One of the best ways to better understand your B2B customer is to embed yourself within their organization. Getting access to people's time can be difficult, but with a compelling reason, you can gain access to a lot of employees' time. Here are some ways to go about it.
- The first way is via old fashioned networking straight to the high ranking person
- The second way is via networking with someone else in that organization who may be able to introduce you to the next person, then the next person. It may take 4-5 introductions to get to the right person. This approach is far more time consuming, but will gain you credibility throughout teams and the org structure.
- In some cases you may have to violate good technique in discovery research and share what you are working on to get access. Do what you can with what access you have.
Whichever approach you take, be sure to remember that the #1 requirement is to have contact with a high ranking person who can get you time with others in the organization.
Also, consider that an alternate approach to getting to know the in's and out's of how an organization operates is to more literally embed yourself - perhaps by conducting a research study or consulting project for the company as a means of getting your foot in the door to gain trust.
This article builds on content developed by the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship for MIT's Orbit Knowledgebase and is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.