Q2 • 2024


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For some products and services, identifying the problem might seem easy. Jim Keenan (better known by the mononym Keenan), President/CEO of consultancy A Sales Guy Inc., cites rice as an example: “Why does the person want the rice? Do they want the rice for a wedding, to make a curry, to feed the poor? Everything behind that why drives that decision.” If you believe a common problem among your audience is that rice is too sticky, you’d want to market fluffy, nonsticky rice. Then again, your audience might have a problem finding rice that is sticky enough, in which case you’d want to market glutinous rice. You can’t assume that because you


prefer nonsticky rice, your audience does too. “A lot of times marketers don’t do sufficient research,” says Bart Sichel, President of marketing and corporate strategy consultancy bps Captura. “All these marketers think they don’t need to do research or focus groups. In 99.9 percent of cases, you do.” Sichel believes you should perform both qualitative and quantitative research to best determine the problems your audience wants your product to solve. “Qualitative surfaces the ideas,” he explains. “Quantitative helps tabulate the direction and the degree.” Focus groups and one-on-one


interviews fall under qualitative research. When leading this sort of research, it’s particularly important that your biases and assumptions don’t come through. Opt for open-ended questions: “Can you describe your ideal widget?” rather than “Do you prefer large or small widgets?” With the latter, there’s the assumption that size is the most important factor in


choosing a widget, that the group or interview participants have a distinct size preference, and that they all define large and small the same. The former question might reveal that respondents don’t care about the size of their widgets nearly as much as they do about the shape, the color, how easily they can be cleaned, or a host of other factors you might never have considered. From there you can probe deeper with more open- ended questions such as “Can you walk me through how you use your widget?” This type of question “could lead to a need you might not have even thought of,” Sichel says. “That’s what leads to breakthroughs rather than modest change increments.” Once you’ve gleaned enough insights


into your target market’s needs, you can proceed with the quantitative research. This might include questionnaires in which you ask a statistically relevant number of people whether the problems that came up in your qualitative research are indeed problems for them and, if so, how much of a problem and for what percentage and sector of the audience. Keenan suggests using the results of your research to create what he calls a “problem


identification chart” with three columns. The first column lists the problems that your product or service aims to solve; the second is the impact for the potential customers if the problems aren’t solved; the third is what is causing each problem. “You’re not finding out what they need but instead where they are,” he says. Lack agrees: “We’re trying to meet the customer where they’re at, which means letting the consumer mindset lead your every mood.” Of course, the qualitative and quantitative research combined will also help you better understand your target audience—or more likely, audiences. You’re apt to find that an ideal frozen dinner for parents of young children, say, looks rather different from the ideal frozen dinner for childless consumers, while empty nesters on a budget might have no desire for frozen dinners at all.


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