How to Structure a Survey

We rely on existing data when available, however sometimes we have to collect primary data using surveys. Over the years we have developed many surveys — including a bi-lingual survey to measure the employment and consumption preferences of Omaha’s first generation latino population. The following outlines the basics of our methodology for how to structure a survey:

  • Incentives: The best surveys use social incentives instead of monetary incentives. Using social incentives requires that surveys are designed to make it easy for people to feel the satisfaction of giving their opinions and helping people. This means that surveys should be short with provided answers that clearly and completely answer the survey questions.
  • Questions: Every question needs to designed to provide the most information for the least amount of effort from the participant. This requires that only essential “business questions” are researched, and that each response provides multiple dimensions of information.
  • Answers: The best surveys provide answers that are able to completely answer the survey questions, because respondents will lose motivation if they can not truly express themselves. This doesn’t mean that you create pages of possible answer, instead it should focus how the question is answered to limit the possible answers. The format of the answers should stay consistent as much as possible so respondents don’t have to re-read the questions, and instead can focus on understanding the question and answering appropriately.
  • Security: Surveys are valuable because they provide people a protected and ambiguous line of communication. When respondents feel safe they are able to provide information that they wouldn’t disclose in normal communication.

 
Please let us know if we can help your collect and analyze data for your organization.

Stop Persuading and Start Selling: How to Qualify Your Clients

Their are a lot of salespeople that are confused about their roles as salespeople.  Salespeople do not exist to persuade, manipulate or pressure us to purchase things that we don’t need.  Their job is to connect people to the resources (people, services, and products) that they need to do our jobs and enjoy their lives.
It is relatively easy to get people to sign on the line that is dotted, however it takes a true salesperson and a lot of work to get the right people to sign.  This requires that management holds salespeople responsible for the clients they sell, salespeople have to have a simple way to qualify prospects, and marketing to develop products people want.  This doesn’t mean that salespeople aren’t responsible to meet or exceed their quota each month, but that they need to fulfill their quote by closing people that have the need, willingness and resources to purchase.
If you qualify your clients to make sure they have the need, willingness and resources to purchase your products and services you will cultivate a loyal, profitable and active client base, have an appreciative operations team, and a more sustainable business.  The following are questions salespeople can use to make sure they are selling to the right prospects:

  1. Define the Problem and Solution: What problem does my prospect need to solve? What product or service (not necessarily mine) will be the best solution to my prospects problem?  If you can clearly define your prospects problem, and your product or service is the best solution then proceed with the sale.  If their is better solution that you don’t sell, provide them with an introduction to someone that can help them.  While you will forfeit the immediate sale you will help establish yourself as a trusted advisor, and the prospect and their connections will come to you first when they have a problem.  This will provide you with a steady stream of potential clients that will trust your advice when your product/service is the best solution to their problem.
  2. Priced to Deliver: Does my prospect have the resource to purchase my solution at a price I can afford to deliver an exceptional final product? While offering a discount might help you close the deal quicker, you never want to discount your price to a point where it becomes difficult to deliver an exceptional final product because you don’t have enough time, resources or you have to spend your time selling instead of producing.  In my experience people typically stop caring about the price once they have signed, and then they only care about the final deliverable, so it is essential to price your products or services so you can deliver an exceptional final product.
  3. Willingness to Close: Is my prospect willing to invest the required time to understand my solution, get the right people in the room, work to implement my solution, and make the necessary political and financial concessions?  Willingness goes beyond just acknowledging that they have a problem and you have the solution, and having them be willing to sign a contract.  Real willingness is a commitment to implement your solution and extract full value from your solution, and this requires willingness to promote your solution internally to get adoption, get the decision makers to buy in, and put financial and political capital on the line.

 

Keeping Business Intelligence Simple

CAN does more than optimize your sales, marketing, customer services, management and strategic planning; we optimize how you learn.  Our job is not to provide you with more information, data or work.  Our job is to provide you with supported recommendations that help you run your business more effectively.  CAN helps you with business intelligence to get the insights you need so you can get back to your life.
CAN keeps business intelligence simple by:

  • No Extra Data Collection: CAN’s systems are designed to only require access to your accounting data, because it is the most accurate data that companies already have.  Any additional data is provided by CAN either through surveys or by using CAN’s databases with data on economic variables, demographics, psychographics, real estate, consumers, and businesses.
  • Implementation: CAN systems are designed to be simple enough that businesses without computers could implement our systems, and businesses with more advanced infrastructure are able to implement using a minimal amount of effort.  We did this because we wanted the success of our systems to be independent of a company’s IT department, software trends, or industry whims.
  • Reporting: We have resisted the temptation to wow you with complicated visualizations and data tables, and instead CAN provides you with just the necessary information to answer your important business questions.

