One of the most important steps you should be taking in your business is discovery analysis. Discovery analysis allows you to get a better feel for what your potential customer needs and allows you to suit them more accurately. Without discovery analysis, you may lose a potential customer or leave someone dissatisfied. In this episode of Focused On The Road, Bo discusses the importance of the discovery analysis process and how to do it correctly.
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Focused On The Road Episode 15 Transcript
Hey this Bo with Focused Engagement and today is Wednesday, which means we have another Focused On The Road. I left a little earlier than usual, so traffic is a little heavier than usual. So I better really focus on the road. As a small business owner, like you guys, I belong to a lot of different Facebook groups and use them to try and get my name out and get more business.
One of the groups I belong to is local here to Utah. It’s called Connect Utah and the other day somebody posted on it saying they need somebody to build them an inexpensive eCommerce system. And inevitably 20, 30 people responded saying they could build it for cheap.
My thought was, how do you know? You don’t even know the requirements of the site yet and you have done no investigation with this person. That’s asked as well, a few questions to know what they’re trying to accomplish. What if they have 500 products that they need to put on this site and you need to take pictures of all of them and you offered to do this cheap. I see this a lot, and experienced it on Facebook groups too. I’ve seen that several times, I’ve even experienced it when I’ve gone into stores looking for products. The salesperson assumes that they know what you were looking for just based off of your first initial query then without doing any serious questions or any sort of discovery analysis as we would call it.
Today’s Focused On The Road is my thoughts on this process. Every business should have some sort of discovery process. They should go through with every single client, no matter what, in order to figure out really what that client wants. Here’s the thing, you are the expert in your business and your industry You’re in that industry for a reason, you know what is required even when we take this example of somebody saying, “I need an inexpensive, eCommerce system”. The industry with people that are not in the industry make assumptions on what it is that they need.
If you had to really talk to a subject matter expert, find out what they need. So again, if we missed to take this person, I don’t know. I don’t remember, but if we take this person as an example. Let’s just suppose that what she is selling is extremely high-end widget of some sort. So really high margin, right? They’re making a thousand dollars profit off of every sale. To build on, damn, if you were to just go off of what they said, and I don’t need an inexpensive eCommerce system. So you’ve built them an inexpensive eCommerce system and you’d actually have to ask yourself if are you actually doing them service?
Are you doing them this service? In other words, by selling them what they actually wanted, they may not accomplish their goals. So you sold them what they wanted, you didn’t sell them what they needed. Now this we’ll go through and figure out what the it is they actually need and help them understand.
That’s the other side of this whole thing. That’s the other part of this whole thing is, again, since as a subject matter expert, you gotta be able to know what they need, not what they want and be able to explain it in such a way that they get that.
Yes, that is what they actually need and want. Let’s take mattresses, it’s one of the industries that I work heavily in. Somebody walks in and they simply say, “I want a cheap and hard mattress”. Cause they feel that they got a bad back and a hard mattress is really what’s going to sell it for them and they don’t want to spend a lot of money. Again, if you was to sell them a cheat, you’d probably carry up to $300 mattress, maybe even cheaper, but maybe they’re a big guy like me. I weigh 240 pounds. So if I was to buy your $400 King size hard mattress. Just like I asked, I took that home.
Would I sleep well? Well, the answer is obviously, no, I would not be happy with that purchase. I would have felt like I wasted $400 that you didn’t sell me what I really wanted. And now I’m now I’m upset with you, right? But if you were to take that same person and say, “All right, well, let’s lay you down on, these $400 mattresses, but let’s lay you on it and let’s see how it fits now”. Let’s talk about your situation. Do you sleep on your side, your back, your stomach, do you sleep with the significant other, you know, let’s lay you on this one. Okay. How do you feel when you go through this whole process, right? And in doing so they start realizing, “Oh, well maybe I ought to look at a different mattress”.
You talk about the features, advantages and benefits of this $400 mattress versus this $1,500 or $2,000 mattress. And they start understanding, “Oh, if I want good sleep and I want my back to quit hurting, maybe I should not buy these cheap mattresses and buy something That’s a little bit better quality”. And they’ll actually be able to sleep at night, so sell them what they need. Don’t sell them what they want. This doesn’t matter the industry in my industry, I do the same thing, you know, so, but he says, “I’m just looking for a cheap website”. Okay, what is the purpose of this website and can sell stuff on it? Is it just to give people and idea of what you have so they can come into your store? You know, what, what is your ultimate goal? And by doing so I started understanding what they need, what they really need, not what they want. And I can offer them the best service possible without doing that.
Almost inevitably, your client is not going to be happy because they didn’t get what they actually needed pick up what they thought they wanted. So, yeah. My whole point about this is that the subject matter expert, make sure that you go through whatever discovery analysis you have. And if you don’t have one, come up with one. You are the subject matter expert, take that knowledge to help your customer get the best product or service that you offer for them. In doing so, you’re going to have a happy customer. You’re going to get your five star review, which is always critical.
You’re going to get referrals from that customer, which is another critical aspect in growing your business. That’s my soap box for the day. Until next Wednesday, you guys have a great day.