Maybe You Should Just Ask?

I was so surprised by the question that it took me several seconds to even respond.

My client sat across the desk. He’d been in marketing for more than a decade and his firm had experienced some real success. Now, though, he was facing one of the most difficult growth barriers for a business owner to overcome.

We call it mid-life crisis.

You can tell a business is in mid-life crisis when they have already achieved success; they continue to do the things that made them successful; but they no longer experiencing the same success. In fact, they may find themselves sliding down the back side of the business lifecycle, headed to stagnation, shrinkage, and … well, we’ll leave it at that.

Leading in a Fog

Jeremy knew things weren’t working anymore. And he truly wanted to do something about it. But the more we talked, the more I realized he was lost in a fog, unable to clearly see what was happening and what needed to be done. So, we went back to basics.

“Who is your target market?” I asked.

“Medium-sized transportation companies,” he replied immediately.

“Great,” I continued. “And what do they want?”

And that’s when he asked the question that left me speechless.

“How the heck am I supposed to know what they want?” he grumbled. “All I know is they aren’t working with us anymore.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t know the answer to his question. I was stumped as to why he would ask the question in the first place. I’m sure Jeremy had all kinds of experience helping his clients answer this exact question, but now that he faced it himself, he was stumped.

Stuck On the Inside

I believe it was Blair Enns who first said, “You can’t read the label from inside the jar.” In other words, it’s easy from the outside to give others objective input, but when you’re working on yourself and your own business, it’s much harder to see clearly. That’s exactly what was happening with Jeremy.

Not wanting to offend Jeremy, I tried to put my next question as gently as possible, “Maybe you should just ask?” I said with a slight upward tone at the end of my sentence indicating that I wasn’t exactly sure this was a good idea. (Of course it was a good idea. And it was obvious. But, in this situation I wasn’t inside the jar. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to feel like an idiot working from inside my own jar, so I had a fair amount of empathy for what Jeremy was experiencing.)

Let’s Stop Guessing

When you’re facing a growth barrier, it’s tempting to make assumptions. Especially if you’re fairly intuitive, it’s easy to jump to conclusions, confident you have the answer. I’ve probably jumped to the moon and back making this exact mistake. The best decisions, though, are not based solely on intuition, they’re based on evidence. It’s a double win when the evidence supports your initial intuition.

Simply asking is the best way to determine what your target market is thinking. But before you run off to create a survey to send to a thousand people (most of whom will simply be annoyed you sent them the survey and won’t respond) let’s take a few steps that will save a lot of time and give you a lot better data.

Simple, Possibly Time-Consuming, but Worth It

Take a minute to think back on the best clients you’ve served over the years. What specifically makes them stand out? Maybe you shared a common vision for the work, or they were easy to communicate with. They may have seen you as an expert helping them achieve their goals, not as a vendor to be told what to do. Likely they were happy to pay your fees fully and on time. Try to pinpoint the factors that made them ideal for you.

If you’ve been in business very long, you can probably think of a number of people who share these characteristics. Write down their names. If this group represents your best clients, then these are the very best people to ask. You don’t just want more business. You want more people like them.

You don’t need to get a statistically valid, random sampling of people in your target market. You need specific and insightful information from the people you want to work with.

Next, think carefully about what information you want from them.

Many employers have learned to stop asking future-oriented questions of job applicants. Anwers to “what would you do if …?” types of questions don’t really show if the applicant has what it takes to the do the work. Instead, asking questions about how applicants have actually handled specific situations gives you the best picture of what they will do when faced with a similar situation in the future.

In the same way, don’t ask your clients hypothetical, future-oriented questions about what they want. Ask them specific questions about what they’ve done in the past.

The answer to, “Would you spend $2,500 on XYZ service?” won’t be helpful. But the answer to, “Tell me about a challenge you faced that you were happy to spend $2,500 to solve,” could be gold.

Do all that you can to ask the questions in real time. No texts, emails, or online surveys. A real conversation with 10 of your best clients where you can dig deep into their answers, hear the subtext, and ask follow-up questions will provide more value than a 25-question survey hastily completed by only 10% of those you send it to.

Your Turn

Do you know what you best future clients want? There’s a (fairly) simple way to find out. Maybe you should just ask?

If you’d like some help finding clarity on who and what to ask so you can stop wandering in the fog, shoot me an email at john@barcanic.com. I’d be happy to talk to you about how we can support you.