You will no doubt have heard me talking about my rebrand, it feels like it’s gone on forever but it has only been a few months. I’ve been working with the fabulous Lynne Stainthorpe who has been guiding me through the process. As part of this, Lynne suggested that I asked my customers, suppliers and colleagues for their opinion on a number of possible new names.
Now … you would have thought that because I’m a researcher I would have no problems researching my own customers….. well … I had problems.
It felt really very difficult. I was nervous, a bit fearful, a bit worried, very conscious of what they might think and so I put off doing it for a few weeks.
When I was brave enough to send the email with the survey link, I hit the button and then ran away. For years I have been telling my clients that they need to overcome this fear, because it’s essential to find out what your audience thinks, yet here I was delaying it.
Anyway when I eventually came back to my laptop to look at the results I was overwhelmed by the incredibly thoughtful comments that people had given, and the time and effort they had taken to answer my questions. There were a number of really lovely comments (thank you to everyone who took the time to respond, I am very appreciative, thank you).
BUT I fell into a trap (the very trap that I tell my clients to avoid), despite the comments from people telling me how proud they were of me, telling me why they liked a particular name, or giving me other ideas that they thought fitted my personality and way of work, despite all of this the one comment that sticks in my mind is the comment that was very slightly critical, that’s the one thing I couldn’t get out of my head.
I tell my clients all the time to look at the patterns, the trends and to ignore the outliers when the overwhelming majority are pointing in a different direction. But it’s so difficult to do, our brains are wired to keep us safe, and there is no danger from people saying “yeah that’s great”.
So what I have a I learned? Well to be honest they aren’t learnings because I knew what I should be doing, but still fell into the traps. But to reiterate
- Don’t be nervous – people are generally very willing to help, people love being asked their opinions and the worst case scenario is that they won’t respond, that’s not the end of the world.
- Don’t faff around delaying – get the survey written and then send it out.
- There will always be some people who don’t agree with the majority. Accept what they say but don’t let your focus go to the comments given by a few people.
So if you need help with some research, I’d love to have a chat. I can absolutely empathise with all steps of the process.
Get in touch to find out how market research can help you make better business decisions.
