Since your business’s success depends heavily on the extent to which you improve your customers’ lives, finding out where your customers are “hurting” is a critical skill—but how best to do it may surprise you! 

I remember facilitating a focus group of new parents in the early days of my company. My goal was to get some new product ideas from the assembled moms so I took the direct approach. I asked them what products they needed that weren’t available. The answer was frightening. “Everything we need is on the market right now,” they told me. Yikes! What do I do with that? Maybe going to law school was not such a bad idea after all.

The mistake I made was to think that my customers could come up with innovative product ideas. They can’t—simply because they don’t have any idea what’s possible. As Henry Ford famously observed, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Every business (and non-profit too) exists or should exist for the same purpose—to improve the lives of some segment of the population. The way you improve people’s lives is always by eliminating pains or fulfilling aspirations of one sort or another. So, being able to determine how well your current products and services are doing that job and identifying opportunities for new customer pain-killers or dream-fulfillers is a critical skill for the leader of any organization.

So how do you proactively identify opportunities for customer life improvement? While your customers can’t tell you what they would buy, what they can tell you is where it “hurts” and how much it “hurts”. In other words, through conversation or observation you can detect their frustrations and unsatisfied needs. Then it’s your job to come up with the solutions. As another American icon, Thomas Edison said, “I find out what the world needs. Then, I go ahead and invent it.”

Here’s how to make sure you have an accurate picture of “what the world needs”:

1. Remember you have multiple types of customers.
Most juvenile product companies sell to end users primarily through retailers and etailers and maybe to some extent directly via their own web site. The result is you are likely to have multiple customers in the broad sense of the word—all of whose behaviors you need to understand:

• Users—the people that use your products (parents, grandparents, other caregivers, babies)

• Payers—the people who buy the products (some, like gift-givers, are not “users”)

• Intermediaries—wholesale, retail, and e-tail buyers and executives
    

2. Personally conduct 1:1 interviews and observation sessions with existing and potential customers on a regular basis.
There is no substitute for you as the CEO periodically conducting one-on-one discussions with customers as well as actually observing their behavior at least to some degree. While others in your company will have direct customer contact and may be conducting surveys and focus group sessions, much is lost if you are only reading reports or listening to someone else’s account. You simply can’t afford to be even slightly out of touch with your “users”, “payers”, and “intermediaries.” As the founder or leader, you are going to pick up on things that no one else in your company would recognize. You need to hear and see the unadulterated truth if you really want to make sure you have a firm grasp of reality.

While there’s certainly also value to be gained from surveys and focus groups, there’s no substitute for a face to face discussion or observation of behavior. The way someone says or does something and their body language can tell you things you’d never pick up over the phone or in a survey. And you can’t do a good job of following up on survey answers in a probing way. Also one-on-one’s trump focus groups in terms of feedback validity. In a focus group, people will say the politically correct things and will be influenced or intimidated by what others are saying.

3. The goal is to thoroughly understand your customers’ relevant processes.
You will want to explore the processes your customers employ to buy and use your current products and those you may wish to develop in the future. For example, from “users”, you may want to know how they perform a particular parenting process like bottle feeding or traveling with their baby. From the “payers”, you’d want to learn what their process is for making buying decisions including to what extent they are influenced by the “users” or other advocates and influencers. In particular, if you’re not observing and talking to your customers as they shop the retail infant department, you’re missing out on a wealth of valuable information.

Interviewing intermediary (wholesale, retail, or e-tail) buyers poses some special challenges. It can be difficult to get an appointment with them especially if they are not current customers, their time is limited, and you will need to be sensitive with your questioning regarding what they may feel is proprietary information. But nonetheless, you need to know their pain points. My experience has been that if you make it clear up front that your purpose is to identify ways to make their lives easier, they will be more likely to cooperate. You could explore with them things like what concerns they have about trends in the industry, how they stay up to date with new products entering the marketplace, what their department-wide priorities are, or what their experience has been with your salespeople or customer service staff. I had my best meetings with buyers or retail executives when I could get them out of their office in a more relaxed setting but that won’t always be possible.

4. Focus on what they have actually done, not what they might do.
You’re looking for the facts not speculation from them or you. Don’t go into these sessions with a preconceived notion regarding what your customers’ problems are or what solutions you’d like to offer. And for heaven’s sake don’t try to sell them anything. If you’re a natural salesperson, that will be really difficult. Just ask open-ended questions that get them to describe how and why they do what they do. Get them to talk about themselves and listen to what they’re saying. Make believe you’re a detective or psychiatrist trying to get to the truth. And don’t be satisfied with surface level responses. Probe like a detective (in a nice way) with follow up questions like:

• “And then what did you do?”

• “Why did you do it that way?”

• “How did you feel about that?”

• “What worries keep you up at night?”

• “Did anyone help you make that decision?”

• “What did you enjoy most about that?”

• “What was an example of an ideal day for you?”
  
  

5. Look for the significant, common “pain points” or unfulfilled aspirations.
The whole idea is to be alert for things multiple customers say that you know you can fix or provide. You don’t have to offer a solution on the spot but your expertise and gut will be telling you it’s fixable. In my company, we used to call these “customer insights.” Obviously if only a few customers have the problem it may not be worth fixing. But if you hear it over and over again from many interviewees, you know you’re on to something. It’s those insights that will be the seeds of the “new” and “improved” products, services, or even an entire new business model that you’ll be able to develop.

Next Steps

If you’re not already talking to customers in this way, give it a try on a small scale. Pick just a few “users”, “payers”, and intermediaries” and conduct in depth one-on-one interviews as described. Visit some stores and watch your customers in action buying yours and competitive products. Then ask them what their selection process was. Hopefully you’ll get at least a few magical “aha moments” which will encourage you to make this technique part of the way you run your business.

As always, if you would like more information on this or any management subject, take advantage of JPMA’s CEO Mentor program. Just contact Kyle Schaller at kschaller@jpma.org or sign up on the web site to set up a free introductory Skype or Face Time session.