Ashish: We often forget that we are dealing with people and selling into organizations. Therefore, it is imperative that we earn their trust because trust is what triggers action. I am Ashish Bagai and I’m the VP of Strategy and Business Operations & Marketing here at nanopay.

Ashish: Over the years, I think we’ve seen a major shift towards being customer-centric, however, mainly the business to consumer space. Unfortunately, the same cannot be claimed consistently across B2B firms. According to many sources, I think only 15 to 20% of B2B companies are truly customer-centric. And what I mean by that is where the customer experience is deeply ingrained in the company culture. What we at nanopay have been finding recently is that we are more successful when we have a deep domain expertise of our clients, and not just the clients and their businesses versus offering a generic payment solution. And given the abundance of choice these days and the inherent lack of customer loyalty, businesses have got to understand their customers at a much deeper level. So table stakes elements such as price or functional elements such as cost reduction or even revenue growth, they’re great places to start. However, understanding the motivations or the frustrations of the people behind the corporation is what I believe truly creates the trust required to take action.

Ashish: So we’re doing a few things. I think the top five for me are first spending time with our customers and not just at the executive level, I think at various levels of the organization. I think second, involving them in product development and what we call co-creation when we can. Third, hiring people with specific domain expertise, so potentially people from our client firms. And then fourth, embedding that in our values. One of the values is around people, so really empowering the people behind the payment. And fifth is about metrics. It’s not just focusing on product metrics, but actually focusing on customer metrics such as acquisition costs, engagement levels, NPS, things like that.

Ashish: You can get as scientific as you want with customers, but at the heart of it all is trust. Creating and maintaining trust is at the heart of every sale. And I think it’s even more important in the B2B world.