Part 2 of 3 of Brainstorming with Vision: How to use customers to brainstorm like a mofo.

Brainstorming with customers is different than brainstorming with your business partners or employees. The key is that customers buy your stuff; often employees don’t.

In Part 2 of Brainstorming with Vision, we’ll ‘set the stage’ for how do this yourself, right in the comfort of your own home.

1. What can you brainstorm about?

Product releases. You’re releasing a new product or service, and you want feedback on how it’s going to do. Now, if you actually make products, you’re already doing this. But if you’re a reseller, you can quickly get 3 great products in a room with customers and see which one wins.

How to improve customer service. Most companies fall down on the job with customer service; I cringe when I try to call my phone company, but it happens with smaller companies, too. If you’re a smaller company, you should be getting regular feedback from customers, as much as you can.

However, when you actually sit down with customers, for more than an hour, the experience changes. You can talk with them and pick up on body language cues. It’s a more ‘gestalt’ feedback system.

Content for website (usability testing). This is my favorite since it’s one of the toughest things to do in my business – getting content from clients. What most companies with websites don’t understand is that they already have the content of their website locked up in two places; (1) inside their customers head, and (2), inside their own heads. If you sit down and talk with your customers about the website, they often will be able to give you very strategic insight on the major ‘gaps’ in website content. It’s amazing how much you can learn within a few hours of time.

Simple customer demographic data. You don’t have to have an agenda, you know. Just talking with customers is an experience in and of itself. Sometimes, this is the best type of brainstorming session to have; you have more mental room to explore whatever is on the customer’s mind.

2. Set the scene for brainstorming.

A Comfortable environment. We suggest your home. Now, you might raise an eyebrow at this, as this is giving them some information that you might not want to be made public, but really – is it dangerous or something? Probably not. But if you really must do it somewhere else, pick a neutral spot, outside your place of business.You want it to be different. Make sure that whatever you pick is not a distracting place and quiet enough to think.

Write out what you want to accomplish. Before you meet with your customer, make sure you have topics of discussion. Just ‘winging it’ is not really efficient.

Have a big notepad open and ready to go. See why your home is better? You can ‘spread out’ and really use the space to do whatever you want. You can setup a big 3M notepad to write on, to take notes. And speaking of notes…

See if you can audio record the session. Ask the customer if you can record the session. Video might be too much, but just a recorder in the middle of the room is not distracting and quickly forgotten about. If you sense the customer closing up, turn the thing off and take written notes. Capturing the useful ideas is, of course, the exercise here.

Do it over dinner. If you can, do it over dinner. It’s a different vibe, and that’s important. Again, making your customer feel this is like nothing they have ever done before. It should not feel like a scientific experiment, and if you do it right, they’ll open up to you in ways no other environment can invoke.

Get to know your customer/client. As the song says, ‘getting to know you’ is important. You want to get as much background about your customer as possible, so you can mentally ‘segment’ the customer from other types of customers. Of course, brainstorming with each type of customer you have is excellent and ultimately profitable.

And keep it social. Don’t hit them up with a billion questions. Your customers will feel a kind of bait-and-switch if you do. You want to get to know them. Talk about their family, their hobbies, their wants and needs. Then use that as a platform to ask about your product, website, whatever.

Make them feel special. If you invite your customer to dinner at your home, they probably already feel special. But make sure they feel throughout the experience that their time is well spent, entertaining, and as close to a ‘night out’ as you can make it.

Give them a gift. If you have product in front of them, allow them to take one of the products home with them, as a gift. If it’s a service, give them a freebie someday in the future. It doesn’t have to be much, but it should be unique. It doesn’t even have to be your product; chocolate chip cookies work well (that’s what we do.)

3 Ask great questions.

Let’s talk a little more about what questions you should ask.

Your goal is to know as much about your customer as you can, so that they answers they provide have a ‘context’ in which to be assessed.

Ask them about their life. People that are allowed to talk about their life, whether the good times or bad, feel important and loved. If you see a way that you can help them as they express their needs, by all means do so. They’ll reciprocate with honest answers.

