独家优惠奖金 100% 高达 1 BTC + 180 免费旋转

Conducting B2B Customer Survey

the face-2-face approach

My task was to plan, execute, and present my findings to the stakeholders after completion.

Two weeks after I had completed the survey and shared the report, here’s what the CEO said ahead of my presentation:

And this is exactly why I’m writing this to serve as a (partial) guide to anyone who intends to run a face-2-face customer survey for a B2B company.

Now, for the sake of making things easy to consume, I’d split this writeup into 3 parts viz:

Pre-field Planning | Fieldwork | Conclusion

This part is the most important because no matter how well done the other two parts are, the poor execution of this part will ruin your efforts. The pre-field planning covers the necessary steps needed to be considered before hitting the streets. *Well, Nobody said it’s a fact but just pretend that I know what I’m saying.

Meeting with stakeholders

After establishing the need to run a face-to-face interview, the next action will be to meet with the major stakeholders individually or collectively. I’d lean towards the collective option because it allows you to see through everyone’s contributions at a glance, hence, saving you a lot of time you could have wasted on individual consultations. This process can come with a lot of complications too. The one I find quite funny is teammates who think the word stakeholder is a chieftaincy title. lol.

Please note, however, that in whatever you do at this stage;

Set goals

I’m referring to the SMART framework approach to goal setting here. The reason(s) for why you’re running this survey has to be: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

A bad example of goal setting: We want to get more customers every month to increase our revenue.

A good example: Every month in 2021, we want to get 20 new customers with a budget of $200.

Draw samples

Since it’s impossible/unreasonable to meet with all your customers face-to-face, the most reasonable thing to do is to draw a sample size from your population.

A population in this case refers to the entire customer base. A sample is a specific group that you will collect data from. The good maximum sample size is usually around 10% of the population, provided the population does not exceed 1000. e.g, in a population of 500, 10% would be 50. What this means is that, instead of meeting all 500 customers, 50 will be enough to give you (almost) the same result.

Budget

Now that you’ve identified how many customers you will be meeting, proceed to draw up a budget.

One thing you should note here is that location. If Lagos is your focus for instance, it is better to interview all 50 customers from Epe, Ikeja, Badagry, Ikorodu, and VI instead of interviewing all 50 customers in Ikeja just because it’s closer to your home or office.

Prepare a questionnaire

This process should be influenced greatly by the stakeholders' meeting and the goals of the campaign. While doing this, please ensure that the questions are:

Once done, share it with the stakeholders to get their feedback.

Call your respondents (liveliness, clarity, value)

Now that you’ve gotten all you need to hit the streets, reach out to your target respondents (phone calls work best). During this call, you need to sound excited; pass across your message with utmost clarity; let them know how much value their contributions will be to your survey.

This step is important because it'd help you identify the interested and uninterested targets. For the uninterested ones, don’t wate time in replacing them.

Draw a timetable

This helps you with planning your movement days, time, and how many places you need to visit daily. It also will help you communicate with your targets to prepare their minds ahead of your coming.

This brings us to the end of the first phase. Now to the next:

2. Fieldwork

This phase covers the relevant things you need to do to ensure you achieve great results on the field.

Appearance

It’s usually better to overdress than underdress for all your visits. By this I mean:

Now that you’re looking sharp and fresh in front of your dressing mirror, you have my blessings to hit your targets.

Action time

Arrival: On getting to their home/office, be courteous, smiling as much as you can will earn you bonus points. They’d be more comfortable. Once settled, make it known instantly how long the question and answer session will take and Please try keeping to time- most B2B customers dislike time wasters.

Composure & Coordination: You’d get the best out of the session if you do most of the work. Do not stress your respondents by handing them a questionnaire to fill. It’s advisable you go with your laptop and personal internet to enable you to make use of real-time recording tools like google forms (you don’t want to start asking for wifi up and down). Having an audio recorder or a notepad won’t be a bad idea as you can use a combination of any of the three tools in ensuring you capture as much information as possible.

Now that you’re done with asking your questions.

Inform them of the next step(s): would you be sharing the report with them or will you be following up with more questions? Let them know when and how.

Now to the last part:

3. Conclusion

Congratulations!

You’ve now successfully visited all your respondents and are now alone in your room, thinking about what to do with the gathered data. Now here’s what I did:

Thank the respondents

This time, don’t call them, send an email or text instead. The content should be simple: show gratitude and remind them of promised update (if any).

Analyze data

Since you’d be reporting your findings to the stakeholders, the next step is for you to clean the gathered data from the field. If you took some notes in your jotter, you should look through them to ensure they are included in your analysis. The same goes for if you recorded anything in your voice recorder.

To keep things simple, you can make use of Google sheets but you can use power BI if you want a more detailed approach. Google slides or Microsoft PowerPoint are cool for presenting your analyzed data.

Present data

The stakeholders have been waiting for this, don’t disappoint. Ensure you send across the report at least 2 hours before the actual presentation. This will allow them to read through and digest your report before the presentation time which is ideally supposed to be spent on deciding on actionable steps.

Once it’s time to present, It’s more efficient to spend more time deliberating on your recommendations than reading through your main report.

Let me know what you think about my approach in the comment section.

Add a comment

What is your view?

Send

Related posts:

Higher Ed Enrollments Are Declining. What Can Educators Do?

New findings from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center paint a troubling picture of declining college enrollments.

Voie royale

Samedi 30 Juin 2018. Demain matin, à 7h, je serai au départ du Marathon du Mont-Blanc (42.8km, 2780 D+), alors que je ne mettais pas un pied devant l’autre il y’a moins d’un an. Comment j’ai su me…

Overcome procrastination by using the Pomodoro technique

Using the Pomodoro technique to overcome procrastination was an interesting experiment for me. I have always struggled with procrastination and finding ways to stay focused on my tasks, so I was…