Anyone looking to make their business a success needs to have certain qualities: most of us would agree that drive and determination are indispensable; no-one would disagree that an eye for a deal is fundamental, either.
What’s often left out of this person specification for the great business minds of the modern day is something just as important: the ability to listen.
When we are kids, we tell ourselves that one day we will open a store, or a restaurant, and it will sell all the things we love now. By the time we are out of university, most of us have recognised that that store or restaurant would have a real-world audience of one – ourselves.
And yet, sometimes you see businesses opening (and closing) in town centres, which could barely have a bigger target audience than the one we junked. Such errors could be avoided if every entrepreneur was serious about market research.
Why market research matters
It’s a tale as old as time: someone with the enthusiasm and charisma to be a great salesperson launches a business, and their faith in the idea carries them to the brink of bankruptcy before they can acknowledge that it’s not going to work.
We love our own ideas, because they seem to fill a gap in the market that we have identified. But you’re not going to be one of your customers, so it is of vital importance to ask the type of people who might be. Only by flying the kite with your potential customers will you learn whether your idea works.
There’s a reason we design by committee
Inventors have the ingenuity to think their way around fundamental problems. What they often don’t have is the distance to see the problems with their own inventions. And that’s why a business idea should be tested in the court of public opinion by a data-driven sampling agency who will focus on the messages that come back from potential customers. Not only can market research tell you whether your idea is a goer or not, it can also tell you how it could be made just a little better. Prototypes rarely make it to market, because public opinion is a key factor in refining them.
Sometimes exceptions prove the rule
Some entrepreneurs will read this and immediately point to products and services that would never have survived the trial of public opinion. Sports cars that are much-loved by the public, but famously temperamental in performance categories. Foodstuffs that are so divisive that they develop marketing campaigns around the hate they receive.
While these are great examples of how success can happen against the odds, they need to be balanced against the inevitable failures. We don’t hear about “failure in keeping with the odds” because it’s so commonplace. So it is worth commissioning, and listening to, market research.
Enthusiasm for your business is great, but enthusiasm alone will not sustain it through the choppy waters of startup teething troubles.
