833: Have Meaningful Customer Surveys and Conversations to Create Meaningful Ideas with Darshan Mehta

Robert Plank 0:00 Well, welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We're here with Darshan Mehta, and he is the founder of ai research.com, which is an insights platform to quickly and affordably extract insights from consumers worldwide. He also has connect quick.com, which is an app for instant connections and engaging interactions. He has more than 25 years of branding, marketing, insight, strategy and technology experience. He has a new book coming out Darshan, glad to be talking to you. Hey, great

Unknown Speaker 0:30 to be here, Robert. Thanks for having me. super glad to

Robert Plank 0:32 have you. And just to make sure that we we get all of our promotions in there, get the right things plugged, what is the exact name of your, your upcoming book, so that way, we can find it on Amazon and we can get a bunch of copies. It's

Unknown Speaker 0:44 called Getting to Aha, why today's insights are tomorrow's facts. And it's coming out in November 2.

Robert Plank 0:50 Super great. So getting to Aha, like what is the idea here we talked for like two minutes before the call began recording about how there are there's this information out there to these conversations happening that we need to tap into take notice of that way we can get it ahead of our competitors. So tell me about this really cool idea you have

Unknown Speaker 1:11 get into has really getting to that aha moment. It's that moment of insight where you go, Oh, my God, that's really interesting and very true. Give me an example, I'd say probably some of the best people giving insights, or comedians, right variable that take something that's over in society, combined with a trend with a technological societal trend, and combined together and give you an observation made that makes you go, you know, I never thought of that. But it's so true and so funny. And that's an insight. And an insight is different than a fact, or an observation is the combination of things put together. And those are the insights that can often help you understand what motivates or triggers consumers to act.

Robert Plank 1:57 And this is a really interesting topic here, because they like this idea here. I like adding in the humor, it's one of these things where I don't, I don't look it up, I don't research it that much. Because when you get too deep into it too much it like it kind of ruins the fun, it ruins the magic. And then if I'm watching some stand up person on like dissecting what they're doing, like, I don't want to go through all that work. But I found myself in the recent years of being too much of an info dumper, right, like I give a webinar and I just like list all these facts, or I'm trying to land a coaching client and I say, here's 20 ideas for your business instead of focusing on one or two. And then I just I've been kind of for all these years chasing this idea of, you see these people who they're really great at presenting. And they sometimes just don't say anything. And it seems like the humor and the comedian part of it is like there's there's things to be pulled out from what they're doing, right from kind of some of these things that you mentioned, of like making the observations, the things that are relatable, kind of choosing a contrarian or like a weird point of view, and then defending it in a lot of ways. And then as a result, they kind of take, they can take things that are like really boring and mundane and kind of elevate them and make them interesting. So this is all kind of like what I consider almost like the magic to tap into of saying, well, they're sure there's information. Sure there's things I want to teach. But then that's almost like secondary of I want to have like the fun bombastic, like presentation, window dressing. So this is kind of a fun topic, because it's like that. It's like this really elusive, kind of like the humor, the comedy thing. It's this elusive thing, but I think it's it's really needed, especially these days when we're trying to stand out and keep attention and kind of get people entertained and not just educated.

Unknown Speaker 3:43 That's absolutely true. It is interesting, use the word elusive. And I think a lot of times people find that this is a bit elusive. But I've been fortunate to have been doing for many years. And I've seen patterns now that have really helped companies be successful. And that is, look, in today's digital world. You're going to hear from your customers, whether you like it or not, right? I mean, even if you don't ask them, they're going to put reviews, they're going to put comments online, and they're going to talk about products and services. So what I'm advocating is actually go out and create these conversations, have these conversations with your target market, and find out what really motivates them what triggers them understand their buying decision making process. It's not difficult, it's not that elusive. It just requires having conversations. And what I mean by conversations, it's a combination of talking and listening, right? Really trying to understand because ultimately 95% of the decisions you and I make are made by our subconscious. And, you know, we, as humans can process a tremendous amount of information. And you know, based on tone of voice, pace, all kinds of things that are factored in, but tapping into those thoughts, feelings and stuff. that takes a little bit of time. That's where you have to have conversations. And you know, it's a form of research, qualitative research. Most people have been doing surveys because it tends to be something they're familiar with. Almost all of us have taken a survey. So we have some familiarity with it. And then we've also found that surveys tend to be less expensive. But I've noticed that when people come to branding challenges, they're often wanting to get at the why, why does something happen? Or why does not something happened. And to do that really requires having deep, interesting conversations. And what I'm offering with my platform, is an ability to do it at a much more cost effective manner than ever before. So that this type of research that has been mostly for those that have big budgets and resources now is much more affordable for the smaller business to medium sized businesses. But not only that, but can do it on a regular basis as well. And

Robert Plank 5:59 so what is this platform do exactly? Like? Is it like a survey tool? Or like, why should we be using this instead of like doing it by hand or doing like one on one conversations, things like that?

Unknown Speaker 6:11 Sure, but one on one conversations is one way to do it. But I would say that having a focus group, where you have a group of 10 to 12, people that are really focused on talk about a topic tends to yield much more robust, insightful. Insights, really. And the reason is, imagine yourself like at a cocktail party, right? You can go talk to someone have a conversation, but if you're with a group of people, and all of a sudden, you're all doing a deep dive into a topic, and you're feeding off of each other. It's making use of oh, you know, that's really interesting. Would you said, Robert, that made me think about this. That's the kind of conversation you want to have, that gets everybody engaged, involved and does a deep dive. And that's when you start tapping in to what people really think and feel, and what are those triggers. And

Robert Plank 6:58 I can see how that could work. Because it's, it's like, there's so many times even when you and I are talking, I'm like struggling to find just the right word, or I think, well, this word gets the point across, but it is exactly what I'm saying that I can imagine that when you have these 10 to 12 people, one person can start a thought and someone else can build up on top of it. And then someone maybe like can disagree with it and kind of refine this idea where when it's just one person, and there's a guy, anytime you're talking, there's a time crunch, right, you have like X number of seconds to get the sentence out. But if people can bounce ideas off each other, and then when this person is talking, someone else can be like thinking and then figuring it out, I can see how this 10 to 12 Kind of like bubble kind of can can make the language refined and get it to kind of the correct answer. And you're reminding me of all these things out of all these times when if I put out a product, made a sales letter or done a product launch, and then I was just kind of guessing, taking a stab at it. And then when I when I went back and like looked at the feedback or like talk to people and things like that, then sometimes there would be like repeat keywords or phrases that I could like kind of plug into a sales letter or like take a piece out or add a piece in and almost like to kind of just like mirror, what they were saying or like put into words, their own problem better than than they can. And like just and it's such a simple idea. But so few people do it. And that and I personally forget all the time, just to kind of like mirror back to the person, the things that they're telling me and maybe even try to get a little bit ahead of them in a thought process. So simple, easy to forget.

Unknown Speaker 8:32 Exactly. And the thing is, people love to give feedback, people want to tell you what they think and feel. But when you do this at a scale, we have a bunch of people in groups, you start seeing patterns, you start seeing commonalities. And that's when you actually can take, you know, some let's say, some suspicions you've had and validate them or not validate them with these groups. And then you can take them to a survey, and actually extrapolate that to a much larger population. So in other words, let's say you do some groups, and you say, you know, I'm getting the sense that people liked this particular aspect of a product or service. Now I can actually put it into a survey and survey, you know, on a larger level, to actually say X percentage, I'm pretty confident that X percentage are going to like this or not. And so that's the best use of both methodologies, having those conversations first, and then validating and extrapolating them with a survey. And

Robert Plank 9:26 that's, that's interesting to hit it from, from both angles, hit it from the like the anecdotal and then kind of the larger data because it's easy to talk about surveying in theory, right? It's easy to say well, I'll make a multiple choice question now I'll let them know if if a like this or like that, but I like your idea there of you have like the gut feeling, you have the suspicion and then you go and like almost like scientifically, then try to prove your hypothesis. So if you have any fun stories about that, like of what you've done where like you had a conversation led to a suspicion and then you tested it with the The surveys. Yeah, in fact,

