Ever wondered how you can get into the deepest bits of your customer’s brains to truly understand them?
After all, it would be so much easier to launch a product when you can really get to know your target market.
Well, guess what, you can do just that with a qualitative sales survey!
However, creating a sales survey of this caliber can be extra difficult, especially for those with no experience.
Don’t fret though because in today’s article, we can help you create one through the use of an LLM, specifically our best friend, ChatGPT!
Today, we’ll show you how to use AI to create a qualitative sales survey like a pro.
So hold on to your seats and let’s get this show on the road!
Why Choose to Do a Qualitative Survey?
In digital marketing and growth hacking, numbers are gold.
But when you’re launching a new product or finding out what you can do to improve your current one, you can’t just rely on quantitative data to satisfy your prospects.
Sure, quantitative data can help you keep track of trends and preferences down to a numerical scale, but a qualitative survey?
You can do a hell of a lot more by uncovering the story.
It’s about diving into the thoughts, motivations, and even pain points your customers might have.
With qualitative data, you can:
- Understand Emotional Drivers – Asking qualitative questions can help you understand what your current and prospect customers truly feel about buying your product and why they choose to do so.
- Identify Hidden Pain Points – Multiple choice questions can’t exactly detail what the needs of a customer are. With open-ended questions, you can get them to jot down the issues they might be facing with your previous or competitor products that you can deliver a solution on.
- Guide Product Development – With insights directly from your target market, you’ll make informed choices on features, usability, and value adds that matter most.
So now that you know why you should do a qualitative survey, let’s get down to the prompt!
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The Prompt to Use AI to Create Qualitative Sales Surveys
Remember that this prompt intends to dig into the deepest insights of your existing and prospect customers, so be detailed in filling it out.
Design a qualitative survey for me, a [your role, e.g., “sales and marketing manager”] at [organization’s name, e.g., “ABC Company”], working in the [industry, e.g., “technology” or “retail”] sector. The aim is to gather in-depth insights on [specific area of interest, such as “customer satisfaction,” “market needs,” or “product feedback”] from [target audience, e.g., “existing customers,” “potential clients,” or “industry peers”].
Survey Guidelines:
• Objectives: Outline the main goals, like uncovering [Goal 1, e.g., “areas for product improvement”] and understanding [Goal 2, e.g., “drivers of customer satisfaction”]. Explain how findings will be used, such as to [Use Case, e.g., “refine product development” or “enhance customer loyalty strategies”].
• Audience Profile: Define traits of the survey audience. Include details like demographics (e.g., “age, location”) and behaviors (e.g., “purchase frequency, loyalty level”) that impact their experience and insights.
• Survey Flow and Structure: Guide respondents from general to specific questions. Start with introductory questions to build rapport, then lead into key themes such as [Theme 1, e.g., “experience with product features”], [Theme 2, e.g., “perceived value”], and [Theme 3, e.g., “suggested improvements”].
• Question Design: Formulate open-ended questions that encourage descriptive responses. Questions should capture insights into their motivations, experiences, and expectations. For instance:
• Background Questions: “What prompted you to choose our product/service?”
• Experience: “How would you rate your overall experience, and what stands out most?”
• Value Perception: “In what ways does our product/service differ from others you’ve used?”
• Future Needs: “What additional features or changes would be most valuable to you?”
• Survey Completion Time and Incentives: Recommend a completion time that encourages participation, like 10-15 minutes. Include incentive ideas (e.g., “discounts,” “gift cards”) to boost response rates.
• Analysis and Next Steps: Suggest ways to analyze responses, like identifying recurring themes or analyzing sentiment to uncover emotional drivers. Provide a few actionable steps based on common insights, such as [Next Step 1, e.g., “adjusting specific features”] and [Next Step 2, e.g., “targeting common concerns in customer communications”].
Lastly, add follow-up prompts to refine the survey, like:
• “Identify Core Themes”: “What themes should align this survey with our business goals?”
• “Optimize Questions for Engagement”: “How can I structure questions to engage respondents and capture meaningful feedback?”
• “Tailor for Specific Audiences”: “What adjustments should I make for a [specific audience, e.g., ‘frequent buyers’ or ‘new users’]?”
Now that you know what the prompt will look like, let’s see it in action.
