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by bkfh 1214 days ago
> The consequence of that is interviewing users in B2B is almost useless, and taking decisions from what users tell you is a severe error and in most cases the path to stagnation.

Who would come up with such a nonsense? Regardless of B2C or B2B, knowing what your users need solved is crucial, irrelevant who eventually the buyer is (user vs Manager)

1 comments

The issue with B2B is that the decision makers are not the users of the product. You need to convince the decision makers first, as otherwise you'll not sell. Hopefully, the decision makers value user requirements as well.
In my experience with B2B, the higher-ups don't really know what's actually needed by the company. Just one step up the ladder and important operational details are lost.

This is why we strive to talk to the actual users as well, to understand what the company really needs.

Some companies are worse than others, but I've got many examples of how the team manager, and everyone above, was unaware of essential procedures performed by users, sometimes even on a daily basis. Without which operations would grind to a halt.

Similarly I also have many examples of companies where the higher-ups selected a competitor without considering their users, and it all ending in tears as the product couldn't do what was actually needed for daily operations. Most of them struggle for a while to make it work, before pulling the plug and coming to us.