You already know your customers and so don’t need to do research….right? Not necessarily.

Below Kate uses her many years of quantitative research experience to identify the core market research and related reflections from the National Minority Business Council’s (NMBC) 8th Annual Women’s Business Leadership Conference in New York. The focus is on how to understand your customers internally and/or externally.

To grow your organisation you need to know your staff, customers, and clients in these 7 ways:

1. Using a social media strategy? You will need to identify when the people you want reading your social media updates are online. If it is blocked at their workplace or they are not online at certain times of the day, it is much more valuable updating your online profile when it is convenient for them (especially on Twitter) or they will simply not see it (recent survey of 1.2 bill tweets on Sysomos.com found that only 29% generate a reaction http://trib.co/ajQqld). By taking the time to identify your tribe’s online accessibility, you will also make sure you can develop greater social bonds with them by being available and ready to respond to questions and/or suggestions when they have time.
2. Focusing on a particular segment of the population? Do you know their profile? Have you looked at their demographics, psychographics, geographic, other segmentations important to your business or organisation? While amazingly simple, knowing your target market will make it a lot easier to actually reach them. There are many tools online you can use, but one of the easiest methods is to ask them directly with a survey.
3. Do you know your tribes’ lifetime value? Retention of current clients while expanding your brand and introducing new people to your tribe is a fairly generic business tactic. By knowing your tribes’ lifetime value however, you can plug your motivation to even out the 80/20 rule for customers and income, and ensure you retain the lifeblood of your business. The 80/20 rule relates to 20% of your database often providing 80% of your income.
4. Where are you in you sales cycle? Knowing beforehand the quiet periods your business will go through is vital to keeping your bottom line in the black. Having these periods clearly defined means that in traditional quiet times, you can prepare a list of options to see you through. Things like focusing more on areas not affected by the quiet time (maybe in international markets), or by adjusting your staffing levels, you can make a huge difference.
5. Is your business culture undermining the outcomes you desire? If you want your business’ internal cultural to develop into something to be proud of, ensuring that your staff understand your target is a good first step. Talking vaguely about customer service, community interaction or long term relationships can get drowned out by a push for more profits at all cost. By rewarding behavior that violates ethical standards, or creating an organisational environment that encourages separate standards at work and home, you will be less likely to reach the internal culture you desire.
6. Afraid of the answer you might get before you ask the question? Fear is one of those things that can both create negative issues and stop your potential from moving forward. I’ve regularly heard people, especially business owners, not getting feedback from their customers because they’re afraid of what they hear. How is that fear stopping the growth of your business?
7. Who should you ask how to improve your business? When you are looking to develop your business, the experts that know how to increase sales, and provide more satisfaction to your customers are……… your customers. Try asking them “What would you like to see?”,”What is one thing we could do differently?”,”How could we improve?”,or “What should we stop doing?”. Answers to any one of these questions will fill your business development calendar.

By no means an exhaustive list, but they were the top 7 that I got from this event, and each one of them definitely offers a good prompt to check you’re covered . Too often we’re stopped by number 6 to get to number 7. So rather than “I don’t need to do research because I already know my customers”, setup a feedback cycle and ask you tribe. Let them help you help them.

Valerie Khoo talks about getting a journalist’s attention in your media release. Valerie reinforced the value of doing your own research well.

Here are three key quotes from Valerie Khoo:

“Statistics are your friend”

“Use quotes from your customers”

“Use your own database”

She provided an example for getting the press’ attention, where an accounting firm calculated the proportion of their clients that needed adjustments to their tax return – adjustments that the firm were able to make to maximise their client’s return. Because the media release included a statistic, the media were drawn to the release and able to create a news story from it. Even though the firm didn’t mention how many people they included in their research and didn’t hide that it was their database that they were reporting on.

Conducting a well designed survey on your own database can give you powerful statistics that you can then use in your own media release to gain exposure for your business.

Why not start now?!

Yet another article in the February 2008 Edition of the Harvard Business Review sparked my interest. This article talked about how Doctors and business leaders make mistakes which can have large ramifications.

