What not to do when you ask your market
It is amazing how many companies are prepared to advertise before even considering to listen to their market.
Anybody who has ever received an unwanted gift from someone close to you would know the feeling of “…if only they had asked me “. Yet, this seems to happen so often in the corporate world that it is generally acceptable modus operandi.
Sure, companies do market research, but do they really ask their market. Take the CSi (customer satisfaction index) calls you receive after buying a vehilce or servicing a vehicle. Notice next time how you get asked all the wrong questions. The fact that you had a very bad experience because the sales or service representative was obnoxious and rude features nowhere in the pre-defined questionnaires. In fact, all these questionnaires set out to do is answer a preconceived and assumed idea of what would make the customer happy with no regard of what would actually make the customer happy.
This is one way communication: The company ask the questions based on the issues that they believe would make the customer happy. It is a little like telling your wife she must choose whether she wants a Mercedes or a BMW when actually she preferred a Toyota.
Companies very rarely go to a market with an open minded approach.
What you should do when you ask your market
The question that should be on your agenda when you ask your market is:
“…what would make you happy?”.
It is a simple question, but a challenging question. It is challenging to the asker not the responder. Most people have a clear idea of what their preferences are – what they want and don’t want. The challenge is, to try and build a business model around the collective needs of the individuals in each of your market segments.
The good news
The good news is that there is such as thing as convergence of issues. What does this mean? It means that in every market or sub-market when approached with an open-ended “what would make you happy” question, there are always at least one, but mostly three key issues that repeatedly surface as the most important to that segment.
Every individual may have a diversity of needs and wants, but between one and three of those are in common with other individuals in that sub-segment. Now you’ve hit the jackpot! Not only do you understand exactly what your market want, you have isolated at the most three things around which a suitable business model can be constructed in order to satisfy these needs. It is that simple.
All that is required is dialogue (notice we don’t use the term two-way communication). Dialogue happens when one party communicate, the other listens, integrates and then responds based on what was internalised – the rest is just noise. (With two-way communication a lot of noise can pass in opposite direction without any meaningful communication happening.)
So next time don’t just storm into the market with what you think the market need and want – ask your market.
How do I ask the market?
Fortunately for you, you have come to the right place. Knowstosis specialises in doing what we call specialised information gathering. What does this imply?
The methodology employed for a project such as this can best be described as investigative or journalistic (also referred to as specialised research – think of how Carte Blanche does it and you will know).
This implies an open-minded approach from interviewers with a view of gaining insight into market fundamentals, rather than gathering data from respondents. For this purpose only graduate consultants are used and particularly with an emphasis on employing the journalistic style, these consultants mostly conduct qualitative open-ended interviews, which implies no structured questionnaires or discussion documents ever exist. The aim is to remain focused on the strategic issues toward obtaining the solution rather than gathering potentially meaningless information.
Knowstosis aims at gaining insight into the aspects defined in the scope as opposed to mirroring aimless market information. We integrate all information and report back on a market view as we as a company see it. We also formulate our recommendations based on this view as opposed to trying to stay neutral. In this way, our process is actually transformed to industry specific consulting based on sound market knowledge.
In principle three common techniques are employed:
- Open-ended personal interviews conducted by graduate consultants
- Telephonic interviews conducted by graduate consultants (often where personal interviews are not possible or allowed)
- Desktop research – where required to gain market knowledge before interviewing