This blog is inspired by a blog posted by Sam Ovens during July 2018, in which he talks about the term “market-backwards”. Having a “market-backwards” approach to running a business is about being “marketing-led“…and not “production-driven”.
You would be surprised how many business owners still operate with an “I know what’s best for my customers” or “I know what my customers actually want/ need” mindset. It’s both scary and disappointing to see how prevalent this psyche still is !
Here’s some cold hard truth about being successful in business…
If you fail to meet the needs of other people, there will be no financial transactions that transpire and you will soon have no business. Simple as that.
For those business owners who continue to have a “production-mindset” and continue to put services/ products into the market which have not been validated relative to actual (i.e. researched) market needs; you are on a slippery slope to potentially seeing your business close through lack of sales.
In various senior manager roles I have fulfilled over the years I have been the one to lead the charge compelling the businesses that I was a part of to “stop telling the market what the market wants”, and instead “ask” the market what needs/ problems to solve it has.
Because by far the majority of people in the world are more concerned about solving their own problems versus those of others, generally when we “ask” people what their needs/ problems are we receive fairly honest answers in response. These answers are “gold” to a business – they represent insights into “what” problems customers have; and therefore enable businesses to view these problems as “opportunity” and proceed to design/ manufacture/ source products and/ or services that have a strong likelihood of solving these identified problems/ opportunities.
The key with any market research is in knowing “what” questions to pose and “how” to write the right questions in such a way that they indeed elicit the insights that you are after. This is a real/ major skill, and particularly where large scale market research is concerned it is often well worth engaging the services of a professional market research agency to construct and deliver the research needed.
One word of caution about engaging professional market research agencies though (something that I learned from first-hand experience)…
Be careful in allowing such professionals to present their findings to the stakeholders who have a vested interest in the research outcomes that have come to light ! Why ? Because such professionals are so familiar with interpreting graphs/ data tables and similar market research report information they can make the (wrong) assumption that the audience that they are presenting their report findings to has a similar level of understanding of the same information.
I have seen a highly esteemed Australasian market research agency completely “lose” and confuse the audience they were delivering $100,000 worth of market research to due to not gauging the right “pitch” (language/ interpretation of facts) to use to communicate their findings to this audience. Result ? The well-constructed highly visual information was “lost” on the audience, so the audience was unable to draw any conclusions of their own in support of the strategic direction that was formulated based on the research findings…so ultimately these stakeholders couldn’t be led to confidently vote in favour of the advocated strategic direction of the company in question.
So when presenting market research findings to an audience that you hope to persuade/ influence as a consequence of presenting the data/ information in question; make sure that the delivery of such information is pitched at the right level so that the audience can understand what is presented and ultimately make an informed decision as an end result.