Beacon Client Stories


The following are 4 examples of how CAN’s Beacon system has been deployed to help companies.  When reading this post it will become obvious that CAN’s systems are catalogues of intellectual property that are used to help people sell, market, retain, manage and plan smart.  Since we are constantly developing new technology, surveys and mathematical models it is easier to focus on solving our customers’ needs, instead of on our technology.  At the end of the day no one cares how we do it, they just want solutions to their problems.  Here are some of the solutions we have delivered using our Beacon system:

  • Client Match Making: CAN built a survey to match managers and clients based on personalities, the needs of the clients and the strengths of the managers.  This resulted in increase client satisfaction and high project profitability.

 

  • Reseller Program: One of our clients had a reseller network to distribute their products.  They competed against other providers to become a core provider of different products.  CAN utilized our Beacon system to determine what would help our client become vendors preferred provider.  The result was a plan that segmented different resellers by what they valued, as opposed to wanted, in new products, marketing support, provider support and compensation.

 

  • Project Management: One of our clients, an architecture/engineering company, used CAN’s Beacon system to determine how to optimize their project management strategies.  We segmented projects by type of project and type of client to build a model that determines what they should bid on the project, who is the right project manager, and how many employees should be involved.  The model also provided a risk factor for each project to determine what the risk of the company losing money on the project.

 

  • Feedback from the Field: One of our clients with thousands of salespeople has used Beacon to improve their lead generation process by having their salespeople complete an 8 question survey after each client interaction, and completing a long survey each quarter.  The result is a monthly report of what leads are effective with different segments of salespeople, what types of leads should be generated next month, and whether the leads are delivered and called in a timely manner.

What We Value – CAN's Development Guidelines


At CAN we know the value in writing down our goals, principals and beliefs so that we don’t get sidetracked in the process of building our dreams.  We put our company values at the top of our priority list.  The following are the guidelines that CAN uses in the development of our systems.  We are careful to not let fads, customers, competitors and whims derail us from what we know is right. Listed below are our development guidelines.
[+] Creative + Math
Numbers can tell you what is working, and provide recommendations to optimize your processes.  However, math alone can’t create strategic plans, organizational structure, sales strategies and marketing plans.  Therefore, Contemporary Analysis is committed to designing our systems to utilize expertise of your employees, managers and executives.
[+] Results not Software
When you hire CAN you get results not software.  We operate the software, and simply provide you with the information that you need.  Focusing on results instead of software allows CAN to quickly adapt our systems to meet the needs of your business in a rapidly changing business environment.
[+] Built for Change
Contemporary Analysis continually invests in our systems often with monthly updates.  Our commitment to continual improvement allows CAN to keep up with or even out pace changes in the business environment.  This is essential because it will keep your business on the cutting edge.  Staying on the cutting edge is essential for success, because “If the rate of change outside your organization moves faster than the rate of change within your organization, the end is in sight”.

Improve your Sales Calls by a Meeting Contract for Each Call

One of the easiest ways that I have found to improve my sales calls is by establishing a “Meeting Contract” at the start of each call  that states the purpose of the meeting, what each participant is looking for out of the meeting, and how much time the meeting will take.

Using a Meeting Contract has helped me:

  • Improve the customer experience, because within the first minutes of meeting me my clients know that I respect their time by asking them how much time they have and what they hope to accomplish from the call.
  • Gain the complete focus of my customers, because the Meeting Contract clearly states that I have their focus for the agreed upon time. You and your prospective client know exactly when you both can get back to work, email, phone calls etc.
  • Focus my presentation, because I know the client is interested in improving their marketing and they want to know about our past work and next steps.

How to Adopt a New System

I am biased towards systems because CAN builds simple systems to help people work smart.  The other day I noticed that a new employee wasn’t using one of our systems to complete his work. When I confronted him about this he responded, “I am not an systems kind of guy”, and my response what “No one is naturally a systems kind of guy.” I have never met someone that enjoyed using systems at first, because it feels unnatural or the person feels that the system is creating unnecessary amounts of work. All of this is true.
Systems feel unnatural because they force people to work in standard ways, and well designed systems are built to create standards based on best practices. Systems do create more work because they require us to put our thoughts into data that can be stored and transferred, however this allows us to handle more work since we can focus on processing information as opposed to storing information.
Some of the keys to adopting a new system in your organization are:

  • Marketing/Selling the New System: People don’t like change, and it is likely that most of your employees feel that the current system works just fine.  Make sure to market your new system so that your employees understand what problems the new system solves, and what the features of the new system are.  Make posters, videos, websites and emails explaining why it is important to adopt the new system, and host user groups so that people can learn from each and offer ways to improve the system.
  • Single Point of Failure: If you adopt a system, anything that doesn’t happen within the system should be treated as if it didn’t happen. You have to be firm and not backdown. Any exceptions will erode the adoption. When it comes to systems adoption three legs are better than four.
  • End Support for Old Systems: When you officially adopt a new system, cut support for the previous system.  Your new system will be undermined if any employees are allowed to continue in their old ways.

