“…When I hear marketing people and IT professionals talking about IT requirements in such totally different ways, whether all the the hype, spinning and time-shifting actually gets in the way of sellers being able to sell, and customers recognising that some developments represent genuine opportunities to do things better.

‘Big Data changes EVERYTHING’ vs ‘Hadoop? For my 200-customer biz?’

Record, don’t write. Being able to get every word from the conversation is step number one to maximizing value, so when you interview a reference customer, record the conversation rather than relying on note-taking. I find this a common, but not universal, practice. Having to write out notes means slowing the conversation, giving your customer less time to offer her thoughts. Even though you may not be aware of it, you may miss something else the customer said while you are jotting things down.

Examine the transcript for more content ideas. You interviewed your customer with a particular purpose in mind, but take time after to think critically about what they’ve told you. Keep a database (even if it’s just an Excel spreadsheet) of ideas you have based on reviewing the interview. You’ll probably have at least several more: testimonial quotes, blog post ideas, more customer contacts, even new product benefits. Enter any ideas you have as content tags: who could follow up, how the material could be repurposed.

Use the ideas in your editorial process. Initiate a regular review of this database, and schedule items for further work, defer or remove them. If you already maintain an editorial calendar these items can be scheduled in. With appropriate tagging, they can also be slotted in to a backlog or used as needed when preparing materials for a sales call, campaign, reference call, blog content, or where they fit into the overall customer reference program.

Cappuchino, anyone?

This is confirmed in daily life by the “early adopter” curve and other studies of how groundbreaking products are adopted by just a few leaders (outliers), while most of the customer prospect pool hangs back. I’m one of the hangers-back, myself. I waited for a while to see what friends and associates were doing with their early iPhones before getting a later (and greater) model myself.

Case studies and success stories about technical inventions that are crafted to show customers using them and reaping the product benefits will help get more prospects over the adoption hurdle by letting them more easily imagine themselves using it as well. In such cases, a bit more emphasis on illustrating customer use, in a variety of situations even, may go a long way to making it easier for others to wade into the customer pool.

Seen on a stroll down 24th Street this weekend…