Introduction

To truly drive value for your customers, it's crucial to have a deep understanding of their business landscape. This involves knowing their business model, revenue streams, unique challenges, and priorities. By comprehensively understanding your customers, you can tailor your strategies to align with their goals, ensuring that your product or service becomes an integral part of their success. In this article, we will explore methods for gaining insights into your customers' business landscape, setting the stage for our subsequent discussions on demonstrating the value of your features to freemium customers.

Why does this matter?

Understanding your customers' business landscape is important for several reasons:

• Tailored strategies: Insight into your customers' business models allows you to tailor your approaches to meet their specific needs and goals.

• Enhanced relationships: Demonstrating a deep understanding of your customers' businesses builds trust and strengthens relationships.

• Informed decision-making: With comprehensive knowledge of your customers' landscapes, you can make better, data-driven decisions to support their success.

How to get started

To effectively understand your customer's business landscape, follow these steps:

Step 1: Conduct thorough research

1. Gather internal information: Review internal records such as CRM data, past interactions, support tickets, and sales notes to get a baseline understanding of the customer.

2. Perform external research: Use online resources to gather additional information. Look at their website, follow their LinkedIn updates, read industry news, and set up Google alerts for significant developments.

Step 2: Engage with key stakeholders

1. Schedule discovery meetings: Arrange meetings with key stakeholders within the customer's organization to discuss their business model, revenue streams, and strategic priorities.

2. Ask insightful questions: Focus on open-ended questions that reveal deeper insights into their challenges, goals, and expectations.

Step 3: Analyze and document findings

1. Create comprehensive profiles: Compile the gathered information into detailed customer profiles, highlighting key business aspects and priorities.

2. Use visual aids: Create visual representations such as business model canvases or SWOT analyses to better understand and communicate your findings.

Step 4: Tailor your strategy

1. Align goals with customer priorities: Ensure that your goals and strategies are aligned with the customer's business objectives.

2. Develop a customized action plan: Create a plan that addresses the specific needs and challenges of the customer, leveraging the insights gathered.

Gainsight features you'll need

• Timeline: To document research activities and key insights.

• CTAs: To automate follow-ups and ensure consistent engagement.

• Playbooks: To guide your team through the process of understanding the customer's business landscape.

What’s next?

With a deep understanding of your customers' business landscapes, you are now prepared to effectively demonstrate the value of your features, particularly to freemium customers. Our next article will explore how to show freemium customers the value they receive from the features they use, driving conversions and enhancing product adoption.

Further reading and inspiration

Pulse Video: Strategies for Delivering Value Throughout the Entire Customer Journey