Customer Discovery in B2B

Strategyzer coaches then helped the teams explore ways to improve, extend, and evolve the existing business model. The teams explored a variety of options with each idea representing a future growth opportunity. Having identified 5-6 ideas that were ready for testing, the question became; how do we test these new directions for growth with customers? Gore had experience in product innovation and was used to focusing on technology, science, and data. This customer focused methodology represented a different approach that raised a host of practical questions for them. How do we get meetings and calls set up with customers? How can we get access to customers in our B2B manufacturing industry? With guidance from Strategyzer Innovation Coaches the Gore teams ended up holding many customer interviews.

Most folks expect that you can't do customer discovery with B2B businesses really effectively. We found that’s not true. In many cases, we got the interview sessions with higher level contacts in some of these organizations because we explained that we were doing customer discovery, and weren’t there to sell anything. We found it pretty exciting.”

David Liss

Global Business Leader WL Gore

Discovering new growth engines

In the past it took Gore years to know if they had a winning idea. By running many ideas in parallel with an innovation sprint they were able to gather feedback in weeks. With specific guidance and support they made a tremendous amount of progress in a short time. David observed, “We went through 36 customer discovery interviews over that eight weeks. We made many modifications to our Business Model Canvas. I think it was 315 changes. We had six pivots along the way--changes in the direction that we were investigating.”

Having that pace, that tick-tock of the clock and the urgency to get things tested, get feedback back from customers and actually boil that back into our model and assessment, that I think was what was most important for us.”

David Liss

Global Business Leader WL Gore

Presenting new growth opportunities

At the conclusion of the testing phase, Strategyzer guided the teams at Gore on how to present their findings. The teams presented the sprint results through evidence based pitch presentations. These findings and this innovation sprint ended up being a springboard for Gore to continue testing and exploring new growth ideas. The outcomes they shared with their leadership team were focused on four distinct areas.

1. Ways to better align their products with customers.
2. New customer segments and markets that they could target with their existing product lineup.
3. A new manufacturing process
4. An updated and improved go-to-market strategy more focused on the needs of customers

This approach provides deep insight into what customers are looking for and how you can evolve your business model to serve your customers better. It provides a very clear objective and expansive view to new ways to address those needs and create value. In our case, we identified new approaches that we will implement to increase our growth potential.”

David Liss

Global Business Leader WL Gore