Here are 10 key questions to ask your customers. They are flexible enough to relate to products, services and value proposition bundles.

The questions and their answers can be used to support pricing decisions, devising and revising selling messages, revising and refining value propositions, understanding yourself better and more. You can create formal questionnaires, do informal interviews over lunch, hold focus groups for select groups etc.

The most important thing is to ask, then shut up and listen, You also want to ask follow up questions such as "Why is that?" to elicit facts, "Why do you feel that way? to dig deeper into their thinking, and "Can you walk me through that please" to get a better picture of what they are thinking. All primary and follow up questions should start with Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, Can we, How could we, Is, If, ... and their variants.   

This is because answers to Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How describe and reflect reality while How could we, Is, If, ... and their variants elicit ideas and possibilities.  

1. Why us? What caused you to initially choose us over our competitors?

2. Why do you continue to choose us?

3. What impact do we make on your life and the lives of others like you?

4. What do you think we stand for, believe in and are trying to excel in?

5. What do you think we do best?

6. What don't we do well?

7. If you ran our business, what would you do differently?

8. If you ran our business, what would you do more of?

9. If you ran our business, what would you do less of?

10. If we could do anything else for you, what would that be?


© 2015 John B Voorpostel CPA, CA, CMB
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