Gather customer data
Kleimann started by trying to identify what it was that clients were specifically looking for in an HR firm. He needed to know what services he could provide that would make him the Lexus of the industry, so he sought out customer feedback.
But when he first started gathering information, Kleimann made a couple of mistakes.
“The first thing I would say is make sure you understand what you’re asking and who you’re asking it of,” he says.
Kleimann and his team didn’t spend enough time specifying the questions they were asking.
“It just wasn’t concise enough,” he says. “If you’re going to take your client’s time, make sure it’s useful.”
For example, he asked many questions about employee benefits and — not shockingly — most said that benefits were too expensive. He realized he needed to be asking more structured questions, such as whether they would prefer a higher deductible with a more limited network and lower costs versus a lower deductible with a broader network and higher costs.
In another question, respondents said they needed computer skills training. But did that mean Microsoft Word and Excel, or did that mean network management and data security?
Instead of just crafting questions to ask your clients, take the process backward.
“You have to think about the options,” he says. “Think about the impact that the questions are going to have. … We should have been thinking about the potential solutions before we were even asking the question.”
For example, he knows there are only certain topics his company is qualified to train on, so there’s no point giving a client free rein to address things he can’t do.
“You need to think about the confines of your capabilities before you start asking questions that might lead to answers outside your confines,” Kleimann says. “Theorists would say don’t limit your feedback. But this is business. This isn’t a classroom, and there’s a certain duty that we have to help people focus easily and specifically on the data we need and can actually do something with.”
Also look at how easy or hard it is to answer your questions — not from your viewpoint but from the client’s.
“The more complex it is to answer your questions, the fewer people who will participate,” he says. “If you leave it at the sky’s the limit, you might get a broader range of data, but you’ll get it from fewer people. We’re businesspeople. We’re not going to spend a huge amount of time transforming your business. Make it easy, make it concise, make it relevant, and we’ll help.”
By changing the questions he asked, Kleimann got better feedback from his clients, but sometimes, it’s possible to have too much good data, as well.
“Make sure you’re gathering information in a manner that you can and will do something with it,” he says.
Narrow down what you’re trying to learn and only gather the information you truly need.
“If you gather 50 pages of data and you only have the time and resources to do anything with five, just gather five because you’ll spend more time trying to figure out which 45 pages of data to get out of your way than you will executing on the five you ultimately narrowed down,” Kleimann says. “It’s human nature today to try to do more than you possibly can, so narrow it down and spend your time and your client’s time gathering that data to what you can achieve.”
