4 Questions to Ask Your Customers

“If you’re not ask­ing the right ques­tions, you could be miss­ing out on 70% to 80% of the most valu­able infor­ma­tion you could have.” — The Growth Whis­per­ers Podcast

How often have you sought feed­back and mar­ket intel from a cus­tomer in the last month?

Once?

Twice?

10 times?

If you’ve done that even three, four or five times, hats off to you: you’re doing a great job!

I know it’s real­ly hard for most of us — some­times all of us — to make the time to get out of our offices and meet­ings with our teams to stay con­nect­ed to the mar­ket and the cus­tomers we serve.

Do you have enough first-hand intel to:

• Make the best decisions?
• Know what your cus­tomers are think­ing – and how their minds or their needs are changing?
• Under­stand how your com­peti­tors are chang­ing in the mar­ket­place, from the eyes of your customers?
• Know how your busi­ness is doing from the eyes and mouths of your customers?

Key Ques­tions to Ask Your Customers

From the book Scal­ing Up 2.0, for which I was a key dri­ver, here are four crit­i­cal ques­tions to ask your customers:

1. How are you doing?
2. What’s going on in your indus­try or your neighbourhood?
3. What are you hear­ing about our competitors?
4. How are we doing?

Your key role is to get out there and get this qual­i­ta­tive data to val­i­date your strat­e­gy, under­stand what’s impor­tant to cus­tomers, learn about the indus­try and your com­peti­tors and your team’s performance.

The Chal­lenge

• In the next month, get out and ask three or four cus­tomers the 4Qs — maybe one each week.
• Even bet­ter, get your whole team to do the same thing.

For more about gath­er­ing key intel from your cus­tomers, lis­ten to episode 78 of The Growth Whisperers.

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

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