B2B Telephone

back with a “5 minute Friday” audio edition

key concepts I cover in this snippet:

1. “phone as a friend” as a critical concept in B2B (vs consumer) products

2. the different tactics used to provide value to prospects (demos, PoCs, etc)

3. reference-able customers being the highest-leverage tactic of all

4. why prospects play the telephone game with references

5. the importance of reference-able customers to a land & expand GTM motion

6. what product teams can do to partner with GTM to manufacture champions

You can discuss these ideas further with me in the subscriber chat in the Substack app.

I’d love to hear from listeners about their experiences with customer references - please chime in via comments👇. And if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing.

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further reading / references

• I’ve elaborated on some well-known B2B SaaS truisms before, including fit changing the status quo, user vs IT pull, and change management as a barrier

• teaching users your product is all about reducing the effort required by the user to get value OR increasing the literacy level of your target user base

• a common hurdle when introducing a new B2B solution is change management to prevent “new language, old thoughts”

• Read more about how “B2B buyers trust what their peers say more than other sources of information” and other big shifts in B2B buying here

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childish drawing / interpretation