you combine consumer behaviour with wider cultural shifts. Example: plant-based eating didn’t explode because of soy milk — it rode the wave of climate anxiety + health + foodie culture colliding. 🚦 Test for action. A good “insight” is useless if it doesn’t drive different behaviour. If it doesn’t change your strategy, your comms, or your innovation pipeline, it isn’t an insight, it’s trivia. ✂️ Be ruthless. Kill weak insights. If it’s just “consumers like convenience,” bin it. That’s not an insight, that’s a horoscope. Most marketers stop at “interesting.” The best marketers push to the uncomfortable “why.” That’s where the money is. So let’s see it. 👉 Drop the best consumer or shopper insight you’ve seen in the comments. I’ll call BS on the weak ones.

"We're moving forward with another vendor." Every rep's nightmare sentence. I pressed for details. "Their approach felt more open. We actually knew what we were buying into." That stung. I'd shared: ••• Exhaustive feature documentation ••• Dozens of success stories   ••• Complete pricing breakdowns Where'd I go wrong? Days later, I got access to our competitor's sales process. The difference hit instantly: They didn't preach transparency. They lived it. Their follow-up wasn't an email avalanche. It was one collaborative hub where buyers could: ••• Monitor which stakeholders engaged with what ••• See their exact position in the evaluation journey ••• Find materials curated for their unique pain points ••• Manage internal distribution seamlessly My revelation: I was buried in PDFs. They were cultivating partnership. Next prospect, new approach: I built a shared workspace exposing EVERYTHING: → Which team members on our side viewed their data → Critical docs they'd missed → Realistic implementation expectations → Where we excel AND where we don't The buyer's response: "Finally, someone not playing games." Ink on paper in 10 days. Here's what's real: Today's buyers aren't starved for data. They're starved for authenticity. Yesterday's strategy: Bombard with polished assets that sidestep weaknesses. Tomorrow's strategy: Build transparent environments that tackle doubts directly. Your buyers know when something's off. Even when nothing is. Quit running sales like a shell game. Start running it like a glass house. You with me?

Most outreach tools help you send more messages. But if you look under the hood, volume is rarely the problem. The harder part is giving someone a reason to reply when they have absolutely 𝐧𝐨 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞. The workflow we use is simple: → 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞: Start with people already connected to your market through relevant audiences and LinkedIn conversations, not another cold list of job titles. → 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞: Look at the person, their company, and what they have been discussing recently. A title tells you who they are. Their activity tells you what may matter now. → 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐞: Follow the conversations that matter i. Add something useful when you genuinely have a point to contribute. → 𝐌𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧: Use what you have learned to explain why this conversation makes sense now. If the opening line could be sent to 50 people, it is not ready. → 𝐊𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭: Save the outreach and reply together so the next interaction does not restart from zero. That is the lesson behind Fuzzy AI 🚀: better outreach begins before the message. Which step takes your team the most time?

We talk a lot about content, channels, and campaigns in #demandgen.  However, the most important thing is understanding your customers.  Without that knowledge, you're just guessing. Jumping straight into campaign mode is a big mistake. Even if you already have a file of your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), it's still worth it to double-check for any new trends to understand your audience in real-time.  👉🏾Who are they?   👉🏾What are their (present) frustrations?   👉🏾What keeps them up at night? Understanding these factors changes everything. There are many ways to gather such insights:  👉🏾Using surveys gives you quantitative data. 👉🏾Interviews provide qualitative depth.  👉🏾Social listening (very important) reveals what people are saying online.  👉🏾Competitor analysis shows the overall landscape. Recently, I was working on a campaign for a new product. My assumptions were way off, especially after reviewing recent customer interviews, which revealed a different path. Together with my team, we updated our messaging and saw a massive increase in engagement. To say the least, market research saved the (our) day! #b2bmarketing #ABM #marketingstrategy

