We’ve written before about the importance of conducting research on your target audience.
But what specifically should you ask them? What kinds of questions produce insights you can actually use?
Two Ways to Do Research
Let me begin by briefly describing the two main ways to conduct this research.
First are phone interviews. we consider these the gold standard because they allow the interviewer the latitude to follow up and dig deeper. They also encourage open-ended answers at every turn. Overall, the answers are richer, more nuanced and chock full of valuable insights. A skilled interviewer can also note a respondent’s tone—are they angry, happy, evasive or noncommittal?—providing additional context to an answer. An experienced interviewer will put the person at ease, making the experience more like a conversation than an exam.
Second are online surveys. Surveys have the advantage of being automated and highly structured, making the data faster and easier to compile. So they can be an efficient way to collect information from a large group of people. Surveys can serve up both multiple choice and open-ended questions. However, people are less likely to provide long, detailed answers, and there is no mechanism to ask follow-up questions.
Many studies employ both techniques or a hybrid approach, allowing researchers to reach a large sample at a reasonable cost while capturing the detail and shades of meaning you can only get in live interviews.
5 Key Lines of Questioning
There are many useful questions you can ask in a study, but we want to focus on five really important ones. These are actually categories of questions, as you can approach them from multiple angles.
1. Who are your true competitors?
Most firms think they know whom they compete against. But when they ask their clients this question they usually discover a very different competitive ecosystem than they expected. If you don’t know your true competitors, you are at risk of being poorly differentiated, offering the wrong mix of services and setting your prices too high or low.
What to ask: When you were selected, who else did your clients consider? What did they like about those firms?
2. How and where do they learn about the kinds of problems you solve?
Thought leadership—or Visible Expertise®—is one of the most important ways a firm can drive interest in, and loyalty to, your firm. But to gain traction, you have to write and speak to the right people in the places they look for expertise like yours. And where are those? Research can provide answers.
What to ask: What business publications and websites do they read? What industry experts do they follow (and where)? What events do they attend?
3. How do they select a firm like yours?
Buyers don’t make large purchases on a whim. They are usually looking for specific things, as well as signals that a firm will be a good fit.
What to ask: What were their selection criteria? Why did they choose you over competitors?
4. What are their biggest business challenges?
Most firms want to play a meaningful part in their clients’ success. By identifying their salient business challenges, you can understand where and how you are relevant. You can also learn if you need to adjust your service to become more helpful and deliver more value.
What to ask: What are their top business challenges? How relevant are your services to addressing those challenges?
5. Would they recommend you?
Since Fred Reichheld first introduced the concept of Net Promoter Score* in 2003, companies of all types have used this single question to measure customer loyalty. It is a useful tool any professional services firm can use to gauge overall client experience.
What to ask: How likely (on a 0–10 scale) are they likely to recommend you?
Who Should Conduct the Research
While you may be tempted to conduct research like this yourself, that approach has significant drawbacks. The biggest problem is that your clients are unlikely to be open and honest about their concerns. They have built a relationship with you, which they don’t want to jeopardize. Some clients simply don’t want to hurt your feelings. As a result, they are likely to withhold some of their most valuable insights.
Another reason you might want to reconsider making the calls yourself is time. At Hinge, we do research like this every week for our clients, so we have a lot of hands-on experience. Each research project involves several steps:
- Survey design and interview guides
- Drawing up a list of people to interview or survey and reaching out to ask if they would like to participate
- Conducting the interviews and/or surveys and documenting the responses
- Compiling, coding and analyzing the data
- Distilling key findings into a research report
- Walking the client through key findings, explaining how and why they are relevant and how they can use them
This process is rigorous, and it takes many hours to do the planning, conduct the research and make sense of the data. If you take shortcuts, you are going to miss critical information or, worse, draw incorrect conclusions.
The last reason is lack of experience. It takes skill to design a valid questionnaire that doesn’t accidentally introduce bias. Coaxing information from a respondent isn’t always easy, either—to recognize when there is more to learn, and to keep digging until the answer is fully uncovered. It also requires a feel for the data to determine which responses to roll up together and which to keep separate. And it takes real skill to analyze the data and derive a practical set of takeaways.
Rather than try to bootstrap this, consider outsourcing the research to a qualified research firm or consultant. It’s important, however, that they know your industry and have experience conducting phone interviews with C-suite executives or senior public officials and community leaders.
Most high-growth professional services firms research their audience. Isn’t it about time you had this competitive advantage, too?
*Net Promoter Score is a registered trademark of Bain & Company.
Related: Marketing To Survive in Tough Times