This time of year always makes me want to stop, though let’s face it – as the holidays are gearing up who has time to really stop? Yet when you’re running your own business it is important for one to stop. Take a look and access your year: where you are or aren’t in your business? Do you like what you see? What issues are raising your anxiety level? How is your bottom line? Have you achieved all the goals you set in January? If not, then why?
Now these questions can cause a lot of emotional pain and angst but they don’t have to. Why not see them as opportunities instead? And as an opportunity these exact issues could bring you more money in the bank. And who doesn’t need this?
So how can you turn these issues into opportunities and get a huge jump on 2011? By one simple thing: Send out a Survey to your list. Why not start the New Year on the right track by creating a survey and send it out to your clients and prospects. It’s actually THE best way to find out what your clients think about products, services, newsletter, website, membership, etc. Also it’s a terrific way to see what they like, what they don’t and what they’d like to see more of from you.
I gave up trying to guess what my clients and prospects needs were years ago. And in my business and in the clients I’ve worked with, we’ve found whenever we had challenges and were not sure in what direction to go in I suggested, “Let’s do a survey.” And believe it or not every time we would do one we got amazing results which were just the answers we needed.
It’s really simple to do a survey. The quick and easy method is to:
- Be clear on your goals for the survey – what’s the info you absolutely need to find out.
- Figure out who you want to send it to – is it best to send out to your whole list, or maybe just your customers? Or maybe it’s customers of a certain product (or service) that they purchased from you.
- Create your 4 – 5 simple questions. Check out this last post to get my BEST questions to ask-
- Get a www.surveymonkey.com or www.zoomerang.com or www.askdatabase.com online survey account and put your questions in there.
- Create a few emails and send out your survey to your list.
- Close the survey within 7 days or when you’ve had enough responses
- Analyze your results and use them in your business. This is the HUGE part that will help create your 2011. Your results will help shape your business, your products, services, etc., depending upon what you’ve asked in your survey.
Don’t downplay doing a survey in your business. It really is THE most simple and easy way to ensure you’re creating products, services and really meeting the needs of your clients and prospects on your list.
If you want to know more about creating and implementing surveys in your business, I’m putting together a FREE webinar and would love you to join me. I’ll give you all you need to know to do a quick survey to your list. 
You won’t want to miss it. So to find out when it is, just go www.CreateAmazingSurveys.com and get on my survey list. (Plus you’ll get a copy of my Free eReport on The 11 Proven Techniques to Create Amazing Surveys that will Predict the Success of Your Business. I promise I’ll send you a quick email in the next few days with all the details. Hope to see you soon!
Posted by Shannon 
I used to think it’d be really cool if I had this magical power to read people’s minds. I mean how cool would that be, right? It certainly would take a lot of guess work out of what I do with my clients! In fact, one of the main questions I ask my clients is to tell me what keeps their prospects awake at night and what are their prospect’s biggest fears and frustrations. Nine times out of ten they can’t answer this question, which is not out of the ordinary. One of the biggest things I work on with my clients is honing in on “Who” their ideal client really is, what are their frustrations, fears, and worries. Once we know what makes them tick, it’s so much easier to sell to them.
