Listen hard: You are not alone.

Our market has changed so much that it’s almost unrecognisable.

So I wanted to share these three points from our Exec Pulse Survey we carried out for us.

The 100 respondents were from companies around the world in listed, mid-sized and early-stage companies.

Here we go:

1 – You are not alone.

Execs are finding sales harder due to slowed decision-making cycles and the economic environment.

If you’re doing well right now, you’re doing really well.

2 – Almost all execs admit their companies don’t know their clients well enough. This is a real problem but rarely addresses well enough.

Yet many felt better research into their competitors would help.

3 – Execs want to know they can trust people and they want more of a value-led approach to creating new opportunities.

So what?

We carry out customer and competitor research all the time.

And in the customer research, we ask customers what they want, what they don’t want and where the opportunities to do better.

In almost all cases, we find opportunities to win more business and deliver more value.

The issue is execs are looking over their shoulders too much and not enough clients really need.

So yeah, get the insight on competitors, but not without the client insights…

What does that mean for your tactics?

Rather than just sending messages in your marketing, you need to be listening to what customers need.

You need to be flexible enough to run research and a greater number of tests so you can pivot faster.

Data delivers business.

So takeaways:

1 – You’re not alone
2 – Listen harder do better research and test with your customers
3 – Focus on trust