I don’t even think of working with other companies and will change my schedule based on Escalent’s availability.
A technology company released a set of developer solutions and needed to understand its market position, not only among its own customers but with its competitors’ customers as well. It needed marketing and product planning insight to find out if it was offering the right features at the right price, and if it was talking about its solutions in the right way to the right people. The goals were to 1) understand why developers choose the solutions they do, identifying gaps and delighters, and 2) expose product planners, engineers and executives to end-users to get a clearer understanding of concerns, preferences and brand perceptions.
Escalent conducted a Listening Tour, bringing stakeholders out of their offices—and from behind the one-way mirror—to have shoulder-to-shoulder conversations with their current and potential customers. We fully vetted and prepped the participants using a double-screening process, which ensured that the participants had relevant experience and were confident, forthcoming and communicative. We also eliminated anyone we thought might abuse the face-to-face meeting to serve their own agendas, weeding out job seekers and people looking to sell their start-ups.
The Listening Tour proved to be a very powerful experience that challenged long-held beliefs and built buy-in across a divided organization. We held a “road show” to share results throughout the division, which excited the team. And the process itself turned project stakeholders into evangelists for the research results, magnifying the impact of the research, and ultimately resulting in more thoughtful implementation of the strategies. In the long run, our client focused its development and product planning efforts, clarified its target audience and inspired the internal team to see the value in getting out and getting real with participants.