Before You Send the Survey: What Decision Are You Trying to Make?

A team wants more customer feedback, so someone suggests sending a survey. It sounds like a reasonable next step. But before writing the first question, there is something more important to establish: What decision will the responses help us make?

This week’s marketing research lesson focused on designing a research study. One concept that stood out to me was designing with the end in mind. For professionals supporting business leaders, this approach offers a practical way to connect information gathering to action.

Consider a hypothetical healthcare technology company experiencing low attendance at product demonstrations. The marketing team might assume it needs a more engaging email campaign. However, customers could be skipping demonstrations because the timing is inconvenient, the invitation does not explain the value, or the topic does not address their needs. Each explanation calls for a different response.

Before collecting feedback, the team should define its research question: What prevents prospective customers from attending our product demonstrations?

The next step is to establish a clear research objective. For example: Conduct interviews with prospective customers who registered but did not attend a recent demonstration to explore their reasons for missing it, using open-ended questions about scheduling, expectations, and perceived relevance.

Those interviews could reveal issues the team had not considered. If the team then needs to determine how common those barriers are, it could survey a larger, appropriately selected group. Qualitative research would help explore the reasons behind attendance decisions, while quantitative research would help measure how frequently those reasons occur.

Choosing the right audience also matters. Interviewing only people who attended would leave out the very prospects whose experiences the team needs to understand.

Before the study begins, marketing and sales leaders should agree on the objective and how they will use the findings. Otherwise, they may collect useful feedback without agreeing on what to do next.

In my work supporting executives, I see how this same thinking can apply to meeting planning and training initiatives. Defining the intended outcome helps determine whose input we need and which questions deserve our time.

For your next feedback project, complete this sentence before building the survey: “We will use these findings to decide ______.” That answer gives the research a clear purpose and helps keep the project focused.