What experiences have you had with adopting new systems? Any interesting tips/tricks?

No Room for the Mediocre

“Make a Dent in The Universe” I love this quote from Steve Jobs. It is was used to motivate a small team of engineers during Apple’s early days, when it was disrupting the way we thought about computers, for the first time. I think this is the mindset that entrepreneurs need to take if they want to truly make a difference. There is no room for the mediocre
Economically speaking new companies shouldn’t exist. There isn’t room for them in the balance of supply and demand. In addition, the incumbents are typically pretty good at what they do, so new companies have to force themselves into the market place. So there is no room for mediocrity. You simply have to be the best.
Also, when designing your website, you also must not be mediocre. When a customer visits your website, they aren’t there to qualify you, they are there looking to disqualify you from their search. This should influence how you design your site, your brand and your copy. Focusing on features and price are the easiest ways to disqualify yourself, and this is where most people focus. Instead your marketing should focus on who uses your product and why. Knowing who uses your product builds trust, and the why focuses potential customers on their own needs instead of the intricacies of your product.

Startups vs. Incumbents


In my experience starting companies, it is nearly impossible to simply outperform or out work incumbent competition because if it is a profitable industry they most likely have unlimited supply of capital, in the form of cash-flow and profits, to reinvest in labor and equipment. You have to select and establish the right competitive advantage. Below are several successful competitive advantage strategies:

  • Unique: Your product or service is so unique that the competition hasn’t thought of it. The danger is that unless your idea is legal protectable or you can keep your property process a secret then your competition can simply copy your product or service. Establishing a unique brand is one way to establish yourself in a way that is hard to replicate. Pharmaceuticals area good example of competitive advantage from legal protection. Coca-Cola is a good example of a competitive advantage by keeping properitary informaiton secret.
  • Understanding: You have a understanding of the market that your competition doesn’t have. This is typically understanding a niche customer need that isn’t being addressed by the rest of the industry. A great example of this is the computer industry. Acer and Dell understand that some people care more about price compared to quality, while Apple and Sony understand that some people care about quality and will purchase a computer at almost any price.
  • Willing: This is personally one of my favorite strategies, because it allows you and your competition to exist peacefully together, as you slowly eat away their business. You are willing to do things or take on jobs that your competition isn’t, because they are either not as profitable, are riskier, or less glamorous. The key to this strategy is to gradually move up the ladder. Ideally you will be able to reduce future competition by owning eventually owning the entire spectrum of jobs, desirable or not.

A fun example of the little guy versus the over funded incumbent is Rocky 5. Check out this video of Rocky vs USSR training style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwvoTDoO9Hg.

How to Increase Your Capacity for Change

Tadd and I have experienced a lot of change over the last three years in business as we have had to learn to run a business, increase our technical skills, and adapt to a rapidly changing industry. Consequently, we have had push ourselves to explore new opportunities, viewpoints, ideas and ways of doing things. In other words, we are constantly working to increase our Capacity for Change.
There is no shortage of brilliant ideas. However, successful implementation is rare. Implementation faces many barriers to success, which include, but are not limited to: politics, complexity, budget constraints, and counter productive habits. However we have found that the most common barrier successful implementation of a brilliant idea are individuals’ capacity for change.  Typically, capacity for change is a function of creativity, resources, intelligence, education, flexibility, values, risk tolerance and beliefs.
Tadd and I have tried to increased our capacity for change by:
Being Patient: Successful implementation doesn’t happen over night. It takes time, and sometimes years. We learned that if our goals were constantly changing we would never be able to accomplish any of them. Now when making goals we try to take a Long-range Focus and set goals carefully and accept that it might take a couple years to accomplish our goal. While we try to have patience we also are constantly looking for incremental progress towards our goals.
Make Space: We have reduced the clutter and commitments so that we can make space for new things. Right now we make space by setting aside time during Saturdays and holidays to explore and implement new ideas. We also try to systemize as much as we can so that we don’t continually have to do the same things over and over, and instead spend our time implementing new ideas.
Develop Horizontal Friendships: Everyone needs best friends. However, having a large number of horizontal friendships can also be valuable. Horizontal friendships are friendships with people that you wouldn’t be friends with naturally. Horizontal friends typically have different interests, lifestyles and personalities. If you spend time with these people they will increase your capacity for change by introducing you to new ideas, products and people outside your normal sphere of influence.
Stumble Upon Ideas: Some of the best advice I ever got was to just read everything I can, and not worry about retaining what I read. This sounds counter intuitive, but my mentor explained that I should make it a habit of stumbling upon knowledge. Everyday I try to scan Twitter and LinkedIn for interesting articles or ideas. Weekly I try to spend time reading a biography, a business book and a technical journal. I don’t care about when I finish, but only that I expose my self to the opportunity to learn something.
 

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