Unknown Speaker 10:02 there was a retailer that we did some work for it was a small retailer in the DC area, that was children's clothing. And they wanted to do sales. And you know, they're doing a lot of right things, they had the right audience there. But they decided they needed to go deeper and understand their consumer better. And interesting, they found out as they open their stores at 10 o'clock. But a lot of the women that came to shop actually dropped off their kids in the morning at school. And then they went to a bagel shop nearby and had their bagels, but by the time they left, it was 915 or so. And they didn't want to wait 45 minutes for the store open. So they're often leave and not come back. And they found out from a series of groups, and then they validate some surveys, that if they had opened the store half an hour earlier at 930, that was the perfect timing for you know, the women to drop off kids have their bagel, and then go to the store and do the shopping and then go on with the rest of their day. And as a result of that, just simple insight, right painful conversations, they more than paid for their research within a week.

Robert Plank 11:07 That's pretty cool. And and like you're reminding me of all these times when just like simple tweaks like that make me feel kind of dumb and away, like, Oh, I wish I'd made that change like so long ago. And like what you're reminding of there with like something like that is I remember once I had a coaching client on just like a screenshare. And I told him like login and one of my sites and go to this download link and grab this piece of software. And he logged in, and it took like 10 seconds for him to log in. And I thought to myself, Man, I need to figure out how to speed up just that part, because I'm getting bored even even looking at that. And then he was looking for some download link in like a top right corner. And I was like, oh, no, it's down below. And you have to click that. And I thought again, like it would just take one simple changes to put what he was looking for in the top right corner. And that even might be a more like intuitive, logical kind of thing to do. And I can always reverse it if if I don't like it, or I can always revisit that in a couple of months and go and improve it later on. But he just reminded me of like all these little changes like that of just changing like a store printing from 10 o'clock to 915. Just to kind of make one little tweak there. And so but the problem, I guess that that I have with that sort of thinking is sometimes I feel like I'm so behind, right? People always talk about like Walt Disney and Disney World and he'll move a trash can six inches over to make it so optimized. And it's it seems like a lot of people talk about just like being so close to perfection, right? And I'm 96% Perfect. And I'm getting it over to 97% Perfect. And I feel like I'm like maybe like 12% Perfect. And then I get one of these little insights, and I'm just kind of moving it to 13% Perfect. So do you feel that sometimes? Or do you see this where, where people say, Well, sure. I want to survey and I don't want to incrementally get better. But I sometimes I feel like I'm just kind of a it's just a drop in the bucket. And I always feel like I'm so behind. And I feel I feel kind of so discouraged. Like I'm inching towards perfection. But instead of perfection being here, it's like it's like way over there. I mean, am I crazy? Is this making sense?

Unknown Speaker 13:07 I know what you're saying. But in all honesty, perfection is a moving target, right? I mean, what might be perfect today may not be tomorrow, for example, I think a major event like we've all been through the last couple of years with the Coronavirus and COVID-19. I mean, who would have predicted and look what is done to the rapid changes that it's making in the way we make decisions in terms of you know, what we're buying, as well as where we're working. And you know, how we're spending our time, quite honestly, that nobody would have predicted it would have been, let's say, I think people think that there was a certain way things were done, you know, pre COVID. But now post COVID, things have really altered, you know, some for the positive some for the negative. But the bottom line is changes occurred. And you know, something you mentioned earlier, you know, there's a lot of facts and information that a lot of times businesses and entrepreneurs get overwhelmed with. And the key is really to keep things simple. And what you want to do is get to the heart of what's really going to make a big difference. For example, I would actually say that most people nowadays are no longer buying products and services, they're buying experiences. So it's just not buying a product or a service that they're trying. They're looking at the entire experience they're buying, you know, before the purchase during the purchase and even after the purchase. And a lot of times that this is also tied in with is this product and service also good for the environment, or sustainable or has other benefits beyond me just purchasing their product or service. Now these are all different decision making things that have come into play, but they can all make a difference. And

Robert Plank 14:40 you have any any cool examples of that because it's again, it's easy to for you and I'd be stuck in our own bubbles and our own little businesses. But then when you're talking about like these big ideas, like if someone buys a product and they say well, it's good for the environment, it has other other helpful factors beyond just what they do. When is when does that happen? What kind of core case studies you have in that area?

