Sign up for this free Research Buy-In email course now, get out of your own way, and start getting more people excited about VOC

You might think the only way to get buy-in on qualitative research is to quit your job or fire your clients and find a team that “gets it”

But if you believe that your colleagues are (for the most part) smart people.

And if you believe that (for the most part) your product has the potential to help people.

And if you believe (for the most part) that your marketing, done right, could get your company meaningful outcomes.

You don’t have to leave your company. You need to change your approach.

Here's how I know:

A few years ago I ran a Jobs To Be Done study, identified the job stories, & shared the output with the CEO who hired me.

"I love this! Present it in all hands." I did, and everyone there seemed to "love" it, too. Emojis in the Zoom chat, DMs after. The works.

And then... nothing happened. After that project presentation, few people consulted the recordings, the transcripts, or the artifacts. The research didn't make its way into other decision-making centers outside of the ones I was already in.

It's hard enough to get buy-in on doing user research. Or doing Jobs To Be Done research. Or researching your ICP.

It's even harder to get buy-in on applying your findings.

I was a product marketer at the time. My charter was to improve onboarding and activation metrics and drive adoption of new features. My data was telling me that the product team was shipping features no one wanted while ignoring Grand Canyon-sized growth opportunities. But the JTBD research findings didn’t take hold in the product department. So after my presentation, I still found myself pushing a boulder up a hill pitching product features no one wanted.

The soul-crushing blow of doing all that work, getting all that data, only for nothing to change.

At first I grumbled. Ooooooh how I grumbled.

"No one is listening to me."

"These ding dongs just don't get it."

"Man, maybe this research isn't as important as I thought, maybe I got bad advice."

I didn’t know what to do differently, so I ended up leaving the company.

I worked with another team, then another, then another - the same pattern kept playing out.

When I saw that research was a hard sell in multiple teams, I started to think seriously about the role *I* was playing in this frustrating outcome.

I knew that other people were good at mobilizing VOC around their organizations.

I knew that other people were able to ship copy that used raw VOC, build onboarding around customer Jobs To Be Done, ship features for a single ICP.

I knew that other people were turning their ability to mobilize their understanding of a customer into high-paying career paths.

So I had to ask myself: what’s more likely?

Is it more likely that every person I work with is a doofus who doesn’t get it and other teams are naturally good at using VOC?

Or is it more likely that most teams have some people who DO understand qualitative data and other people who don’t understand its value?

Is it more likely that everyone around me is a dumb dumb?

Or is it more likely that I am not approaching buy-in for customer research in a way that gets me the alignment, rigor, and brilliant strategic approach that I know my team is capable of?

Until one day I couldn’t ignore it:

The only common variable in my failed attempts to get buy-in on research was me.

Everything about how researchers/product people/growth folks approach buy-in was wrong.

And when I finally realized the right way to go about getting buy-in, everything changed.

I figured out how to get product and marketing to stop silently seething over who had the most “correct” understanding of their ICP.

I figured out how to get “out of touch” execs to understand why we should or shouldn’t pursue one strategy or another.

I figured out how to get “hardened engineers” to spend an hour reading VOC every day so I’m not the only one pushing back on product features no one wants.

And the first step to making it all happen: breaking down my invisible beliefs and faulty understandings of the work I was actually doing.

Your invisible beliefs about buy-in and VOC are holding you back…but they don’t have to any longer

Your faulty beliefs around getting buy-in on customer research be the thing holding you back from hitting your growth KPIs?

I’ve created a free email course to help anyone in B2B SaaS who understands the value of VOC, but struggles to get buy-in, finally get your (and your customers') voices heard.

I’ll send you an email a day outlining the invisible beliefs silently holding you back (without you even realizing it) from getting other people to care about and use customer research buy-in on incorporating customer-centric strategies at work - plus the tactics I use to thwart each belief before it gets in my way.

1. Not realizing that introducing JTBD/VOC/CLG is a change management project
2. Not knowing what you mean by “buy-in” or what you want from “change”
3. Not understanding that your colleagues might not make decisions the same way you do
4. Thinking you have to betray your values to get good at organizational politics
5. Not understanding your colleagues level of awareness with respect to research

Sign up for this free Research Buy-In email course now, get out of your own way, and start getting more people excited about VOC before you know it