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AtricleZine - Should A Small Business Bother With Market Research?
And so it goes, another post about customer service. I was thinking the other day. Why is it that we all seem to get poor customer service more often then we’d like? From what I can tell, there are three main reasons.First. When most of us receive service that is less than what we deserve, we tend not to say anything about it. I’m not saying that you need to ream out the person at the KFC counter or always ask to “see your manager.” Mostly we just take it and move on instead of constructively letting the person right in front of you know what it is they could improve upon.Second. Let’s say you have received less than stellar service. And you, unlike many, let it be known what was or wasn’t done. And, the response is poorly handled and/or nothing is done. But, you keep going back to that store or one of its other locations.Third. You don’t receive good service and you don’t tell any
Second, you have to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish by doing the research, before you start it. It doesn't make sense to approach it any other way - you’ll end up wasting your time and money, if you do. You’re also more likely to offend, or at least annoy, those that you are researching; don't make a customer, or anyone else go through a process that you know might frustrate, or annoy you, unless you have already determined why you need the information and what you are going to do with it.
Finally, research has
Reach and frequency are terms generally used when planning advertising campaigns. However, the concept of reach and frequency applies to any promotional activity you undertake: direct mail, direct selling, and even networking.Reach is the number of people you touch with your marketing message or the number of people that are exposed to your message. Frequency is the number of times you touch each person with your message. In a world of unlimited resources you would obviously maximize both reach and frequency. However, since most of us live in the world of limited resources we must often make decisions to sacrifice reach for frequency or vice versa.For example, an air conditioning repair service who has decided to do a direct mail piece has to decide whether to mail the entire Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex once or to mail a quarter of the Metroplex four times. An attorney who receives many of her
But, let's not make a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be. Sure, you can buy market research, or pay someone a lot of money to collect it specifically for your business; or, you can use a little imagination and do a few simple things - often with the information that you already have - that will get you a lot closer to where you need to be than where you are now! Research can be surveys and polls and focus groups - the formal stuff that is usually time consuming and always expensive. Research can also be as simple as keeping your eyes and ears open, but in a very focused, organized, and disciplined way. There are things going on in your business every day and just having a "feel" for their impact is not sufficient. Taking the time to capture and use this information can yield huge dividends over time.
Let's first come at this issue from the standpoint of what information a small business really needs and then circle back to how it can get the information and whether it's worth the effort. There are three areas that any business needs to know as much about as it possibly can - what its customers want, how much these customers are worth, and how the business' competition is trying to prevent it from accomplishing its objectives. There is no rocket science here - this is pretty straight forward stuff. Obviously, the more any business can learn about how it actually creates value for its customers and how much those customers are worth to the business, the better it can manage its own internal processes. Knowing what the competition really is - in other words where else your customers can buy exactly what you sell, what else they can purchase instead of what you sell, and what might drive them to just skip the purchase altogether (whether it's from you, or someone else) - is just common sense.
There are several fundamentals for having an effective research process. First, make collecting market research a way of life in your business - in other words, do it all the time. Getting good at collecting information only comes when you make a commitment to it - when you first tell yourself and then imprint on everyone you work with that "this company" puts a premium on finding and using the information that is going to tell us what we need to know. It doesn't have to be complex, or difficult, or time consuming; but, there does need to be a mentality in the business, where everyone involved recognizes and understands that the company puts a premium on collecting and using actionable information that helps everyone make better decisions.
Second, you have to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish by doing the research, before you start it. It doesn't make sense to approach it any other way - you’ll end up wasting your time and money, if you do. You’re also more likely to offend, or at least annoy, those that you are researching; don't make a customer, or anyone else go through a process that you know might frustrate, or annoy you, unless you have already determined why you need the information and what you are going to do with it.
