February 20th, 2013
Every day… you get up, go to the office, collect some data for your clients, interpret that data and give them some feedback to help them do their jobs better. Yeah, a little over-simplified, but you get my drift.
So, here’s the question… are you doing that same thing for yourself? Particularly with your marketing & sales as a way to help you do it better?
August 28th, 2012
The SWOT Analysis (Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats) has been around for a long time as a way to take a critical look at your own company. Strengths and weaknesses are internally focused… opportunities and threats are for looking outward.
What you do is think about your own firm in terms of each of the four categories: “What are our strengths?”, “What are our weaknesses?” and so on. In those answers could be ideas for helping you to move your company forward. Not a bad process.
But even though it’s “old school,” with a few tweaks, the SWOT Analysis can continue to play a valuable role in helping to look deep inside your firm to find your competitive advantage(s) and market position to help drive future success.
June 14th, 2012
We all want the research firms that employ us to be the best they can be… to provide top-notch service, use the most current methodologies and deliver the deepest insights for our clients. So, how do we get there?
For many of us, we start with post-project client satisfaction surveys of some kind… for that immediate feedback on the work we just completed. And you should continue to do that. It’s good and valuable information – from clients who LIKE you.
Where you have an even bigger opportunity to learn is from those clients who DON’T like you… your ex-clients – those firms who used to bring their projects to you, but who, for whatever reason, no longer do business with you. These firms can be an amazing source of insight about your firm, its services and much more.
May 7th, 2012
The idea that the market research industry is dying has been filling up LinkedIn groups, conference sessions and online discussion boards for a while now, due largely to the emergence of new technology and the concept of DIY research. Then a few weeks ago, Google announced its low-cost surveying tool… and the conversations accelerated once again.
The fact is, as technology advances, industries change… would you want to be in the newspaper business today? Own a bookstore? Produce vinyl records? Continue Reading…
April 9th, 2012
At the risk of preaching to the choir, I’m gonna tell this story…
Because you’re in the market research industry, I’m sure you’re doing some sort of client satisfaction study following each project. Perhaps some combination of quant and qual… maybe with a little Net Promoter Score thrown in for good measure. Then you track it and trend it over time to make sure you keep getting better. Great! Keep it up.
What I have found over the years, however, is that even if you get a decent percentage of your client satisfaction surveys returned, often they don’t include very much “actionable” feedback. The clients will tell you if they liked or didn’t like your work, maybe give you some vague specifics (e.g. “Our Project Manager wasn’t very responsive.”), but that’s about it. Not a lot to work with, is there?
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