Finding out what people WANT

I want to share with you some ways in which you can find out what your customers and target clients want and how we can discover what their pain points are.

You could do a survey – perhaps one you’ve written, printed and taken to your local shopping mall or local library or airport – wherever your target customers are most likely to be found or perhaps it’s one that you’ve produced on line using SurveyMonkey and sent out to your contacts.

You could gather together a group of people for a focus group to discuss the topic of interest to you – you’re sure to gain loads of insights.

You could interview people on the topic of concern or interest to you and find out more about the wants and needs of your target customer, how they would like those needs to be satisfied. This is important as you may not only assume what their needs and wants are but also how they would like them to be met. It’s vital to get both right ! So how can you do this?

You could do random telephone interviews at times of the day when you know you are likely to find your target audience or you could so interviews in public places or if you have an on-line business invite people to apply to be interviewed. People love to do this as they have the opportunity to have their moment in the spotlight – and this can also give you material for blog posts. If you have a show on Blog Talk Radio then you may decide to invite some of the respondents to be in conversation with you on your show. Do you see how you can make efficient use of your time and information and make it work hard for you ?

Whichever method you choose to ensure that:

1) you reach your target customer

To do this you need to have identified who you target customers are and where you can find them. There’s nothing to be gained by asking your questions of the wrong set of people

2) you’ve designed your questions in a way that enables you to identify what the person’s needs are but also how they would like to have them satisfied

For example – if people want to lose weight some won’t want to achieve this goal by exercising and will prefer to change their diet or consume special weight loss drinks and food; others will want to lose weight by an exercise program – perhaps at a local gym perhaps at home then of course there will be those who want instant success and liposuction could be their preferred option. Perhaps someone wants to know if their business idea is viable – they may want someone to do this for them, they may want to buy a book or a program or watch a webinar and then do it themselves.

My challenge to you:

Think of all the needs that might exist in your market. You can then do a short survey to test whether you are right. I’ll tell you about doing surveys next time.