Finally, research has
If you own a franchise or are considering one, often arbitration levels the playing field for the franchisee in a dispute with a big and powerful franchisor. Recently, I was contacted by a franchisee who had bought a franchise from a company Franchisor, whose Founder was the President of the IFA International Franchise Association.His dispute did not seem to be viable in his favor and indeed he himself felt that he had no chance against the bigger franchisor. He assumed that the arbitration clause would prevent him from winning his case. Actually, it could very well help him and let me tell you why. In litigation he would run out of money completely.Indeed in court, I would tend to agree that a former IFA President would be a tough case, especially considering the access to incredible fire power and the best of breed attorneys in that industry sector and unfortunately this really puts the question ba
Let's first come at this issue from the standpoint of what information a small business really needs and then circle back to how it can get the information and whether it's worth the effort. There are three areas that any business needs to know as much about as it possibly can - what its customers want, how much these customers are worth, and how the business' competition is trying to prevent it from accomplishing its objectives. There is no rocket science here - this is pretty straight forward stuff. Obviously, the more any business can learn about how it actually creates value for its customers and how much those customers are worth to the business, the better it can manage its own internal processes. Knowing what the competition really is - in other words where else your customers can buy exactly what you sell, what else they can purchase instead of what you sell, and what might drive them to just skip the purchase altogether (whether it's from you, or someone else) - is just common sense.
There are several fundamentals for having an effective research process. First, make collecting market research a way of life in your business - in other words, do it all the time. Getting good at collecting information only comes when you make a commitment to it - when you first tell yourself and then imprint on everyone you work with that "this company" puts a premium on finding and using the information that is going to tell us what we need to know. It doesn't have to be complex, or difficult, or time consuming; but, there does need to be a mentality in the business, where everyone involved recognizes and understands that the company puts a premium on collecting and using actionable information that helps everyone make better decisions.
Second, you have to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish by doing the research, before you start it. It doesn't make sense to approach it any other way - you’ll end up wasting your time and money, if you do. You’re also more likely to offend, or at least annoy, those that you are researching; don't make a customer, or anyone else go through a process that you know might frustrate, or annoy you, unless you have already determined why you need the information and what you are going to do with it.
Finally, research has
There is no question that in recent years energy costs have skyrocketed. And the price of burning fossil fuels is more than just financial: environmentalists the world over continually warn about the dangers of using non-renewable energy sources that pollute the environment when burned, global warming being just one of the major topics frequently discussed.With the cold winter months looming ahead, energy consumers have been looking for new ways to heat their homes that are easily renewed, will not pollute the environment, and will save them money. Enter stove corn, a new source of heat energy that involves burning shelled corn in specially-designed furnaces.To heat a typical Midwestern, 2,000-square-foot home, the heating costs per season will typically be around $880, excluding the initial $2,000 cost of the special stove required for burning stove corn. By comparison, heating the same home using n
There are several fundamentals for having an effective research process. First, make collecting market research a way of life in your business - in other words, do it all the time. Getting good at collecting information only comes when you make a commitment to it - when you first tell yourself and then imprint on everyone you work with that "this company" puts a premium on finding and using the information that is going to tell us what we need to know. It doesn't have to be complex, or difficult, or time consuming; but, there does need to be a mentality in the business, where everyone involved recognizes and understands that the company puts a premium on collecting and using actionable information that helps everyone make better decisions.
Second, you have to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish by doing the research, before you start it. It doesn't make sense to approach it any other way - you’ll end up wasting your time and money, if you do. You’re also more likely to offend, or at least annoy, those that you are researching; don't make a customer, or anyone else go through a process that you know might frustrate, or annoy you, unless you have already determined why you need the information and what you are going to do with it.
Finally, research has
A lot of big inventions were discovered " by chance ". Let's take the case of the penicillin. In 1928 the scholar Alexander Fleming discovers it after to have forgotten a culture of mushrooms in his laboratory. He notices that a mildew that had developed (Penicillium notatum) killed all the bacteria around the mushrooms. 17 years later he shared the Nobel price of medicine.Another example, the discovery of Velcro. While taking a walk in the mountains, Georges De Mestrallet, engineer, is irritated by the small balls of a plant that hang themselves to its clothing and to the hairs of his dog. The tiny hooks of the seeds of bardane that it observes to the microscope give him the idea of the closing Velcro.Velcro has become a multinational corporation.There are hundreds of examples of this type as the history of the Archimedes principle discovered in his bath, the apple o
There are several fundamentals for having an effective research process. First, make collecting market research a way of life in your business - in other words, do it all the time. Getting good at collecting information only comes when you make a commitment to it - when you first tell yourself and then imprint on everyone you work with that "this company" puts a premium on finding and using the information that is going to tell us what we need to know. It doesn't have to be complex, or difficult, or time consuming; but, there does need to be a mentality in the business, where everyone involved recognizes and understands that the company puts a premium on collecting and using actionable information that helps everyone make better decisions.
Second, you have to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish by doing the research, before you start it. It doesn't make sense to approach it any other way - you’ll end up wasting your time and money, if you do. You’re also more likely to offend, or at least annoy, those that you are researching; don't make a customer, or anyone else go through a process that you know might frustrate, or annoy you, unless you have already determined why you need the information and what you are going to do with it.
Finally, research has
There’s an old curse “may you have many employees.” For many business owners, handling employee matters is the top of their list for problems. So, what’s a small business owner, who is already wearing too many hats, supposed to do to avoid employee problems?Employees are supposed to help you get more accomplished, not drain your energy. In fact, employee innovations (inventions and process improvements) are the source of competitive advantage and profitability – your success depends on leveraging them.How you handle new hires sets the stage for employees to become high performers and contribute to the success of your business.The first step is to select the right person for the job. It’s almost always better to “hire for attitude” and “train for skills.” You can’t fix a bad attitude, but you can fix a skill deficiency. You want to hire the person with the good attitude.Don't hi
Second, you have to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish by doing the research, before you start it. It doesn't make sense to approach it any other way - you’ll end up wasting your time and money, if you do. You’re also more likely to offend, or at least annoy, those that you are researching; don't make a customer, or anyone else go through a process that you know might frustrate, or annoy you, unless you have already determined why you need the information and what you are going to do with it.
Finally, research has to be combined with analysis. Sometimes the answer that you get to a question isn't what you expect and really should be leading you to ask more questions, or different ones, rather than jump in and take action based on what you have already discovered. Go back to what you were trying to get out of the research in the first place; unless what you have learned from the research helps you take meaningful steps to improve, the challenge is to find a better way to ask another follow-up question, not act prematurely.
Now, let’s get back to actually doing the "market research" - collecting the information that will help you make better decisions and take the right actions. Most businesses already have a huge amount of information on hand that they probably don't use as effectively as they could. Every day you have internal transactions that generate sales receipts, delivery orders, charge slips and shipping transactions, inventory trends etc; make sure you are pulling that information together in a deliberate, intentional, and meaningful way - again to answer the specific research questions that you identified at the beginning of this process. Customers give you feedback every day; why not be proactive in determining what you want to learn from them, rather than just trying to respond to what they ask of you.
Identify single pieces of information that you can obtain over time in an unobtrusive way and that you can "aggregate" to answer some of your specific, strategic questions. Look for this information one piece at a time - birth announcements, people moving to a new home, things people want, or do. This is a game of inches. You don't have to collect all of this information at once; you collect the data one piece at a time, add it together and think about it, and turn it into actionable information that will help you run your business more effectively.
Most important, train your employees to always ask the "right" questions when they talk to anyone outside the company – in other words, the questions that you want them to ask and that fit into the overall approach that you have for collecting information. Make sure they understand the strategy behind what you are asking them to do. Build this into their performance plans and make their performance rating partly contingent on getting answers to your questions. Help them to collect this information in a "conversational" way that is unobtrusive to customers. One of the keys to good market research is for people to never suspect that's what you're doing; help your employees understand that you never want the "target" of your research to go through anything that you wouldn't want to go through yourself.
Finally, think outside of the box;
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