Phone a friend?

The value of trusted client perspectives on your business can’t be understated and it’s surprisingly easy to do. So why don’t more do so?

I’ve seen many companies, when working on a new business plan or growth strategy, reference nearly all the intellectual content internally. In other words, they trudge off to some retreat destination, lock themselves in a room for a few hours, and hopefully come up with a bunch of ‘new’ ideas for growing their business. Occasionally they might get one of those corporate facilitators to help keep them stay awake during the lock up but too often that sees one person’s views imposed on an all too receptive group, hungry for ‘fresh’ thinking.

But how do you really expect to get fresh thinking when you confine your search for inspiration to the same people you’ve been working with all year, and when you’ve neglected to ask some views of the most important people in your business: your clients.

Given it’s your clients who actually pay the bills, it’s surprising that client surveys aren’t a more routine discipline in business development and growth planning.  They’re the ones who are looking to your business to grow with them, to adapt, to anticipate and innovate. You already have a relationship and a highly inter dependent one, so doesn’t it make sense to place a high value on the perspectives your clients (and potential clients) can bring to you business?

This can take the form of a reasonably detailed anonymous survey. There are some tricks to getting this right (poorly phrased questions will produce poor responses) but the mechanics today are all too easy. You can use a number of online services which allow respondents to submit their replies in a multiple choice format, in complete anonymity. And the programs themselves do the basic data summaries for you. Have a look at one I’ve used with good results: www.surveymonkey.com

If you’re sending your survey to hundreds or even thousands of contacts on your client database, you need to appreciate that the response rate will be quite low. If you get 10% you’re doing incredibly well. Five percent is more like it. But that can still be a reasonable sample and provide you with quality insights into what you’re customers are looking for in your business or when buying the sorts of services you provide.

You can always make it more personal, by directly approach a smaller group of high value clients, asking them to complete the survey for you. That will generate a higher response rate because it’s more personal and relies on the relationship you have with them. The numbers need not be huge in the sample to give you some excellent feedback.

And don’t fall into the trap of thinking that it’s only on the big issues where you could use your client’s feedback. Something relatively straightforward, like a general brochure outlining your businesses’ credentials and what you offer, is also worthy of ‘phoning a friend’ in your clients. Why not ask them what they think of it (as a draft) because they’re in the business of looking from the outside in. They’ll know what makes them tick and what presses their hot buttons, and they’ll probably know that better than you. The smartest marketing executives on your team (if you have them) simply don’t think like your customers, so using your customers as a sort of focus group even on draft marketing collateral just makes sense. 

If you have the relationship, they won’t mind and many will go to substantial effort providing all sorts of detailed feedback. You obviously can’t take it all on board and what works for one customer won’t for another, but in the process you’re better informed and your valued clients  probably feel more valued because you went to the effort to ask them their opinion.

This is such a simple discipline in business marketing and growth planning, that there’s no need to labour the point. The fact that it isn’t done that widely in professional firms and B2B markets is even more reason why you should give it a try, if you aren’t already.