Imagine that you are a tailor and suddenly you have a 6 foot tall, thin client who comes to your business interested in buying a suit. Without much thought, by eye, you take out the first suit you find and ask him to try it on.
The result is that the suit is loose, the sleeves are short, the hem of the pants are also short and let alone the waist where you have to hold it so that it does not fall. You just won’t like that suit !! Well, what that person needs is a tailored suit!
With a business we could say that something similar happens. It is usual and natural that when you are thinking about start your company, many doubts arise: if the business will work? If the product can be sold? If people will come to your business? If the prices are correct?
Those questions are good because they are the framework for us to structure a business plan that guarantees the success of your company. It’s kind of like making a tailored suit for your business.
Enthusiasm and knowledge are not enough, they must be used market research tools that allow us to obtain information to meet the needs of our client and second to determine if the business we have in mind adapts to what that market requires.
Today we will expand on the questions that a questionnaire should take to carry out a market study and that allow you to obtain enough key information for the planning of your company.
Target market
The first thing we need to determine prior to conducting the survey is to determine what our target market is. Who is our client? This profile must be described in sufficient detail because knowing who we want to reach is a key factor for success.
Answer these questions:
- What age range is your client?
- What gender should your client preferably be?
- What socio-economic level should it have?
- What educational level?
- Civil status?
Example 1. Imagine that you are thinking of setting up a stationery and bookstore. You should prioritize that your client be schoolchildren, between 7 and 18 years old, of both sexes and then your business should be focused on serving that kind of client with a medium socio-economic level, and it is them to whom you should take the questionnaire.
Example 2. Imagine that you are thinking of opening a sporting goods store. So your client should be young people and adults between 12 and 35 years old who like to do sports with a certain frequency. Both sexes and with a medium-high socio-economic level. Your business should be located near gyms, sports centers, preferably in shopping centers visited by this customer profile or in upper-middle-class residential areas.
The Questionnaire and Questions
While conducting a questionnaire may seem like a simple job (and indeed it is), asking the right questions requires a lot of intuition, especially since the survey must be quick and concise. People will usually not be willing to sit down with you for 15 minutes and answer 50 questions. Not at all!
On the contrary, if you manage to attract a collaborator who answers you, you will get their attention for a couple of minutes to answer a maximum of 10 questions as long as the respondent does not feel pressured or invaded regarding their privacy with the questions. Therefore, your questions must be direct and allow you to obtain that valuable information for the purposes of your market study.
Questions for Library Market Study (Example 1):
1. What is your age?
2. School grade?
3. How often do you buy stationery?
A. Daily, B. Weekly, C. Occasionally
4. What are the items you buy the most? (mention 3)
5. Is there a bookstore near your home or school? A. Yes, B. No
6. If the answer is Yes, do you find what you are looking for in that library?
A. Always, B. Almost Always, C. Sometimes, D. Never
7. Do you consider that the prices of that bookstore are?
A. Cheap, B. Accessible, C. Expensive, D. Very Expensive
8. At what time do you shop at the bookstore?
A. In the mornings, B. In the afternoons, C. At night
9. Do you shop on the weekend?
A. Yes, B. Occasionally, C. Never
10. Does your current bookstore offer you other services such as photocopies, the Internet and others?
A. Photocopies Yes ___ No ___
B. Internet Yes ___ No ___
C. Others ______________________________
Questions for Market study Sports Store (Example 2):
1. What is your age?
2. What sport do you practice?
3. How often do you practice it?
A. Daily, B. Weekly, C. Occasionally
4. What are the items you buy the most? (mention 3)
5. Does the idea of having a sports store near your home appeal to you?
6. What are your favorite sporting goods brands?
A. MarcaA, B. MarcaB, C. MarcaC, D. Others (mention)
7. How much do you consume monthly in sporting goods?
A. More than $ 5000 dollars, B. Between us $ 100 and us $ 500, C. Less than us $ 100
8. Do you find variety and assortment where you currently shop?
A. Always, B. Almost Always, C. Sometimes, D. Never
9. What do you like most about your current store?
10. Is there something you can’t find in the stores where you buy?
As you can see, the questions are simple but can reveal invaluable information before starting your business. You must give enough questionnaires to the right people to then tabulate them and then conclude with a report that allows you develop your business plan like a whole tailored suit.
It is important that the questions are short and stated clearly and simply so that the person can understand them. Likewise, in some cases, possible answers should be suggested to prevent people from spreading “opinion” and preventing us from gathering specific details that we are looking for.
The right time
Another detail that we must mention is that it is important to choose the appropriate time and time to carry out the surveys. For example, a bookstore survey should be done during school time and not on vacation to obtain useful information. And as for a sports store, it is ideal to approach gyms or sports fields to be able to obtain information from the right people while they are doing sports and not randomly survey.
Final Recommendations
To conclude, we will say that discretion should always be maintained when asking. Nobody likes to be questioned directly about their salary, income or private and family appearance.
The survey should be short and requested politely without taking the person’s time. In some cases, some kind of promotion or benefit may be offered to the person in exchange for answering our questions. This allows there to be something that attracts you and the person is ready and relax to answer.
And of course, the use of the questionnaires does not end here because this very technique is really useful for measure your customer’s satisfaction, for measure the speed of your services, for estimate the acceptance of a new product or service, for investigate your competition, etc.
* Note: the questionnaires in this article are for educational purposes only and each person and business should adapt theirs to their own particular entrepreneurial purposes.
Plus tools to undertake:
