Let me get straight to the point here and ask you: When was the last time you surveyed your clients? Every business owner I meet tells me they have never conducted a survey. Or if they have, their version of a survey consists of asking their clients a brief question after a purchase is made for a product or service.
A typical question everyone asks their clients is “Are you satisfied with your service/purchase?” Answer: Yes or No. And …that is where it stops for most business owners. Although this IS something, I believe these types of questions fall well short and don’t allow you to dig deep and truly understand your customers.
In my opinion, doing surveys correctly where you can gain A LOT of information about your customers’ feelings, will put you well in front of your competitors – the chances are they are not doing these properly either. Why is it important to understand your customers’ feelings? Well, EMOTIONS are the real drivers of motivation.
Did you realise that 75% of your customers buying decisions are made based on emotions and then justified with logic? This is why it’s important to do customer surveys!
Here are my suggestions on what type of questions you can ask your customers today:
1. If you could wave a magic wand, and get any result when it comes to _____________ (fitness, dating, whatever the topic you have chosen), what would that result be
2. What are your biggest challenges when it comes to achieving this result?
3. What have you tried so far when it comes to achieving this result?
4. What would it mean to you if you achieved this result? How would it change your life?
5. What would it mean if another year went by and you didn’t achieve this result?
These questions will not only reveal your customers true feelings about your product or service, they will also help you:
- Identify what is missing in your existing product offer and help you improve it
- Develop content for your inbound marketing activities such as blog posts for the next 12 months
- Improve the content for your sales calls, direct mail letters, social media platforms
- Create new products which will help double your revenue
- They will help you to be very specific with targeting your audience, which in turn, will help you minimise the cost to acquire customers. In other words, you will be better at finding and attracting the right customers without spending a lot of money on Facebook and Google advertising
- You will be able to improve copywriting for your website, and start converting more traffic into leads and customers
- And my favourite one is they will help you build an automated sales funnel (a gold mine!)
As digital marketing takes over the world and your competition gets savvy, being good at finding out the deepest desires and frustrations of your customers is going to be the way forward for any business who is looking to do things a bit differently.
You don’t have to take my word for it! Steve Jobs famously stated at the launch of the very first iPhone: “Get closer than ever to your customers, so close that you tell them what they need well before they realise it for themselves”
He didn’t invent the iPhone because customers told him that’s what they wanted! He listened, observed, tested, listened, observed some more and then created a product that changed the world.
It’s your turn to change the world now. You can hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn and tell me what you’ve discovered.