Unknown Speaker 15:02 Well, I think it was just time I really insights. I mean, I always use the example of being sustainable. Environmental, I think, if you really think about, I mean, look at just YouTube, look at all the videos, you see about the unboxing experience, right, and so many companies now, and I think Apple was one of the ones that really kind of triggered that, you know, it's just the whole experience of opening the pack is the way it is designed, from the package to the eating, even the way the package is put together, and you open it and build it. So it's all part of the experience. Now people are looking looking for when they're buying a product. And that's making a big difference. And it's no longer just the customer satisfaction experience. We're talking about a whole continuum, right? From learning about your product, to the process that go through to investigate it, to look at also competitors, that that actually buy it, and then actually how they feel post purchase. And a lot of times, you know, the product is making you feel good, but also making sure others see that you have a product that makes you feel good as well.

Robert Plank 16:03 And you see that sometimes where someone will like post a graphic on on Facebook or social media, especially like in marketing groups, and they'll say, I just registered for this, I just I you know, bought a copy of this, I mean, heck for your your new book, you could do this right, you could you could have a graphic already made, like, I just bought the whole book, and then there you go, they can slap it on their, on their page there. And so you're reminded me of like another really cool kind of marketing principle against something like I forgot, but you're bringing it back to life in me of this whole idea of like, tell people what will happen after they buy, right. And like I used to, I used to do all the time on a sales letter. And for some reason I forgot, like, say even like having text or little video, like after you click the button, you'll go here, you'll see this, you will feel a bat. And I mean, and that's kind of like the digital online version of unboxing. But I mean, there's almost like there's so many like software tools and products and things like that, where I'm just I'm kind of, I wonder how much of my hesitation of buying this or just putting this off because it's not our priority, because I just haven't gone through the imagine the imaginative steps of after I buy, what will I do? And there's like that hesitation and that unknown? And will I have to wait after I buy so even just that simple idea of it what I have like an unboxing situation, however it applies to your own business, after someone buys from you, what will they experience? What will they see what are the steps? And is there a way that you can kind of communicate that to them ahead of time, that way, they'll feel the excitement already as if they've already bought now like they have to go fulfill that?

Unknown Speaker 17:42 Yeah, I think we've really, I think what a dig deeper marketing is changing from kind of what it used to be, which was really just selling or communicating more of a one way kind of communication to the consumer. Now with the digital world is totally different. It's all about building a relationship, and an ongoing dialogue with your customers, right. And so, you know, sometimes even the people buy your product, they may have still have some dissonance or hesitation thinking, hey, that makes the right decision or not right? I really investigated this, but I wasn't sure I decided to go with it. And that's where the communication post purchase really comes into play. Right? Did you really? How did you find the experience? Is there anything we can do to make it better? Do you have any suggestions to even an answer product for the future? So and those are all things that will help people feel more happy and comfortable with the decision they made?

Robert Plank 18:35 And I mean, every every time that we go through like the Question and Answer step in our conversation here, you ignite like four more ideas. And again, I feel dumb, because they're all things that years ago, they just kind of fell off like one after another and like one thing that I do a couple of times a year but I should do more often is like personal videos. So I look at like the top like leads scored, you know, contexts I have customers and I'll just shoot off these quick 30/62 You know, webcam things just like how we're talking here. It takes no time. But so few people do it. And then something else that I used to do is not as consistently as I should have, but I used to send like thank you cards, especially if someone made a high ticket purchase and I'd customize it and if I can find their photo on social media, I put it on the card and they'd get a card in the mail with their own photo on it and like a little bit and even things like like quick thank you calls. That was just like kind of always a fun experiment that would go on for a few days and it would drop off and so should your your reawakening all these things I feel almost like I'm like saying these out loud so I can mentally like make an effort and bring all these these old good ideas back to life. And so are there any kind of like fun outside the box like kind of ideas or like techniques such as these that come to mind as far as like, just the things that like you wanted to jump into or things like that, like you have jumped into or that we should maybe think about as far as like Creating this like enhanced personal, like customer experience, any, any ideas come to mind? Sure.