Ask them about their wants and needs. Try to separate their critical needs from their desires, but overall get them to talk about what drives them to buy, and why. If you’re focusing on your website, you can ask them open-ended questions like, “What is the single biggest think you like about our website? What is the biggest dislike? Why?” That ‘why’ question is important, because you don’t just want answers, you want motives.

Ask them about your product. If they’re talking to you about a product, and they say, ‘I would like to have more colors to choose from,” follow up with a question like, “Why? Is it that these are unappealing or you just like variety? What color would you like to see? Does that mean something special to you?” Go as deep as you think necessary.

• Do they like your product? It’s simple, but frequently overlooked. Do they like the product or service? What do they like most about it?
• Why did they buy it in the first place? There must have been some reason. Even if they bought it for convenience alone I challenge you to extract valuable customer info. It’s there, you just have to discover it.

Why did they choose that product over others? Call out some competitors, and then as your customer why they didn’t choose their product. That alone will give you ammo like you wouldn’t believe.

How could it be better? Whether product or service, you can always make the customer even happier. Ask them about how the product could be improved, what else they buy at the same time, etc. Customers LOVE this question because they feel like they can directly shape your company. And they are. Giving customers the power to do that will be a transforming experience for you. Trust me.

4. Get great answers.

Listen and watch. Ask a question, then shut up for a while. The more you don’t talk, the more the customer gets excited about telling you what’s in their head. This is, or course, a balance. You need to keep them on track.

Make sure you give them the space to express. Don’t rush them – it’s better to let some of your questions go rather than rush them through the process – it’s counterproductive. Give them the space to express themselves. You’re after quality information, not quantity.

Allow them to explore ideas. If they get off topic, let them wander. Sometimes the best information comes from the strangest of ‘off topic’ digressions. Entire campaigns have been built in our workshops by allowing our clients to explore ideas with us.

Pose “what if” questions. “What if you had more of a selection, would you like that?” “What if you could buy both products together for a lower price – would you do that? What should the discount be?” You’ll be surprised at the honesty and great ideas that come from customers. After all, all customers are “professional patrons” – they know that they want, and know precisely what your product or service is lacking. That bears saying a second time:

Customers know precisely what your product or service is lacking. If you ask them how your product or service could be better, you win.

5. Tools for Brainstorming.

Mind-mapping. Read this article for more about mind-mapping. I love mind-mapping. If you have a snazzy setup like me, you can do the mind-mapping right in front of them, on the computer, and allow them to ‘get in’ on the exploration process by just watching things unfold on the screen.

BIG notepad, visible to everyone. If you don’t have a 37 inch screen porting from your server, you could use a laptop, but we suggest having a 3M BIG notepad instead. That way, you can all see and review the ideas you’re talking about.

Recording device. It doesn’t have to be complex, it could just be your iPhone hanging out in the middle of the room. But BE SURE that you do a test recording and see if everyone’s voices can be heard. Click on the icon to the right to hear one customer talk about the experience.

Make up your own tools. Hey, I could write a book on this process, but just use your head. You can probably make up some interesting visuals or physical examples, or handouts, whatever.

6. Our observations about the brainstorming process.

Time flies. Even 3 hour sessions fly by – so block out the time a bit and see if you can get all your questions answered. BTW, if you find that you’re behind schedule, accept it and schedule another session at a restaurant. Hey, if you’re getting good data, then the price of the restaurant is nothing. If your’re becoming friends, either do it the next day, or wait a full month, and do it again.

Just do it. Don’t stop and think too much. Spend $50, make a great dinner, write up a 3 questions, and invite a customer to your home. I guarantee you’ll like the process, and your customer will too.

You’ll probably try to pack in too much into one 3 hour session. Let questions go, rather than ‘speed through it’. Quality vs. quantity, as they say. You want to allow your customers to tell you what’s on their mind. Let them. Go off script.

Have some fun, dammit. Just have some fun. Having fun helps you think differently. What’s the worse that can happen? You have a great evening with some interesting people?

7. And in next week’s session….

In Part 3 (of 3) about Brainstorming, we’ll give you a real-world example of a website we’re creating, Ultimate Restoration, and the experience that client had with the brainstorming process. Many martinis were poured, and a good time was had by all. In fact, we uncovered so many great ideas, we wrote this 3 part series on it.

See you next time!