What do people want?

Generally, by the time people go to consultants about product they are having trouble selling, the want a magic solution. What they might need instead is a new target market or a new product. It’s not necessarily the case that the product is bad. Nor that that the target market is bad. It’s a question of whether they are a good match.

The best way to determine who is a good match is to do a survey, which are used frequently for seminars, reports and online technology. Surveys are all ways of letting people give you the answers, so you don't have to guess what they're thinking. With surveys, you can determine who your target is and what they want. You can do product surveys, which tell you what products or services people are most interested in buying. But, you can also do price surveys and attitude surveys.

WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST SURVEY MISTAKES?

Getting lost in the weeds of data. It's easy to get overwhelmed and develop analysis paralysis.

Follow methods developed for advertising agencies. Ad agencies use sophisticated research methods, which are not relevant for entrepreneurs. You are interested in what products a customer or prospect most want to buy, not how well they remember your brand.
Getting bogged down by the technology of surveys. You don’t have to use online survey tools; email works fine.

 WHO TO SURVEY

You obviously want to survey your existing customers or those on your opt-in list. If you have neither of those, you have to decide who to survey. Follow the 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of problems are caused by 20% of causes.

By understanding the things that trouble your customers and prospects, you can better satisfy them, so you should use surveys.