Unknown Speaker 20:05 But you also made me think of something really interesting in this whole conversation. It's what I really advocate is having these conversations, right. So you're, you're feeling like, Oh, my God is really making me think. And we're both kind of getting insights from each other. And, you know, making our creative process work again. And so really, unfortunately, it shouldn't be out of the box, but it is a little bit these days. And that is you just really need to have more conversations like this, right, that are engaging, that are involved that really make both sides think. And we were both kind of engaged in both, what we're saying it makes us kind of keep upping the ante to get into it, you know, further and deeper. And that's really what we're talking about. And so if you can have these and imagine just, if we had, you know, a five more Robertson, three more darshans, right. And we had more of a conversation about some isn't just digging deeper, just think of how much more thought provoking things, we're all going to kind of feel. And what I find is when we do these sessions for two hours, initially, I think, Oh, my God, two hours, right. But it goes by so fast, most people don't want to leave. But the key to these conversations is a couple of things. One, you want to make sure the right people and to you want to make sure that you really have someone good, second moderate, and really promote the conversation. You know, the role like for me is not to give you the facts and figures, it's more important, what you're telling me what your perception is, and what you feel and things that's much more important than what the facts might even exist. I

Robert Plank 21:33 like that a lot that, that. So you saying this, this, this focus group is important, but also have like the limited length of time that way, it's just not going on forever, and then have that that moderator there not to control the conversation, but just to kind of shape things guide things so that that way, things stay focused. And there's there's not a lot of chaos. And that way, it's like there's at least some sort of sort of organization there. And so, so yeah, this is making a lot of sense. And like the same way that we're our minds are waking up. When we're coming up with ideas and one upping each other. I can definitely see the value here. And so what's the next step here? People are listening to our conversation here. And they're, they're getting just as excited as us about these ideas and the things that we need to be kind of doing the deep business thinking about, what's the next step? How do we get the book when it's out? And what are these websites to go to? What do we do on these websites?

Unknown Speaker 22:26 Sure, there's two simple ways to really get in touch. One is just going to the website, ai research.com. And if you want to fill in your name and contact info, we'll let you know when the full platform is launched, as well as the book. Or you can always just email me directly at DM at a research.com. Fantastic

Robert Plank 22:46 DM at ai research.com. And when the answer Are you saying that the platform is not fully done,

Unknown Speaker 22:53 I've been using the platform internally for many years. But now I'm just making it so it's basically available to anyone, anytime, anywhere to do it in any language. So basically, it's an on demand platform. And then related to the platform, we're also going to be offering you some educational tools to help you basically use it better.

Robert Plank 23:13 Well, super great. And so if they go to ai research.com. And if it's ready, or it's not ready either way, they can fill in their details and get notified when it is correct. Exactly, absolutely. Super great DM at ai research.com. And we all need to be having these deep conversations, we need to be listening to these things, especially as you said that COVID has changed things. And there's been a lot of shakeups, a lot of maybe things that are old aren't working anymore. Things that are even older need to be brought back to life and it could be so chaotic, such a mess. So confusing. So why not get some stability, some clarity? By having these conversations, the place to do that is to sign up for that platform at ai research.com? And can you plug the long title of the book one more time just to make sure we can get it? Sure.

Unknown Speaker 24:02 It's called Getting to Aha, why today's insights are tomorrow's facts.

Robert Plank 24:06 And if we search on Amazon, getting to ah, getting to Aha, is that easy way to find the book? Yeah, it

Unknown Speaker 24:13 will be it's just, it won't be until the launch is on the second. So that's the date when it's going to be available. But again, if you sign up, I'll be happy to send you an email advanced and so on. Let you know what's coming out.

Robert Plank 24:25 Super great. Well, thank you Darshan, for stopping by. And we will see everyone at ai research.com. And on Amazon, getting to Aha, and do you have any final parting words of advice? You have a sentence or two just to wrap up this whole conversation?

Unknown Speaker 24:39 I would say that, you know, I think once you get into this world of insights, it's really eye opening. And you know, basically, business is faced with choices all the time. And I think if you can make informed decisions and informed choices, you will find that things are not that complicated, sometimes simplicity and just doing it You know what your market kind of is already kind of directing you towards is sometimes the best way to get to you know the Northstar that you're seeking