2-4-16 Making eye contact helps create a relationship

My husband recently sent me a YouTube link that showed some results from a study of couples who looked into each other’s eyes for four minutes. The study shows that this helps build intimacy.

I’ve written in this blog before about the importance of eye contact when you are running a retail business. You aren’t building an intimate relationship, so you don’t need to look into a potential customer’s eyes for four minutes. But, if you make eye contact, you are creating a potential relationship.

Think for a moment about something as simple as going through a grocery checkout line. If the clerk looks at you and the two of you make eye contact, your simple transaction becomes a friendly experience, one you’ll want to repeat. If the clerk is busy and looks away and never looks at you (which I’m sure we’ve all experienced), it’s almost a relief to be done with the transaction and walk away.

If you have a retail business, whatever product and/or service you are selling, a potential customer wants to know you have a genuine interest in them when they enter your store. The simplest way to demonstrate this is by making eye contact…..and a smile helps too!

1-28-16 Why do a survey?

It seems like I get a Survey Monkey, or some similar kind of email survey, at least a couple of times a month. As someone who has written hundreds of marketing research surveys in my professional life, I am often bemused at the lack of focus and the inhibiting types of possible responses I see. The maverick in me often wants to provide an answer that’s different than what I’m offered.

The major question I always ask myself is “What is the purpose of this survey?” In other words, what will be done with the information that is gathered, and how accurate will the material be that is collected?

The most common purpose for doing a survey is a need to gather information about a group of people – often customers or potential customers – that will impact how you market your product. If the responses to a question do not fit this purpose, they should not be included.

And, if you do not have a clear purpose for doing a survey in the first place, why waste the time and energy.

1-21-16 Polling: How can there be such wide ranges of differences?

Now that election season is ramping up, it seems we hear about new polling results every couple of days….and the results appear to be all over the place. Since random sample surveys are based upon math principles, what accounts for the variations?

How a sample is chosen and how a question is asked determine if a survey result will truly be providing projectable statistically valid data.

A random sample means that everyone in a given population has an equal chance of being selected. Anything that alters this concept biases the results. Right now, we’re hearing a lot about polls relating to the November election.

Here is what will determine the accuracy (i.e., the likelihood that the sample results will match the total election results):

• If you sample everyone who is registered to vote—this will include a lot of people who will not vote.
• If you sample likely voters in a way that excludes certain elements of the population (such as neighborhoods with a lot of low-income or minority populations, or that will exclude many people who may be likely to vote, but were not included in the sample.
• If you sample using a self-select method (such as a Survey Monkey) it will exclude people who simply have no interest in responding.

As part of the survey methodology, the survey company will want to have a screening question, (assuming they are using a list of registered voters) such as: “Are you planning to vote in the November election?”

And, surveys are a snapshot of the moment. If a major event happens that is widely reported in the news a few days before the polling is done, that will definitely affect the results.

1-14-16 Tis the season – Everyone is doing surveys

With the political season in full swing, every other day I am reading or hearing about a survey about the candidates or public opinion about issues.  In my next few blogs, I’m going to go back to talking about the basics of how to interpret survey results.

On- line surveys have become extremely popular.  There are services that have made it easy to do a survey and obtain the results quickly.

If you’ve read my blogs, you’ve learned there are big differences between a statistically-valid random sample survey process, where the data collected represents the views of the total population being sampled (within a certain error range) and a self-select survey, like many that are out there now, where the people who respond make a choice to do so.

Self-select surveys provide good information about peoples’ opinions regarding what’s important and what they appreciate about the product or service a business provides and about some issues.  They can also be a quick way of identifying negative concerns, because that’s often what motivates someone to respond to a survey.

So both random sample and self-select surveys are valuable.  But, it’s a good idea to understand how a survey has been conducted when interpreting the data collected.

If it’s a self-select survey, data is only accurate for the people who completed and returned a questionnaire.  A random sample survey must follow specific procedures, including sample selection and numbers sampled, in order to provide data that is relatively accurate for an entire population.

1-7-16 “Suffragette” is a movie that reminds me how far women have come

Rich and I saw the movie “Suffragette” last night. It is a must-see for everyone to understand how recently women not only won the right to vote, but became acknowledged as professionals and business people.

The story begins in England in 1912, 50 years after the women of England first began demanding the right to vote. It turns out that England was one of the first major country to give women the right to vote in 1918, and then only if they were householders over age 30. Other countries followed, many not until the last few decades.

What’s important to understand is that before women could get the right to vote, most couldn’t be professionals or business people.

I remember how excited I was to participate in a “Women in Business” event when I was in high school. I also remember how it felt to be able to go to a woman doctor for the first time.

Take a look around now and see how many women are employed, how many are professionals, business executives or have their own businesses. And realize, this has all happened in less than 100 years.

We’ve come a long way, baby, and women in many countries of the world, and even in the United States, still have a long ways to go..