The benefit of top down meetings.

The article explains how Doctors have team meetings with everyone from the top down to talk about cases and how this doesn’t generally happen in business. It goes on to say that in particular, business leaders don’t allow their team to challenge their decisions and don’t ask the opinion of those below them enough.

This interested me because I have never run my business like that. We have Planning Expeditions every 6 months that are designed specifically for my team to challenge the decisions I have made and to discuss what we need to do differently for the business to grow. It is probably why a recently leaving staff member suggested we started a group for previous staff (see last week’s post).

Your staff have a unique view of your business that you can’t see and won’t hear about unless you ask them. Inviting your staff to be involved in your business strategy is invaluable, both in the short and longer term, regardless of their experience.

I have always told my staff that they are my long term marketing plan. They work for me largely while they are at university and would like an understanding of research, but don’t want careers in the research sector. They have full lives of which their work at Tribe Research is only one element. So, being intelligent and ambitious, they leave and work elsewhere full time, but, it won’t be long before they are in a position when they think: my organisation needs to know their tribe better and I know just the place to go.

So, I ask you, why don’t businesses operate like medical institutions in that way? What are we scared of?

Another great article in the February 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review (p21) is Understanding Opposition.

Are you in a Blue Ocean?

One of our Planning Expeditions was based on Blue Ocean Strategy (W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, Harvard Business School Press, 2005) and we discussed its relevance for us. We identified that we are a Blue Ocean in Market and Social research, like Cirque du Soleil is a Blue Ocean in relation to circuses, because we are focused on raising awareness of our purpose too – understanding your tribe as a key business strategy for small business.

Why don’t SMEs value doing quantitative research to know their tribe?

• I think one reason is a perceived price barrier.
• I think another is a lack of resources (time and money).
• I think it may also involve a lack of understanding of the benefits of research for small business growth and improving this understanding is our focus.

Our competition largely isn’t Market and Social research companies, but coaches, workshops and consultants in other sectors who SMEs already know to be involved in small business growth.

What about Market Research though? SMEs are notorious for not doing Market Research once they have done the initial research to get their business going. They are opponents because they don’t understand its ongoing value for growing businesses.

The HBR article uses the example of two soft drink companies competing to put a vending machine into a school. The opponent to installing the vending machine isn’t the decision on what is a better soft drink, but the opposition from parents who don’t want soft drink in their school. It is this opponent group that the soft drink company should be addressing.

Once you’ve recognised your opponent, the next step is deciding the best way to approach opponents. The HBR article goes on to say that observing political behaviour is a better way to adopt skills for approaching opponents:

1. Who is on the other side of the table, and why?
2. What is that side’s ultimate goal?
3. How can it be met with your help?

These are interesting insights for dealing with oppositions, but also for developing a business in a Blue Ocean.

I’ve thought about coaches, workshops and consultants as competitors but I haven’t defined SMEs as opponents until now. It is a great way to define a new Tribal Group and focus attention on real opponents to growth in our industry – the way people think about research – and an interesting perspective on interacting with opponents to a Blue Ocean business’ core philosophy.

On page 23 Michael L Porter and Forest L Reinhardt say:

“A company needs to understand the emissions it causes its business partners to produce, as well as those it generate itself: Both types are important targets for reduction.”

For a while now, I have been an advocate of businesses improving their understanding of their relationships with their suppliers. So many businesses undertake customer/client and staff satisfaction research, but miss out on improving their understanding of their suppliers. As cash flow is one of the main ways that a small growing business can fall over, understanding and improving their relationships with suppliers is critical. If one of your key suppliers is changing their focus, producing in an environmentally damaging way or not aligned with your philosophy then these aspects could significantly impact your business through a change in quality, timeliness of delivery, service, or decreased customer/client satisfaction from an increased desire for environmentally sustainable suppliers themselves.

I suggest business leaders take an active stance on this by getting feedback from their suppliers either formally or informally. You can then assess whether they are the right supplier for you, and if they are, then you can use in your marketing that this is one of the selection criteria for you in selecting a supplier.