The Outsight™ Revolution: How Visionary Leaders are Flipping the B2B Script

Time for a Quantum Shift

It’s time we shift our thinking about voice-of-customer research. In fact, a new mindset is long overdue. For years we’ve heard a lot about insight. Every company wants insight and many actually have it. But these days we need more than just insight to better serve our customers’ needs and beat our competition. We need more than insight to deliver more compelling products, services and messaging around those offerings. We need more than insight to simplify and amplify our value proposition. We need more than insight to craft our brand experience and deliver on those promises. If you’re wondering what could possibly be beyond insight, I don’t blame you. I’ve worked my entire career to learn just that. Turns out the answer was in plain sight. Just not the sight I was expecting.

Edward deBono is famous for saying that you “can’t look in a new direction by looking harder in the same direction.”  Yet that’s exactly what most companies do when they embark on voice-of-customer research. They get out their spyglass, extend the tubular lens and peer through it. I can hear the company now, saying “Ah, there’s the customer. Let me look more closely at them. Let me study all the details about them. I’ll ask them questions about all the topics we’ve been wondering about. Very interesting. Just what we thought!”  While you might get some insight, it won’t be enough in today’s business world.

Unfortunately, there are two fatal flaws with the above approach. First, all of your competitors are doing the same thing. The days are over when only a few companies do voice-of-customer work. Every company does it. So, you’re not hearing anything special that would allow you to set yourself apart. Second, you’re still observing the customer from your own perspective. You’re holding the spyglass and zooming in from where you are in market.  You’re looking more closely, but still seeing what everyone else sees.

Here's where the mindset shift comes in. It’s a shift in perspective, and maybe a quantum shift. You’re going to take that spyglass and instead of looking through it yourself, you’re going to hand it over to the customer. The customer’s going to turn around and look through the spyglass at you. And when they’re doing it, you’re going to talk with them about what they see. You’re going to ask them questions as wide open as the ocean’s horizon. And you’re going to listen. Not listen for what you care about, but for what they care about. You’re going to capture what they say in their words, the way they say it. You’re going to hear the truth. And what you hear will put you on a path to transformation. What you’re going to hear is called Customer Outsight™. Not our sight, not insight. Outsight.

Over the coming months and years, I am planning to build out the concept of Customer Outsight™ so as many companies as possible can take advantage of its benefits. After all, the more effectively each company serves its customers, the more value we create and the better off we are. I’ll be writing about Customer Outsight™, creating tools, education and building a community of interested “Outsighters.”  Up for an adventure and voyage? We’ll try some things that work and some that don’t. We’ll learn by doing, learn from one another and continuously improve. Bold goal, but let’s make the world a better place than how we found it. Are you in? If so, keep reading.

The Heroic Journey to Customer Outsight™

Make no mistake, finding Customer Outsight is going to be a journey. It won’t happen overnight because there’s learning involved, but your destination is visible so don’t worry, it’s not an endless journey.

Why is it a heroic journey? Throughout history, heroic journeys are characterized by challenges faced along the way. Sometimes these challenges seem insurmountable, but somehow, with creativity, perseverance and sheer will, the hero overcomes these challenges and reaches his or her destination. You might be thinking “look, I’m not Odysseus taking on the cyclops here, we’re talking about voice-of-customer research.”  True, the barriers you’ll face will not be existential. Your life will not be in danger. On the other hand, it won’t be easy. Once you make the mindset shift required to embrace the Customer Outsight principles, you might be a lone voice in the wilderness for a while. Leaders will push for immediate results, salespeople will resist in order to preserve the status quo, and customers themselves won’t understand until they experience the radically different conversations you’re going to have with them. So please, consider yourself a hero going into this process. You’re a superhero working on behalf of your customers, fighting the old ways of doing things, emerging on the other side as an “Outsighter.”  If you want to picture yourself with a cape and cool outfit, holding a spyglass, go for it! God’s Speed, my friend.

