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Why listening to your customers will make you fail

It was during a focus group that I realized that my clients were lying to me.

I was working at a television station in Portland, Oregon, and we were developing a new late-night game show. Part of that development involved focus groups.

You may have participated in a focus group. In our case, the process was like this. Our focus group research company somehow found several groups of potential viewers, paid them twenty dollars or so to go to a meeting room, and then showed them clips of our pilot and asked them questions. What viewers didn’t know is that we, the producers, were watching and listening to them from behind one-way glass (kind of like the interrogation rooms in every police show you’ve ever seen).

Now here’s the part you didn’t expect.

Before the first focus group (I think we did three in total), the research company told us this: “Pay attention when they tell you what they don’t like. Ignore them when they tell you what they would like instead.”

“Ignore them when they tell you what they would like.”

This is because your customers generally don’t know what they want until they see it.

They think they know what they want. But when you try to give it to them, they lift their nose and say, “Oh, I don’t like this. This is not what I want at all.” To which you reply, “BUT IT’S WHAT YOU ASKED FOR !!!” And that can be. But it doesn’t matter, does it? You still lose.

Henry Ford is reported to have said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” [Note: although there’s no evidence that Ford ever actually said this, there is evidence that he felt this way.] That’s because they didn’t have the concept car until they saw one.

Your customers tend to base what they think they want on what they already have. They just want a better one.

Steve Jobs said (really!): “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give it to them. By the time you build it, they will want something new.”

This is what I learned from those focus groups. It is not the customer’s job to create a product or service that they like. It’s your job. You are the producer. You can’t give them that job. If they tell you they don’t like something, pay attention. And then find out what to offer. Something that will surprise you. Something that will captivate them. Something that will amaze you.

In 1997, no one said, “You know what I really want? A book about a wizard boy!”

And then on June 26, we saw one. We read it. And we couldn’t get enough.

JK Rowling is a producer. He didn’t gather a group of teenagers in a room with one-way glass and ask them what they wanted. Instead, what he did was offer them something they couldn’t have imagined. Something that surprised, captivated and amazed them.

You are also a producer. What are you going to offer?

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