ToB Operations | How can a customer success manager quickly understand the industry characteristics of their customers?

When it comes to consumer customers, how do you begin to understand them? What information do you need to know about them? Why do you need to understand them? This article gives the answers, and I hope it will be helpful to you.

Previously, I talked about ToC, that is, how to operate private domains in the field of consumer customers. If you are in the enterprise service industry and are facing B-end enterprise customers, what should you do? Faced with corporate customers from many industries, how do you digest them?

As an operator in the enterprise service industry, I actually feel that ToB operations are much more difficult than ToC operations, and talent is much more scarce! Why?

First, you need to be familiar with the business of the client industry . After all, professionalism is the foundation of service. However, there are so many client industries, and you need to have a deep understanding of the underlying logic of the business in order to quickly integrate it. It is necessary and even necessary to go to the client industry to do business in person and get results.

Second, you need to be familiar with the B-side business itself , including the corporate customer profile, decision-making chain, and operating methods targeted by the B-side company.

Recently, the position of customer success manager is also a subdivided position in ToB operations. Its essence is the operation of the To B industry. In this article, we will talk about the capabilities required for customer success. Of course, this methodology is applicable to all ToB operations .

Suppose we enter an enterprise service company as an operations officer, what should we do? What should we do first before officially taking over a client?

First of all, the first step in customer operations is to understand them. Understanding them is the basis for subsequent service to them. Otherwise, if customers feel that you do not understand their situation and you provide services blindly, it will be difficult for them to trust you.

So how do you start to understand your customers? What information do you need to know about your customers? There are three main points: industry characteristics, business processes, and key decision chains.

In this section, we will start with understanding the characteristics of the customer's industry. So how do we start to understand the customer? What information do we need to know about the customer? There are three main points: industry characteristics, business processes, and key decision chains.

In this section, we will start by understanding the characteristics of the customer's industry.

1. Why should we understand the characteristics of our customers’ industries?

As a customer success manager, the customers of your company's products may come from all walks of life, such as the financial industry, e-commerce industry, Internet industry, gaming industry, insurance industry... and so on. At work, you cannot just choose the source of customers based on the industries you understand. It is possible that a customer from an industry that is unfamiliar to you may come to you at any time. What should you do?

If you fail to quickly learn the industry knowledge of your client’s industry, it will be difficult to do your job well, and your client will feel that you are not a trustworthy customer success manager.

Because the business processes and business concerns vary for customers in different industries, the solutions provided by the company's products to customers in different industries are also quite different.

Take the example of the company I work for, which makes CRM products. For customers in the Internet industry, we usually pay more attention to customer behavior dynamics and sales funnels, hoping to know at a glance the behavior tracking and conversion status of each customer on the Internet; while for customers in the catering industry, we pay more attention to the operating conditions of offline stores.

In short, understanding the characteristics of the customer's industry is the prerequisite for us to quickly provide solutions to customers. Otherwise, the next step of communication with the customer will be difficult to carry out.

So how do you understand the characteristics of your client’s industry? Here’s a complete process framework.

2. General Process of Industry Analysis

You may have seen various industry analysis models on the Internet, such as PEST analysis, SWOT analysis, etc. Many people are probably confused by various methods before they even start to analyze , because these methods seem to make sense and the workload is not small.

Here, we suggest that you do not blindly analyze, but choose the appropriate method according to your purpose, because different analysis methods have different purposes. For example, investors want to know whether there is a possibility of rapid appreciation; entrepreneurs want to formulate the next market strategy. However, this article is a general process of industry analysis written specifically for the purpose of customer success managers, and it is also a process that the author has personally practiced on the front line.

As analyzed earlier, as a customer success manager, the essence of understanding the characteristics of the client's industry is to better communicate with the client, provide business solutions to the client through the company's product capabilities, and solve business problems of clients in different industries.

The overall process framework is shown in the figure below:

Next, we will explain the contents of the outline in detail:

1. Information learned

(1) Industry definition

Before we actually start searching for information, we should first clarify the definition and classification of the industry, because the definition can help us quickly sort out the goals and scope of our research , and the classification can also help us understand how the industry is further subdivided, and then accurately locate which more subdivided classification the customer's industry belongs to, so that we can search for relevant information more accurately.

Take the financial industry as an example. We searched for the definition of the financial industry in Baidu Encyclopedia (as shown below). It is easy to see that the banking industry, insurance industry, securities industry, leasing industry, etc. are all subdivisions of the financial industry. Then we need to continue searching for these related words and determine the industry the customer is in and which subdivision it belongs to.

In short, understanding the definition of the industry and understanding the more detailed industry types are the basis for our search for industry information. If you start searching without knowing anything at the beginning, the keywords will be too vague, resulting in searching for a lot of irrelevant content, affecting work efficiency.

(2) Market size

Next is the size of the market. From the size of the market, we can see the overall size of the client's industry, which can help us judge the future development potential of the client's business and thus determine our resource investment.

We can directly obtain data on market size from some industry reports. For example, the market size of the online education industry in 2020 was 257.3 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 35.5%. It can be seen that the overall market size is still relatively large.

As for the development potential of the industry, we can analyze the competitive landscape through market concentration, which can also be obtained directly from industry reports. Market concentration, also known as industry concentration rate or market concentration, refers to the comprehensive market share of the top N largest companies in a certain industry's relevant market. Generally, we look at the changes in the market share of the top 5 or top 10 companies in the industry. If they have been rising rapidly in recent years, it means that the market is still unstable and has great development potential.

If the share remains almost unchanged, it means that the industry is already relatively mature and latecomers have little chance. For example, the industry concentration of the online education industry in the figure below shows that CR5=15.2% in 2020, and the value is still growing, indicating that the current concentration is not very high and there is still great potential for development.

