Do you really know your buyer, or is your marketing and sales team guessing? Understanding your buyer is the key to winning new customers. Yet, many sales, marketing, and product teams focus on selling their solutions rather than truly grasping what their prospects want, need, and think. This is where buyer insight becomes invaluable.
In this blog, we’ll explore why understanding your next customer is critical, the methods you can use to gain deep buyer insights, and how services like Voice of the Buyer can help you align your messaging, strategy, and product development with real-world buyer expectations. Viewpoint Analysis is a 'Technology Matchmaker' and as we sit between the buyers and sellers of IT, we know this area and why buyer insight is so important.
Why Buyer Insight Matters
Before someone becomes a customer, they are a prospect with a specific set of needs, concerns, and decision-making processes. All too often we make assumptions about each of these points. That isn't because the marketing, sales, or product teams are lazy, it's usually because they don't have any easy mechanism to speak to customers. If you work in sales, you know how difficult it is to get hold of a customer - so for the marketing and product teams, it's sometimes just out of reach.
Understanding the buyer allows businesses to:
Craft targeted marketing messages that resonate with real buyer pain points
Align sales strategies with how buyers prefer to research and purchase
Develop products and services that meet market demands
Improve win rates by addressing objections and uncertainties earlier
Learn how they are perceived compared to their competitors
and so much more.
The companies that invest in buyer research outperform those that rely solely on assumptions. Without genuine buyer insight, businesses risk wasting time, resources, and budget on ineffective campaigns and sales efforts.
Methods to Understand Your Next Customer
To develop a deeper understanding of your prospective buyers, businesses should leverage a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods. At Viewpoint Analysis, we use a selection of different mechanisms depending on what our client really needs to understand. Some good examples include:
1. Voice of the Buyer 360
A really great way of understanding the buyer is to look at the 360-degree viewpoint - every possible angle that might bring us insights, and when put together, can build the full picture. With a 360-degree viewpoint we look at conducting:
Interviews with lost opportunities - why did they not select your product or service, and why did they choose a competitor?
Interviews with won opportunities - what made the difference? What did they see in your product or service that made it an easy decision?
Interviews with tenured customers - why do they love working with your product or service? Why are they with you? What does your solution offer them that means they are so happy?
Interviews with prospective customers - let's speak to an ICP that doesn't have any relationship with you. Do they know of your company? Do they have a need for what you do? How do they buy? How should you target them?
Interviews with your partners - what do they hear when they represent your business?
Interviews with your new business sales team - what do they hear when they knock on doors and what resonates?
Interviews with your Customer Success or Support team - what's missing? What's not working? What gets the most complaints or levels of frustration?
2. Win/Loss Analysis
By systematically analyzing why deals were won or lost, businesses can pinpoint key factors influencing buyer decisions. This helps refine messaging, pricing strategies, and sales approaches to improve future conversion rates. Although we believe these are best included in a 360-degree viewpoint, they can just standalone and many companies conduct win/loss analysis just like that.
3. Buyer Panels & Direct Engagement
Engaging with a Voice of the Buyer Panel allows companies to regularly connect with key decision-makers, gaining real-time insights into market trends, customer concerns, and competitive landscapes. What is a Voice of the Buyer Panel? It is a hand-picked group of your buyer community - and ideally, they are not current customers. It's an opportunity to speak directly to a group of people who are your ideal customers and ask them unvarnished questions that you really need answers to.
4. Customer Options Research
Understanding how buyers explore and compare their options gives businesses an edge. What alternative solutions are they considering? What messaging resonates most? Answering these questions can help shape a more compelling go-to-market approach.
How to Use Buyer Insights in Your Business
Understanding your buyers is just the first step. The real impact comes when you apply these insights across your organization. For example:
Marketing: Tailor your content, messaging, and campaigns to reflect what your buyers truly care about.
Sales: Adjust sales pitches and outreach based on buyer objections, priorities, and concerns.
Product Development: Use feedback to refine features, usability, and overall customer experience.
Product Marketing: How do customers use the product and what buttons should you press when you market to future prospects?
Customer Success: Identify potential churn risks early and proactively address them to improve retention.
Common Buyer Insight Mistakes to Avoid
While gathering buyer insights is crucial, many companies make mistakes that limit their effectiveness. Avoid these common pitfalls:
Relying only on internal assumptions: Without direct feedback, strategies can become misaligned with real buyer expectations.
Not updating insights regularly: Buyer needs evolve, so periodic research is essential to stay relevant. We recommend these types of buyer insight activities to take place at least once per year, but for some elements (like win/loss analysis) they might take place on each deal.
Failing to act on insights: Insights are only valuable if they lead to strategic actions and improvements.
Ignoring lost deals: Understanding why a prospect chose a competitor can be just as valuable as understanding why you won a deal.
The Competitive Advantage of Buyer Insight
Companies that prioritize buyer insight gain a competitive advantage by:
Enhancing lead generation with messaging that speaks directly to buyer needs
Reducing churn by improving customer satisfaction and renewal rates
Making data-driven decisions for sales and product development
Outpacing competitors with agile, market-aligned strategies
Start Understanding Your Next Customer Today
Whether you’re looking to refine your sales pitch, improve marketing effectiveness, or develop products that truly meet market demand, buyer insight is the foundation of success. Viewpoint Analysis specializes in Voice of the Buyer research, helping businesses gain actionable intelligence to win more deals and build stronger customer relationships.
By investing in buyer research, businesses can position themselves not just as vendors, but as trusted partners who understand their customers’ needs before they even become customers.