Face It: Cheaper Isn’t Always Better
Friday, March 17th, 2006Unquestionably, with customer feedback in hand, your organization could make improvements in numerous areas. So, why not have your sales reps provide that input? Working on the front line with customers every day, they’re in an excellent position to collect and share this important market research, right? Wrong. In fact, it’s highly likely that such an approach will produce inaccurate and/or incomplete data that does little to drive meaningful operational improvements.
We’ve seen numerous organizations make the “do-it-yourself research” mistake in the name of cost-efficiency. Some make assumptions about their clients’ opinions based on what their sales reps and other customer-facing staff members recall hearing and seeing while going about their daily business. Others task these employees with actually conducting interviews with clients using survey instruments that were scripted in-house.
Certainly, many of your sales people and other customer-facing staff members are very good at what they do. But, they aren’t trained and experienced market researchers. And, that inexperience puts your research at high risk of failure due to leading questions, selective memories, inaccurate interpretations, and even customers who are uncomfortable being completely candid with people they interface with on a daily basis.
You’ll get significantly better data by using professional researchers to develop and conduct your market surveys. In addition to your customers and prospects, a good research firm will recommend also talking to your sales force, customer-service personnel, and executive team as part of that study. Many of those “feet on the street” staff members have excellent client relationships and keep their ears to the market ground. Marrying their feedback with data gathered directly from your customers and prospects can result in even richer research results,?? and that means even richer operational improvements.
