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The quest for the Holy Grail - ask the right questions!

After conducting hundreds of market research studies and asking thousands of questions, we have reached the conclusion that there is no such thing as incorrect questions, only irrelevant ones. That is, questions that may give interesting snippets of information, but don’t result in insight that leads to action.

Fundamentally market research should serve only one goal: to provide information for organisations to take the decisions and actions that will make a difference to their future development.

The challenge of course, is deciding which questions to ask! Here are a series of steps that should help put you on track.

1. Less is more. Don’t be lulled into the common mistake of ‘ask everything’ and something useful shall emerge! In the long run you’ll end up with having to spend hours filtering and analysing data, only some of which will be valuable. Take the time up front to plan and think through what you need to achieve. The result will be fewer, but far more meaningful questions.

2. Anticipate actions. If you discover that 70% of your prospects buy from your primary competitor because they offer an online customer portal, are you happy with the 30% who are buying from you? Are you willing and able to provide the same level of service to meet your competitor head on? If not, what else can you do? If you discover that only 30% of your customers rate your service as excellent and 50% as ‘good’, what will you do with that information? It takes time and soul searching to anticipate the answers you may get to your questions, but if you fail to think your responses through, or are not willing or able to take action when you have the answers, you are simply wasting your time and money.

3. KISS (Keep it short and simple). It’s been said many times before, but make sure your questions get to the heart of actions that will make a difference to your organisation. It’s pointless knowing that your service or product no longer meets the needs of the marketplace, unless you plan to do something about it. By focussing on the questions that will make a difference you’ll avoid being frozen into inactivity because of too much information.

4. Start with the important things first. What’s your greatest opportunity for growth within your organisation today? Is it recapturing lost customers, adding new products or services, entering new markets? Whatever it is, focus on that first!

5. Economic realities. If you discover that you’re losing business because your sales people are too slow and that they will need a new CRM system to improve their responsiveness, there’s no point in collecting this information, if your organisation doesn’t have the budget to invest in a new IT solution.

The more you know about your customers and prospects, the better you’ll be at identifying where that knowledge could lead to action. Try the following exercise to plan the key questions for your next project:

1. What do you need to know that would have the greatest impact on your business? If you know the answer, what question do you need to ask?

2. What are the potential answers that you might get from the question?

3. What three actions could you afford to take to the answers you’ve identified?

4. Get an associate to re-phrase / re-write the questions

5. Get another associate to answer the newly worded questions

6. Write down the three actions that you can afford to take from this new list.

7. Repeat this process with other associates until you are crystal clear about the questions that you need to ask and what actions you could take to make a real difference.

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Search our Article Bank

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Keywords:
Category: Any Category Market Research SectorsMarketing Research ServicesMarketing Research Subjects