Bob London, founder and CEO of Chief Listening Officers, helps B2B companies develop marketing strategies by tuning in to their customers’ challenges and priorities. We sat down with Bob to discuss how vendors can capture the customer’s voice and put it to work in marketing and sales.   When did you realize the value in listening to customers? Over the past 20 years, I have worked with a lot of B2B technology companies as a marketing executive and outsourced CMO. When these companies would share their marketing and sales strategies with me, many of them were very confident that they knew what was important to their audience. But once I began asking more diagnostic questions, it became very clear that they were simply speculating on what their customers needed, and that their assumptions matched the products that they’d built. About six years ago, the pattern became clear: Companies that were more curious and wanted to know what the world looked like from the customer’s perspective were growing. And the companies that just plodded along, guessing or assuming what’s important to customers, were plateauing. That’s when I decided to develop and promote a more customer-focused listening approach for B2B companies. I … Continue reading Strategy Spotlight: How to become your own Chief Listening Officer