The most expensive words in business: "I know my customers"

"I know my customers." Every time I hear a business owner say this with absolute confidence, I get a little nervous. How do you know that you know your customers?

When was the last time you actually talked to them? Not sold to them. Talked to them. Not told them about your latest product or service. Not sent them an email telling them how wonderful you are. Talked to them.

And then did something even more difficult. Shut up and listen.

In the first chapter of my book, muddled, meager & messy, I spend quite a bit of time on one simple idea: you are not your customer.

Business owners make decisions every day based on what they think their customer want. Choosing colours they like, writing copy that appeals to them, advertising in places where they spend their own time. They even introduce products and services they think are terrific.

And then they're surprised when the customers don't cooperate. How inconsiderate of them. You may have built the business and spent 20 years in the industry. You may even know everything there is to know about the product you sell. You still don't get to crawl inside your customers' head and furnish the place.

"But my customers tell me things all the time." Great. What do they tell you? There can be an enormous difference between what customers volunteer and what you can learn when you ask a useful question.

"How are we doing?"

"Great!"

Well, that was illuminating.

Maybe consider these questions: Why they chose you in the first place; what nearly stoppe them from buying; what they found confusing; what they wish you'd done differently; what they looked at before they found you. And definitely ask, what they would tell someone else about doing business with you.

Then comes the hard part. Don't explain.

If they tell you something on your website was confusing, don't tell them why it shouldn't have been confusing. If they didn't understand what made your product different from the competition, don't spend the next 15 minutes telling them all the ways it's different.

They didn't understand. That's the information. You can defend yourself later if you really feel the need. Preferably alone in your car where you won't contaminate the research.

Research doesn't have to involve people with clipboards

Some small business owners hear the words "market research" and immediately see dollar signs. Focus groups. Surveys. Reports. PowerPoint presentations with graphs nobody understands. Sure. Research can involve all those things.

Or you could buy someone a coffee.

Talk to a customer who's been buying from you for years or someone who just discovered you. And then talk to someone who bought once and never came back.

Maybe most importantly, talk to someone who decided not to buy from you at all. That conversation may sting a little. You'll survive. You aren't trying to convince them they made a terrible mistake and should immediately hand over their credit card. You're trying tounderstand why they made the decision they made. It could be a lot of things. Maybe the price or your website made you look like you hadn't updated anythign since 2007. Perhaps your competitor explained things better. Or they called and whoever answered the phone was a twit.

Wouldn't you like to know?

Be careful who you ask

Friends and family are lovely people. Hopefully. But they aren't necessarily good market research. People who care about you have a tendence to care about your feelings. Your customers have fewer such obligations.

If you're going to do a focus group, don't faciliate it yourself. Yes, your customers have fewer obligations to make you feel good but they're human. They aren't going to be honest if you're staring them in the face. Get someone from outside their experience to facilitate. And always be aware there'll be at least one strong personality in the group who tries to take over the conversation and get everyone to agree with their perspective. I sound like I'm not a fan of focus groups. I'm not.

A well constructed online survey can give you so much more. People tend to be more honest when they're sitting in their pajamas in the comfort of their home, or are at their desk where no one's looking.

There's little point in doing in the research if you only want to confirm what you believe to be right.

Your ego can get very expensive

I've seen business owners hang on to marketing ideas that weren't working because they personally like them and watched people dismiss good information because it didn't agree with what they already believed. I've also watched businesses spend a pile of money marketing to an imaginary customer who, by an astonishing coincidence, had the same preferences as the person who owned the company.

Funny how that happens.

Your customer may not care about the thing you're most proud of. That feature you spent months developing may barely register with them. The beautifully designed bit of your website you adore might be getting in their way. Something you consider a minor detail might be the very reason people choose you. Or don't.

This is where getting over yourself becomes a useful business skill. You don't have to commission a $50,000 research study. You do have to ask questions. You have to ask good questions. And you have to be genuinely interested in the answers, including the ones that make you mutter under your breath.

Here's hoping you're wrong

Really.

If you talk to your customers and discover that every assumption you've ever made about them was absolutely correct, I'd be taking a hard look at how you did the research.

Finding out you're wrong about something is useful. Now you know something you didn't know.

Your customers know things about your business that you don't know. They know what it's like to find you when they don't already know where everything is. They know what it's like to read your marketing without knowing what you meant to say. They know what it's like to choose between you and somebody else.

You can't know those things the same way they do. So ask. Then shut up. You might learn something.

And try not to take it personally.