Market research

Carrying out customer research on loyalty, satisfaction and service can make a big difference to your business.

You should focus on finding out as much as you can about existing and potential customers.

If you can work out how they make their buying decisions, you can adapt your sales methods and techniques to fit your customers' needs.

Business customers

For business customers, you'll want to know:

• how big their businesses are
• what sectors they're in
• who would make the decision to buy your product or service

Individual consumers

If you're targeting individual consumers, it may be useful to know about their:

• gender
• age
• occupation
• income
• lifestyle
• attitudes

Existing customers

For your existing customers, try to find out:

• what they think about your products or services
• why they need your product or service - this may be different from what you believe
• why they buy from you and not your competitors
• what they think of your prices
• what they expect from you, e.g. reliable delivery
• how they rate your customer service
• how they think you could develop or refine your products or services

Potential customers

For your potential customers, try to find out:

• who your potential customers are and what groups they fall into
• how many potential customers there are
• how much of your kind of product or service they already buy from your competitors
• the criteria on which they make buying decisions
• what it would take to get them to buy from you
• what developments they expect in your product or service
• when and where they prefer to buy