The Output
Here’s how we filled out the prompt:
Design a qualitative survey for me, a head of sales and marketing at 123 Business, working in the technology sector. The aim is to gather in-depth insights on product feedback from existing and potential customers.
Survey Guidelines:
• Objectives: Outline the main goals, like uncovering areas for product improvement and understanding customer pain points and addressing them. Explain how findings will be used, such as to improve future products.
• Audience Profile: Define traits of the survey audience. Include details like demographics (e.g., “age, location”) and behaviors (e.g., “purchase frequency, loyalty level”) that impact their experience and insights.
• Survey Flow and Structure: Guide respondents from general to specific questions. Start with introductory questions to build rapport, then lead into key themes such as experience with or opinions on previous products, perceived value, and [Theme 3, e.g., suggested improvements.
• Question Design: Formulate open-ended questions that encourage descriptive responses. Questions should capture insights into their motivations, experiences, and expectations. For instance:
• Background Questions: “What prompted you to choose our product/service?”
• Experience: “How would you rate your overall experience, and what stands out most?”
• Value Perception: “In what ways does our product/service differ from others you’ve used?”
• Future Needs: “What additional features or changes would be most valuable to you?”
• Survey Completion Time and Incentives: Recommend a completion time that encourages participation, like 10-15 minutes. Include incentive ideas (e.g., “discounts,” “gift cards”) to boost response rates.
• Analysis and Next Steps: Suggest ways to analyze responses, like identifying recurring themes or analyzing sentiment to uncover emotional drivers. Provide a few actionable steps based on common insights, such as adjusting features and better addressing existing and prospect customer pain points.
Lastly, add follow-up prompts to refine the survey, like:
• “Identify Core Themes”: “What themes should align this survey with our business goals?”
• “Optimize Questions for Engagement”: “How can I structure questions to engage respondents and capture meaningful feedback?”
• “Tailor for Specific Audiences”: “What adjustments should I make for both existing and new customers?
Note that you can go even more detailed than what we did with this survey.
Here’s what ChatGPT gave us:
Using the prompt, you can see that ChatGPT gave us a comprehensive output that is usable as is.
However, the best part about this survey is that the answer ChatGPT gives is customizable!
While the original results are great, we encourage that you personalize it a bit more to make it more suitable for your own products and company.
So, how can you improve this survey?
Best Practices for Creating a Qualitative Sales Survey
When it comes to qualitative surveys, the goal is to gather meaningful insights.
Coming up with questions that can lead your target market to detailed responses takes a lot of effort, even with the use of our prompt (though, the prompt definitely makes it less complex than starting from scratch).
Here are some best practices when coming up with those questions that you’d like to include”
Start with Open-Ended Questions
It wouldn’t be a qualitative survey if you only have questions answerable with “yes” or “no”. Instead, try to gather further insight by asking questions that ideally start with the 5 Ws!
Avoid Leading Questions
Baiting your customers to a specific direction with their answer is not how you should be creating a survey. Instead, you need to come up with questions that will allow them to provide feedback, both positive and constructive.
So instead of asking “What do you love most about our product?”, you can always ask “What was your experience with our product”
Encourage Storytelling
Nothing screams like a detailed response then having your prospects tell you about their actual experiences with your product. Knowing their experience can not only connect you with them on an emotional level, you can also implement what you know into your product design.
Limit the Number of Questions
It doesn’t matter how much someone likes a product, they won’t answer a long survey because they definitely have other things to do with their lives.
Keep it short with a limited number of questions, but make sure they’re high-quality. This will encourage your respondents to be more detailed with their answers and also shows that you respect their time.
Create a Logical Flow
We can never emphasize this well enough, but a survey needs to make sense! You can’t just jump from one question to the other. This is not only unorganized and displays unprofessionalism, but it also keeps your respondents’ momentum going.
Ideally, you need to start with broader questions and slowly transition into more specific ones.
Include a Final “Anything Else?” Question
Make sure to always leave room at the end of the survey for your audience to give further feedback. You’d be surprised at what they have to say that isn’t covered by your survey. This also shows them that you greatly value their opinion.
Key Takeaways
A qualitative survey can help you gain genuine insights on your products, which you can use to further understand your audience and improve your product.
When you use AI to create a qualitative sales survey, you make the process easier and lessen the need for you to put strain on your resources, while adding insight to your approach.
Now that you can create your own qualitative survey like a pro, go forth and take your products to the next level!
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