How to remind your B2B2C sales team that end-users matter

Without generating value for end-users, there would be no contracts to sign and invoices to send out.

Once again, I begin with a hypothetical. Imagine that your B2B2C company has become slave to their enterprise contracts, and upselling features at any cost is the be all and end all of business models.

Your team, in charge of product design, is employed as a conveyor belt design production facility. Features get sold by sales and account management, and several weeks later the news reaches you. By that time, you are already on a deadline to deliver the interface design so that devs can implement it. Because, you see, the client is waiting for what they were promised.

This way of working results in two important things. First, invoices get sent out and paid, money is in the bank. Second, customers are happy with their purchase. That is, until they ask for insights into how said feature has impacted the business case of the overall application. And discover that it hasn’t.

Having your enterprise customer invest tens of thousands of euros, then spending a hefty amount in the form of design and development, only to fail in making any significant impact… Well that’s just bad business.

Luckily, working this way is not sustainable in the long run. At some point, your company’s leadership realizes the shortsightedness of this product development approach and starts looking for answers. And once your organization is aware a problem exists, it is much easier to push through a change in process.

This is where your knowledge of UX comes in. User experience design is all about process.

So make a case that two main things need to change. First, make your sales team aware of your product roadmap, or in case there isn’t one, reshuffle your sales process to include subject matter experts from the product team earlier on, before a sale is made. This will prevent any misalignment between the objectives of the customer and the product and will let your team develop an actual product and not a series of projects.

And second, make it known that in order to design products that result in a positive business case, your leadership should be interested what end-users have to say, not just the clients paying your bill. In the B2B2C value chain, clients only sign up for your SaaS product if there is a valid, profitable business case. The foundations of which happen to be in the value the product generates to consumers.

Once these two points are made, and there is buy-in from your leadership, follow the well-established product design methodologies. Design Thinking processes, Google’s design sprints and regular discovery sessions with end-users are your best friends.

And last but not least, make your contributions visible enough to minimize chances of relapse.