Our organization was engaged in a debate regarding customer and prospect preferences and behaviors. After a bit too much of, “I’m right, you are wrong,” someone wisely suggested surveying prospects to ask their preferences.

We created a short 14 question business owner survey and offered the proprietary results as “payment” for taking the time. This collective output would be valuable to an owner to compare their daily activities and preferences with like-minded peers.

As the results trickled in, we tried to find a way to speed up the collection process to hit our goal of 1000 business owners surveyed. Our marketing director noticed that Surveymonkey offers to find survey takers for you. She proceeded to the audience selection webpage and then saw the screen below.

Wow, $22.25 per survey taker! This changed our paradigm a bit. Here’s what was buzzing around our conference room:

• It’s not unreasonable to charge $22.25 for a survey response, but boy oh boy does it add up quickly.
• The input and collaboration we receive from our prospects and customers is a more valuable asset than we thought.
• We need to do a better job proactively seeking input from customers, customer service reps, and salespeople that have increased visibility into customer trends.
• The customer data we already possess has value and should not just sit on the shelf. Who can we co-mine this data with? What partners could benefit from our data? Could we trade our data with partners who have complimentary data?
• We should constantly collect data rather than sporadically chase it when a specific need arises.

Most companies are not unlike ours and can benefit greatly from prospect and customer insights. Hopefully the information in this post will spur you to better understand your prospects and mine the gold you already have.

Do you feel you are maximizing your customer/prospect data? What can you do better?