In short, understanding the market size of the industry can help us quickly judge the market situation and development potential of the client company. If the development potential is large, we can invest more energy and bring greater returns.

(3) Industry pain points

Next is the most important point for customer success managers to understand, which is the industry pain point. Industry pain points represent the common needs of the entire industry. Because we are trying to help customers find better solutions, the most important thing to understand is the current problems in the customer's business.

Understanding the pain points of the industry helps us understand the potential needs of customers and better propose targeted solutions based on their needs. Industry pain points can be understood through Baidu search or the latest reports on various media websites. You can search for keywords such as "XX industry" + "dilemma" or "XX industry" + "current situation". For example, the article about the dilemma of the catering industry searched on the NetEase News media website in the figure below shows that from January to April 2022, the catering revenue of the entire industry fell by 5.1%, of which April alone fell by 22.7%. It can be said that all businesses in the catering industry are facing similar anxieties.

Of course, after understanding the pain points, the specific solutions still need to be analyzed in conjunction with the product capabilities provided by the company. For example, the marketing enterprise service company where I work, which makes CRM systems, faces the current situation in the catering industry, where it is almost difficult to continue to acquire incremental customers. So we can provide system tools to better retain and activate existing customers, increase the repurchase rate after the epidemic, and thus increase overall revenue.

In short, the pain points of the industry need to be coordinated with the positioning of the company's products to determine whether they can help customers solve common pain points with the company's products. If you know the difficulties and solutions of their industry before contacting customers, customers will think you know them very well.

(4) Benchmark Enterprises

Every industry has more or less some benchmark companies that are at the top, and for the customers you serve, they also care very much about how their competitors in the industry are currently doing, and they also hope to surpass their competitors and become a benchmark in the industry.

Therefore, it is very necessary to understand the benchmark companies in the client's industry. On the one hand, you can have more common topics with your clients. On the other hand, you can learn from the good experiences of representative companies in the industry and apply them to the solutions you provide to your clients. You can also tell your clients with reason and evidence that this is how benchmark companies succeed.

Of course, if the client you serve happens to be the benchmark client in the industry, then it is great. You must take this opportunity to learn from the case of the benchmark client and help the benchmark industry to become better and better as the endorsement company of your company's products. We can directly search the ranking of companies in the industry online, or get this information from some industry information websites, such as the insurance industry ranking below.

(5) Upstream and downstream relationships (optional)

From raw materials to the delivery of a product to consumers, it goes through multiple links and multiple companies, and these companies are in upstream and downstream relationships. The investigation of upstream and downstream relationships depends on whether your company's products and the business of the customers you target are related to upstream and downstream.

For example, the purchasing department needs to find upstream companies to purchase raw materials, and the purchasing business is related to upstream companies. Through the analysis of upstream and downstream, we can have an overall understanding of the industry. On a large scale, we can understand how the entire industry operates in the market. On a small scale, we can analyze the connections and pain points between upstream and downstream businesses, and also dig out business needs and opportunities.

This information can also be directly obtained on some industry websites. Take the upstream and downstream industrial chain map of China's instant retail industry as an example. Assuming that your customer is JD.com, you can see that its upstream is brand owners and its downstream is some logistics companies. It can be seen that the characteristics of its retail business are that there are many types of merchants, a wider range of choices for consumers, and a very broad user group positioning. So taking the CRM company where the author works as an example, we can find out that the business of this type of merchants will have a stronger demand for refined operations in the later stage, and we can come up with some refined operation solutions and talk to customers.

However, for some similar employee management systems, this part may not be very important. Whether to analyze it specifically depends on the customer business of the company's product positioning and whether there is a connection between the upstream and downstream. Of course, it is always beneficial to peek at the layout of the entire industry from a macro perspective.

(6) Business model (optional)

Analyzing the business model or profit model can help us understand the industry’s current monetization methods, their advantages and disadvantages, as well as opportunities.

Of course, whether to analyze the business model also depends on the customer business that your company's products are targeting and whether it is related to marketing realization. For example, the CRM system I work for is a system that helps customers with customer management and automated marketing. It is still necessary to analyze the customer's business model. How to analyze the business model?

In fact, it is very simple. The core is three points: where to get customers? What products to sell to make money? How to make money continuously? For example, the business model of online education includes three core links: customer acquisition, conversion, and retention and repurchase. Customer acquisition is mainly through the release of free and low-priced courses to attract users, and then increase product experience and user stickiness through community operations and trial classes in batches, and finally convert low-priced customers into high-priced customers, and then further retain customers through products and services to achieve continuous repurchase.

The three core indicators that ultimately determine its profitability are: customer acquisition cost, conversion rate, and repurchase rate. Through this link and indicator, we can analyze which link has room for optimization and make corresponding adjustments.

2. Ways to understand

With the development of information technology, it has become very easy to obtain the above information. Here are some common channels:

Conclusion

The above shares how operators in the enterprise service industry, such as customer success managers, should quickly understand the characteristics of an industry . In fact, the secret to quickly understanding is to focus on understanding the information we need most according to our goals, without being greedy for everything. Because in actual work, we face a large number of customer industries, and it is unrealistic to have a very comprehensive understanding of an industry, and there is not much time to wait for you to understand it before serving a customer.

So if you are in a time crunch, give priority to understanding the common pain points of the client's industry and the benchmark cases of the same industry. If you have more time, learn more about the definition and classification of the industry, market size, upstream and downstream relationships, and business models. This will make it easier for you to talk to clients or help them output solutions.

Author: Maowen Private Domain Research Society;

Source: WeChat public account "Mao Wen Private Domain Research Society";