Can your current and prospective customers tell the difference between your products and the competitions’ products?

How do your products and services differ from the competition?  Are you really sure?

When was the last time you asked your customers and prospective customers that question?

Too many companies have either developed ‘Me too’ products and services or they have failed to understand the needs and perceptions of the prospective and current customer well enough to highlight the important differences in their promotional efforts.

Businesses struggle because they develop products lacking differentiation, and many businesses fail to clearly communicate the unique value their products and services offer the customer.

Take some time, sit down and then compare and contrast your products with the competition.  Do it internally with your team, then bring in some customers – prospective, current and former.

Yes, it takes some time and your schedule is jammed – but what could really be more important than making certain that your products and services are being developed and promoted properly?

Differentiating your products and services from the competition so that you address unmet needs while delivering unique value will have a tremendous and positive impact on your sales.

Your audience evolves – and so do their needs, wants, expectations and perceptions.

Your competition evolves – they offer new, improved products and services at new prices through a wider array of distribution channels.  And they change their promotional efforts (maybe a little too frequently…)

The economy has its ups and downs.  The government changes laws that can positively and/or negatively impact your business.

Technology changes at lightening speed – and sometimes produces something that can help or hurt your business.

So how does your business stay on top of all this change and determine next steps?  As a matter of fact, how can you stay ahead of the curve so you aren’t reacting all the time – sometimes you could even lead change?

Too many businesses are focused on internal matters – getting through today’s meetings or shipping today’s orders or making sure whatever is on the list gets done.

And they miss what’s going on around them – and that weakens the impact of what they are focused on completing.

How does your business stay on top of what’s going on around you – and how do you incorporate into your strategic action plan so that you can work smarter and achieve more with the resources you have on hand?

Hint: You need a process for collecting, analyzing and determining next steps.

Recommended Reading: Seth Godin’s Post “Resilience and the Incredible Power of Slow Change“

One of the most important factors in improving marketing and sales performance is understanding the needs, wants, perception and motivations of your target audience.  And in order to improve, you need to ask, gather, analyze, modify and test – so here’s a few hints that will help you ask the right questions…

1. Clearly define the purpose of your survey

Clarity is key.  Good surveys have focused objectives that are easily understood. Spend time up front to identify, in writing:

Though these questions may seem rather obvious, you should go through the process Sounds obvious, but we have seen plenty of surveys where a few minutes of planning could have made the difference between receiving quality responses (responses that are useful as inputs to decisions) or un–interpretable data.

Imagine your goal is to identify ways to improve your product in order to deliver greater value to your customers.  If you were to ask ‘How can we improve our product?’, you would most likely get answers like ‘Make it easier’ .  But you can’t really act on that statement  with confidence – you would need an answer like ‘Color code cable and plus for easier assembly’.

Spending time identifying the objective might have helped the survey creators determine:

Your success will come from advanced planning and stepping back from your survey and looking at it as if you were the respondent.  (Ask what type of information you need, then look at the question and give some thought to whether or not the question will get you what you need.)

2. Respect the Respondent’s Time

Keep your survey short – under 10 minutes is a good rule of thumb for a as typical survey of customers, shorter for those that don’t have a relationship established with your business.  Fail to follow this hint and watch people abandon the survey before completion – leaving you without the quantity of information you need.

3. Focus on a single issue – don’t over do it.

Focus on a single objective and don’t fall try to accomplish too much.  Make sure each of your questions is focused on helping to meet your stated objective. Don’t toss in ‘nice to have’ questions that don’t directly provide data to help you meet your objectives.

4. Follow the KISS Principle

Try to make your questions as specific and direct as possible. As mentioned earlier, ask the respondent to rank the importance of “Color coded cables and sockets for faster, easier assembly” rather than “How can we improve the assembly process?”

4. Use closed ended rather than open ended questions whenever possible.

Closed ended questions give respondents specific choices (e.g. Yes or No), making it easier to analyze results. Examples include yes/no, multiple choice or rating scale. Open–ended questions allow people to answer a question in their own words.

Open–ended questions are great supplemental questions and may provide useful qualitative information and insights. However, for collating and analysis purposes, close–ended questions are preferable.

5. Be consistent

Rating scales are a great way to measure and compare sets of variables. If you elect to use rating scales (e.g. from 1 – 5) keep it consistent throughout the survey. Use the same number of points on the scale and make sure meanings of high and low stay consistent throughout the survey.  Switching your rating scales around will confuse survey takers, which will lead to untrustworthy responses.

6. Be logical

Explain your reason for requesting their input, then start with broader questions and become more specific over time.  You will want to request demographic data and ask any sensitive questions at the end (unless you are using this information to screen out survey participants).

7. Pre–test your survey

This is often times overlooked or ignored – but it can save you a great deal of time, money, energy and sanity.  Invite a small group of people to take the survey in order to see if they have any problems or issues.  Use their feedback to modify the survey and, if necessary, test again.  Otherwise, once is enough and you can launch your survey to the larger audience.

8. Invite and remind

When launching an on-line survey, remember to invite  respondents and then, if possible, remind those that haven’t responded after an appropriate period of time.

9. Consider your audience

If your audience is business buyers, you might want to limit your invitation and survey to weekdays – but consumers may be more receptive to weekend surveys.

10. Incentives can increase response rates

Depending upon the type of survey and survey audience, offering an incentive is usually very effective at improving response rates. People like the idea of getting something for their time.  Research has shown that incentives typically boost response rates by 50% on average.

Just remember to keep the incentive appropriate  – overly large incentives can lead to undesirable behavior such as misrepresenting themselves.

?