Listening to Customers: The Secret Weapon for B2B Business Growth with Eli Portnoy

In this episode of The Grow Fast Podcast, host Mark Shriner sits down with Eli Portnoy, a seasoned entrepreneur who has founded multiple successful startups, to explore the critical importance of customer feedback in B2B businesses. Portnoy shares his journey from working at Amazon to launching innovative companies like Think Near and Sense 360, ultimately leading to the creation of Back Engine, a platform designed to help businesses better understand and act on customer insights.

The conversation delves deep into the challenges of scaling B2B companies and the common pitfalls of misinterpreting customer needs. Portnoy reveals a startling statistic that 85% of sales team explanations for lost deals are incorrect, highlighting the critical need for a more systematic approach to gathering and analyzing customer feedback. Through his experiences, he illustrates how companies often build the wrong solutions by fixating on specific feature requests instead of understanding the underlying problems customers are trying to solve.

Drawing from a survey of 150 SaaS founders, Portnoy demonstrates a clear correlation between mature customer feedback practices and business performance. He offers practical advice for companies looking to improve their customer listening skills, including assigning a feedback owner, ensuring the CEO regularly talks to customers, and implementing a weekly company-wide feedback summary. The episode provides a compelling blueprint for businesses seeking to transform their approach to customer insights and drive meaningful growth.

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