You’re fired!

If you’re a fan of The Apprentice you’d be forgiven for thinking that a focus group is an opportunity to convince your target audience that they want your product. You may believe that it is simply a mechanism to convince other people in your team that your original idea was the best after all, and the focus group agreed with you (even if they didn’t).

We have a lot to thank The Apprentice for, where else would you get to see a group of egotistical, arrogant, deluded fantasists all backstabbing and lying their way to a high paid salary. It’s great entertainment. But it also has a lot to answer for too. Not only does it promote the idea that to succeed in business you need to be a bit of an arse, but it also gives the concept of customer research a terrible image.

Candidates in The Apprentice run focus groups really badly

Every year I watch The Apprentice I grumble to my partner about the appalling way the candidates grill focus group participants. Their approach is to either present them with an idea and ask if they like it, or they tell them about the concept, ask for thoughts and then argue the participants into submission. When this doesn’t work and the focus group clearly dislikes the concept they just ignore it and carry on regardless.

It’s no surprise that The Apprentice candidates have produced some awful products with their poor approach to customer research. Think of the cardboard camping table (Cardboard + Mud = Ugly Mess), the beach book holder (which was unstable, hard to assemble and you couldn’t turn the page) or the classic environmentally friendly greeting cards (sending cards wasn’t the most environmentally friendly idea). None of these ideas should have passed through a well-designed and correctly facilitated focus group.

4 lessons The Apprentice candidates need to learn

So what should next year’s candidates of The Apprentice do differently to run an effective focus group? Here are 4 lessons we think would make a big difference to give them a much better foundation to create a great product using focus groups.

1) If you don’t ask, you don’t get

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen” Winston Churchill

If you don’t want to hear opinions which may challenge and contradict your ideas, there’s no point in a focus group. You have to be prepared to be guided by the research. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should blindly follow what participants tell you. But you should be able to use the information you gain in the focus group to stimulate new ideas and refine current ones. If you’re already sold on your idea and are only doing a focus group to prove you’re right, don’t bother. Save your time and effort.

2) Don’t speak, listen

If you want to run a focus group correctly, never argue with, or try to convince a participant that they are wrong. You are there to hear their opinions and understand their perspective. Not the other way around. If participants don’t like an idea, don’t understand the value in something, or are bewildered by the concept, that’s a good finding. It highlights a change in strategy is needed. It also reflects what customers may think when presented with the product in store, where you won’t be able to convince them it’s worth buying.

3) Ask a stupid question…

Asking leading questions is an easy mistake to make when conducting customer research for the first time.  Asking them with an enthusiastic smile “What do you think?” communicates the outcome you are hoping for. What you’re really saying is “Tell me you like my new design that I just worked really hard on”. People generally want to please not disappoint. We all have a tendency to tell someone what we think they want to hear.  Customer research needs to be designed to get to the truth, to strip away biases, influences and the chance for hurt feelings. At the very least, you should make sure that the person facilitating the group has no vested interest in the outcome of the research. In other words: If it’s your idea, stay well away!

4) Research helps generate ideas

Conduct a focus group before you commit to an idea. The best way to use a focus group is to understand the needs of the group, uncover gaps and exploit new ideas from there. Once those ideas are more concrete you can return to the group to test different variations and refine a concept further.

Feel free to pass these tips on to Lord Sugar for me if you like, oh and Donald Trump and Martha Stewart too.

What do you think? What else do The Apprentice candidates need to learn?

When talking to our clients about focus groups and customer panels they invariably reply, ‘there’s a difference?’. Indeed there is, and it can have a lot of impact on the type of research you can do and the feedback you will receive.

If you conduct a focus group, you get a one shot deal. They will tell you what they think of your site or product, and then go away. All the data you get from them is received in isolation of any other factor. This might be good when asking about something definitive like a brand name or logo and asking ‘what do you think?’

A panel, on the other hand, offers a way of evolving your ideas and receiving feedback from the same people through the changes. A panel can be reconvened at regular intervals to monitor progress of, say, a new shopping site page, to see how their opinions have changed and if those changes are for the better or worse.

Naturally, the latter is more expensive, as the subjects need paying or rewarding for their time, opinion and loyalty over the course of a project. But, the information that your regular panel members provide can help bring a project from its origins to conclusion in a meaningful and structured manner.

So, you can see that the two distinct groups can serve very different purposes. For example, anything that is being researched as a concept, such as an advert or cosmetic site refresh, can go to the focus group for a snapshot of opinion and some yes/no answers to design questions.

On the other hand, when you need some ongoing feedback, turn to the consumer panel and you will see how their opinions evolve with your product. The downside of the panel is that you need some guarantee of open mindedness and a willingness to share opinion.

Another difference is that while both are traditionally run as face-to-face events, it is now easier to run a quick focus group over the Internet, allowing for the rapid collection of data. A long-running consumer panel is still best run as a face-to-face exercise to allow for a more detailed approach and the ability to observe the reaction of subjects.

Someone who starts out with negative thoughts may well harbour them through a project, no matter how it progresses and you might find that your panel runs out of love for the project long before you do. This is where companies that run these panels and groups try to find the right people, a task that would be tough for most businesses.

So, there can be a fine line between when to call in the consumer panel or when to get a focus group to do some opinion forming for you. Or, if your project or product is easily adjustable, why not try evolving it in front of the focus group and see their reactions and impressions change live on the day to try to shorten the timeline and development process. It’s amazing what some hard focus and nimble evolution can do.

What type of group do you think would benefit your company or product better?

Related services: Focus Groups & Customer Requirements Capture