PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Here’s brilliant thought.

If you want to sell something, you need to listen to what your customers think.

This proposition showed up in a Wall Street Journal story the other day that appeared under this headline:

WHY COMPANIES SHOULDN’T GIVE UP ON FOCUS GROUPS

In an era of big data, marketers may be forgetting qualitative research

The story went on to cite a fascinating story about the toy firm, Lego:

“Numbers may not lie, but they can mislead. Listening to customers and understanding them can help companies develop strategies that are more on target.

“Back in the early 2000s, Lego Group was in trouble.  Videogames were ascendant, making the Danish toymaker’s trademark plastic interlocking bricks seem passe.  Relying on data analytics, company executives concluded that a digital generation demanded instant gratification, so they pivoted toward Lego sets with larger components that could be completed more quickly.

“Big mistake.  Sales tanked further.

“Hurtling toward bankruptcy, company executives re-dedicated themselves to listening to their potential customers rather than treating them as data points, according to Martin Lindstrom, a branding consultant who was brought in to help with the effort and to whom Lego referred questions.

“And so it was that an 11-year-old boy in Germany mentioned to a team of Lego researchers that the worn-down and pocked soles on his sneakers were evidence of his prowess on a skateboard. ‘They are my trophy,’ the boy said.  It was a eureka moment that helped change the company’s fortunes.”

Over my years in business, I was a partner in a company that valued research, in both quantitative and qualitative forms.  The definition of research we used:  Go to the effort to transcend your own biases and find out what the members of the public really thought about an issue or issues.

We weren’t selling toys like Lego or anything else in that arena.  We were selling ideas and perspectives from our clients.

Nowhere was this more valuable than in preparing for campaigns on ballot measures in Oregon, a tough business that became one of our specialties despite the fact that, as I put it, “we were working without a net.”  There was no middle ground to be found such as would be the case in lobbying; at the ballot, it was win or lose, which, for me, is working without a net.

One of my partners, Pat McCormick, was a master of the art of interpreting polls, but his ability didn’t stop there.  He always went beyond the “big data numbers” to test individual perceptions before deciding how to encourage people to vote.

One of the methods he modeled was to schedule focus groups, an ability which became an art form for another of my partners, Tom Eiland, who functioned as one of Oregon’s public survey opinion leaders.  Invite people to a meeting, even if you had to pay them just a bit to attend, then test their perceptions face-to-face.

Good to combine focus group results with polling data.

Here is the way the Wall Street Journal put it:

“In an age when big data, or quantitative research, has seduced many companies into thinking they know their customers better than their customers know themselves, there is a growing realization that, even if the numbers don’t lie, they can be seriously misleading.  To really understand the beliefs, motivations and passions that move people, it is still necessary to sit down and listen to them, which is what qualitative research is all about.”

It takes fortitude to come to the belief that you cannot rely just on data – or your own biases — and that you need to find ways to understand the real intentions, beliefs, likes and dislikes of your customers.

The Lego account above speaks volumes. 

As a lobbyist, my twist on this was that I often counseled clients not to pitch an idea to the Legislature before they had done the due diligence of asking legislators for their perspective, or what they could see their way to support, given who they were, where they lived, and how they won election.

Then, after doing legislators the courtesy of listening, either convince them of your point of view or find what I like to call “the smart middle.”

Take the basic message to heart — if you are selling something or, as was my case as a lobbyist, you are selling a perspective or point of view, find out what your customers really think before you move ahead to arrive at a conclusion.

Just ask Lego – you’ll be better for the effort.

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And this footnote: A writer of a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal said it was wrong for the Journal to equate the January 6 insurrection with such events as the 9/11 tragedy. She said it was wrong because not enough people died on the 6th. Well, I wrote about this, too, and I included the January 6 event because it was designed to overthrow the U.S. government. Good that not a huge number of lives were lost, but the purpose was still sinister.