Segmentation beats personalization. Personalization is terribly inefficient... (and oftentimes unnecessary outside of highly strategic enterprise selling). Think about the ads that really grab your attention. None of them have your name in them. Or mention podcasts you were interviewed in or posts that you wrote. These ads work because they're segmented based on patterns amongst small-ish groups of people. Outbound should be treated similarly. Pro tip: this approach works WAY better over the phone than via email. The expectation for personalization and quality is much higher in emails than over the phone. Here are a few ideas for segmenting your lists so you don't have to personalize so much: ✅ By region/location If you sell anything brick & mortar, SLED, etc—segment your accounts by geographic region. You really don't have to personalize much when you can: - Name-drop local businesses/organizations - Drop the location This sounds like: "Hi David, we work with Fit & Fashion right down the road in SLU. It's Jason with ________. Ring a bell?" ✅ By tech stack Let's say you sell a tool that enhances Salesforce. Or Jira. Or some other specific tool. Segment your accounts by tech stack. This sounds like: "Hi Katie, we're partnering with engineering teams who wish sandboxes were way easier to set up and use in Zendesk. It's Jason with ________. Got a min?" ✅ By persona Let's say you sell to ecomm solutions to SMB retail business owners. This sounds like: "Hi Tom, we're working with several retailers in the Seattle area. It's Jason with ________. Heard our name tossed around?" (H/T Armand Farrokh) ✅ By trigger This list gets pretty extensive. Hiring, job changes, customer/champion change, M&A, expansion/contraction, promotion, etc This sounds like: "Hi Dave, congrats on the promotion. It's Jason from __________. Was just talking to a new HR leader yesterday who's running into all kinds of complications scaling international hiring. That by chance something you're running into?" ✅ By niche One of my favorites. Take a well-recognized logo like Rippling. You could go after direct competitors, but it's even better to focus on non-competitive products selling to the same personas. This sounds like: "Hi Cierra, we're working with Rippling to help scale their product suite for HR leaders. It's Jason with ________. Thought you might want to hear how they've doubled ACV in the last 6 months. Have a min?" ~~~ Before you think of personalization, start with segmentation. Do the work upfront to avoid having to customize too much. Agree or disagree? We're training entire sales orgs at companies like Shopify, Rippling, Zoom, and many more on how to land more meetings with outbound. Interested in custom training for your team? DM or email me jason [at] outboundsquad.com for more info.

The secret to company success is deep-customer understanding. And no one did it better than Gillette. How? By literally living with their customers and seeing how they use Gillette products. When Gillette wanted to expand to India, they realized that Indians didn't shave the same way as Americans. To understand Indian customers better, one of Gillette's executives, Chip Bergh, asked his team to go to India and live with the customers there. They wanted to observe how people shaved and how it fit into their lives. This concept is called ethnographic market research. One scientist from the UK thought they simply could talk to Indian men living nearby, but Chip said it wouldn't be enough. They needed to see and experience things firsthand. In India, the team discovered that many people in India didn't have access to a big sink with hot running water like in the West. They used a small cup of cold water to shave. This made shaving with regular razors difficult because the small hairs clogged the blades. So, they innovated a razor called the Gillette Guard: it had a single blade with a safety comb to prevent cuts and was easy to rinse. Perfect for Indian customers. This way, they could make razors that people needed and loved. The lesson: The key to unlocking consumer experience lies in understanding the consumer’s needs in-depth. #consumerresearch #customersatisfaction #startups #entrepreneurship

Every company says they listen to customers. But most just hear them. There's a difference. After spending years building feedback loops, here's what I've learned: Feedback isn't about collecting data. It's about creating change. Most companies fail at feedback because: - They send random surveys - They collect scattered feedback - They store insights in silos - They never close the loop The result? Frustrated customers. Missed opportunities. Lost revenue. Here's how to build real feedback loops: 1. Gather feedback intelligently - NPS isn't enough - CSAT tells half the story - One channel never works Instead: - Run targeted post-interaction surveys - Conduct deep-dive customer interviews - Analyze product usage patterns - Monitor support conversations - Build customer advisory boards - Track social mentions 2. Create a single source of truth - Consolidate feedback from everywhere - Tag and categorize insights - Track trends over time - Make it accessible to everyone 3. Turn feedback into action - Prioritize based on impact - Align with business goals - Create clear ownership - Set implementation timelines But here's the most important part: Close the loop. When customers give feedback: - Acknowledge it immediately - Update them on progress - Show them implemented changes - Demonstrate their impact The biggest mistakes I see: Feedback Overload: - Collecting too much data - No clear action plan - Analysis paralysis Biased Collection: - Listening to the loudest voices - Ignoring silent majority - Over-indexing on complaints Slow Response: - Taking months to act - No progress updates - Lost customer trust Remember: Good feedback loops aren't about tools. They're about trust. Every piece of feedback is a customer saying: "I care enough to help you improve." Don't waste that trust. The best companies don't just collect feedback. They turn it into visible change. They show customers their voice matters. They build trust through action. Start small: 1. Pick one feedback channel 2. Create a clear process 3. Act quickly on insights 4. Show results 5. Scale what works Your customers are talking. Are you really listening? More importantly, are you acting? What's your approach to customer feedback? How do you close the loop? ------------------ ▶️ Want to see more content like this and also connect with other CS & SaaS enthusiasts? You should join Tidbits. We do short round-ups a few times a week to help you learn what it takes to be a top-notch customer success professional. Join 1999+ community members! 💥 [link in the comments section]

