Is customer knowledge the ultimate competitive advantage in B2B?

The post-pandemic upheaval in B2B buyer behavior, the explosion in the amount of data to be collected, and the more or less pronounced eviction of the salesperson from the purchasing process (outside industry). This is the triptych that makes customer knowledge an absolute strategic priority for decision-makers.

What is "customer knowledge"?

Customer knowledge, or Customer Knowledgerefers to all the information a company has on its customers and, by deduction or extrapolation, on its target, from atomic data (data whose decomposition has no meaning or interest) from B2C transactions to the large pools of data collected throughout the longer, more complex B2B sales cycles.

By extension, the term "customer knowledge" refers to the process of identifying, collecting, analyzing and interpreting this data to better understand customers' needs, preferences, expectations, challenges and aspirations, in order torefine the value proposition in the broadest sense. Customer insight cannot be limited to a subjective and fragmented understanding of customers developed by a few decision-makers. It must benefit from an operationalization framework accessible to all stakeholders to inform decision-making at tactical and operational levels.

Only 29% of companies practice successful customer knowledge

De facto, all organizations practice a more or less advanced and conscious form of customer knowledge. On the other hand, success stories are relatively rare in B2B, as the customer portfolio is less substantial than in B2C, with by definition a smaller pool of first-hand data.

A study by Marketing Charts documents the mixed results of customer knowledge as practiced by B2B companies:

• Only 29% of B2B companies believe that their customer knowledge process " helps them significantly to identify and share market insights ".
• Only 23% of B2B companies use customer knowledge to refine buyer personas and guide decision-making.
• Only 18% of companies use a form of customer knowledge that enables them to plan personalized action at each stage of the purchasing process.

How customer knowledge has become a decisive competitive advantage in B2B

Gaps in customer knowledge are all the more problematic as we witness the emergence of a new post-pandemic B2B buyer persona. A landmark study by Accenture has identified its new characteristics:

• Increasingly AUTONOMOUS, carrying out an average of 57% of the buying process before initiating a first contact with a company representative
• Increasingly CAREFUL, rarely responding to generic cold calls and favoring collegial decision-making. According to Gartner, the B2B purchasing decision now involves 6 to 10 decision-makers, not counting the influencers of the decision. This plurality argues in favor of holistic customer knowledge, looking at both the "individual" customer and the buying group... a performance that requires a formalized and integrated data processing process, but also interviews with loyal customers (and/or ex-customers?) to deepen with qualitative research.
• Increasingly SOCIAL : 58% of B2B buyers use social networks rather than search engines to advance their sales journey. This shift reinforces the importance of Thought Leadership on LinkedIn, Social Selling and data collection on social media.
• Increasingly DEMANDING, as they expect the same level of personalized service they find in their daily lives as B2C consumers.

Customer knowledge has never been so decisive in a context of upheaval in purchasing behavior. The explosion in the amount of data to be collected as a result of the digitalization of the business also supports this view.