The other part of this section’s title uses the term “Business Transformation.”  You’d think that term needs no explanation whatsoever. “4 Stages to Business Transformation? Bring it on. What are the 4 Stages, please tell me now so I can get going on this Hero’s Journey!”  I’m going to go out on a limb and assume when you read the term “Business Transformation” you were thinking about your own business. Am I right? You’re going to learn how to dialogue with customers more effectively in order to sell more stuff, whatever it is you sell. Noble goal and totally understandable. It’s what we’re taught our entire lives. In school growing up we’re encouraged to think like an entrepreneur.  In business, we have sales targets to meet. All of this is valid, and we know that’s never going away.

But with Customer Outsight, the Business Transformation we refer to isn’t ours. It’s our customers.’  Let me say more about this transformation because it’s one of the most important concepts of this process and critical to the mindset shift needed for success. In my experience, there are two types of businesses:  one is a business that wants to make money and figures out how to do it successfully, most often by legitimately providing a product or service of some value to customers. The main objective of this company is to provide a return on investment to its stakeholders and this description applies to about 95% of the companies out there. Some of these companies are very successful and many of them have great insights. But they are still in-sights…and they are still holding the spyglass on the deck of the ship, looking out at the horizon for the next opportunities that will help them grow and be more profitable.

The other type of company is very different. The organization might look similar to the casual observer since they, too, sell a product or service into a given marketplace. But these companies, which may be 5% or less of firms out there now, have their priorities in a different order. Insight Companies, I’ll call them, have their own interests first – even if they know and understand that in order to sell more stuff, they need to serve their customers’ needs. Insight Companies are always looking to transform their own companies; to transform themselves. Outsight Companies have decided to put their customers first. Truly first. The goal of Outsight Companies is to transform their customers’ businesses. They realize that the only reason their customer buys anything from them is to help them with a job they’re doing. Whatever sold to them is a means to an end for them. By definition, we are in business to help and serve our customers in their quest. If we can understand better what our customers are trying to accomplish, and if we can do a better job helping them accomplish it, they’ll win the race they’re running. And, as a result, we’ll sell more, be more profitable, and win the race we’re running.

Do you see and hear the difference? One kind of company – most of them out there, unfortunately – are mostly concerned with themselves and their own survival and growth. But a few of the most amazing companies, led by visionary servant leaders, think about the customers’ challenges and goals first, strive to assist them the best they can, and, as a result, don’t just survive themselves, but thrive.

Outsight Companies have a culture of service that permeates every part of the organization. They attract talent more effectively and retain it more easily. They have better, more open relationships with their own suppliers, they respect their competitors for what they bring to the marketplace, and they contribute more authentically to their communities.

So, it’s “we want to make a lot of money, so we’re going to provide this product or service to do it,” or it’s “we want to help transform our customers’ businesses, so we’ll provide products and services that help them do it…and make a lot of money as a result.”  Profit is either the goal or the result.

Is your current company an Insight Company or an Outsight Company? How about you – right now as you’re reading, listening or watching? Are you an Insighter or an Outsighter? If you’re not an Outsighter right now, do you want to become one…and bring your company along with you? I hope so.

Imagine if we could wave a magic wand and flip the percentages so 95% of businesses are Outsight Companies and only 5% are Insight Companies? What would our economy look like? What would capitalism and democracy look like? Wouldn’t we have a better world in so many ways if everyone got up every morning thinking about how they were going to help someone else succeed?

It is a Heroic Journey. You’ll face a lot of obstacles along the way. But no venture that’s worthwhile is easy, or everyone would have done it already. It’s easier to be an Insight Company. It’s harder to become an Outsight Company. But I’m guessing if you’re still here, you have some internal motivation not to shy away from this challenge. You can be the hero we need. Your team can be the team we need. Your company can be the company we need. And your company can be what your customers need for Business Transformation. Their transformation, not yours. By focusing on your customers’ transformation, you, your team and your company might transform yourselves. But as you start this journey, in order to reach your destination, your mindset needs to be on the customer’s goals, not your own. Success will come. Trust the process. Just take that spyglass you’ve been gripping so tightly in your hand for years, loosen the grip, flip it around, and hand it over to your customers. Take a deep breath. Then, ask them what they see.