“Your content isn’t a differentiator—it’s a commodity.” a $19M CMO asked me: “how do we stand out in a market that’s flooded with content?” my response? “stop producing content. start producing original research.” most companies treat thought leadership like a volume game— 📌 repost industry benchmarks 📌 repackage someone else’s blog 📌 react to trending news or LinkedIn takes but the best GTM teams don’t just publish. they run GTM like a research lab. they investigate. original research isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s your content moat. if your brand isn’t backed by insight, you don’t have a POV—you have opinions. if your sales deck relies on only internal stats, you don’t have authority—you have dependency. if your marketing playbook hasn’t been updated with real customer data, you don’t have strategy—you have guesswork. when GTM is fueled by research, it becomes a competitive engine. so what does a research-driven GTM system look like? 1️⃣ predictable demand generation → how do we earn attention with insight? ✅ create data your buyers can’t find anywhere else ✅ partner with analysts, customers, or communities to co-produce insight ✅ promote research findings across product marketing, brand, sales, and PR 🚀 example: Gong → turned sales call data into viral content + trust-building insights OpenView → SaaS benchmarks that power the GTM of hundreds of startups 2️⃣ seamless pipeline conversion → how do we enable buyers with clarity? ✅ use research to frame the problem and build urgency ✅ arm AEs with industry-specific insights that shift conversations ✅ ground messaging in data, not just value props 🚀 example: Figma → published research on collaboration gaps to drive adoption G2 → used category data to educate buyers and accelerate decisions 3️⃣ revenue retention & expansion → how do we keep leading with insight post-sale? ✅ host insight-driven QBRs that prove value ✅ share ongoing trend reports with current customers ✅ co-create case studies and benchmarks based on actual usage 🚀 example: HubSpot → publishes “State of Marketing” to upserve and re-engage Amplitude → shares product analytics benchmarks to deepen use cases final thoughts 📌 if your content doesn’t lead with insight, it won’t land 📌 if your GTM isn’t learning—you’re falling behind 📌 if your sales team can’t teach, they can’t sell GTM isn’t about chasing trends. it’s about building trust. so i’ll ask you: 👉 is your GTM guessing—or is it grounded in original research? let’s discuss 👇 — love, sangram p.s. we have written over 30 original research notes and actively working with leaders like Gainsight ZoomInfo Demandbase PathFactory PartnerStack Qualified. DM Sangram Vajre to learn how to power your GTM with research and insights. #gotomarket #gtm #originalresearch #b2b #marketing

Five years ago, Warburg Pincus LLC invested in BetterCloud and urged us to work on a project to narrow our ideal customer profile (ICP). It's the most impactful thing I've ever done to improve conversion rates, shorten sales cycles, increase deal size and ultimately transform the company. A big mistake many CEOs make is believing their product is for everyone. It’s tempting. More potential customers should mean more sales, right? But in reality, chasing too broad a market drains resources, distracts your team, muddles messaging, confuses your product roadmap, and kills go-to-market efficiency. Being laser-focused on your ICP drives alignment across product, messaging, and the go-to-market motion. When the right prospect engages, they’ll feel like you built it just for them. Anyone who has built a product or service knows that the things a small business needs are very different than what a huge enterprise needs. A company is different from a school. An IT buyer is different from a security buyer, a sales buyer is different from a marketing buyer, a director level decision maker is different than a C level decision maker… but we still believe we can sell to different segments and personas as the same time. The process to define and use your ICP is relatively straightforward but does take time. The larger your business, the more data you have, the more resources you have to crunch that data the more time you should spend to do it as scientifically as possible. The high level steps are: 1. Build a Customer Dataset: Gather all your customer data. Current and churned customers, won and lost opportunities. Enrich it with firmographic, business-specific, and buyer demographic data. 2. Engage Your Team: Your best sales and customer success people hold invaluable insights about your most successful (and worst) customers. 3. Analyze & Identify Pockets of Gold: Identify common attributes of high-performing accounts and avoid the traps of poor-fit customers. 4. Communicate the ICP to the entire company with the “why” behind the attributes that make up an ideal customer.  5. Rework your messaging to appeal to your newly defined ICP and narrow your growth initiatives to be focused only on the accounts that matter.  6. Assign the right ICP accounts to your reps and ensure they’re focused on the right buyer personas. 7. Product Development: Reassess your roadmap to align with the needs of your ICP. You should see impact fast. GTM funnel metrics will improve. Conversion rates should rise, with better leads turning into stronger opportunities. You may not get more leads, but their quality will increase. I’ve been discussing this with many Not Another CEO Podcast guests, so don’t just take my word for it. I wrote a deep dive on how to “Narrow Your ICP and Transform your Company”, with real examples from other companies. You can read the full article here https://lnkd.in/e5EN3XSR