One of the key inputs into developing your strategy are your customers. However customers, in general, do not like written surveys. As a result, I recommend you identify your top 10 customers and give them a phone call. On this call, don’t ask immediately how they like your products or services. You want them to talk about their favourite subject –themselves– first!
Then I suggest four questions:
- How are you doing? You want to understand the opportunities and challenges facing your customers. What are their priorities for the coming year? And more important,what are they projecting their sales will be in the coming year. Will they beup, down, or the same?
- What’s happening in your industry? This is your chance to identify trends that might influence the ongoing development of your own products or services. And it will give you a glimpse of what other potential customers in the same industry are doing.
- What do you hear about our competitors? Learn what your competition is doing through the eyes of your customers, instead of relying only on your own assumptions.
- How do you like our products/services? Of course, you need to ask this question,but not until the end.
