Market research: Do customers really know what they want?

The problem is simple - companies get too close to their product. Vendors think in terms of features, buyers think in terms of benefits.

The "If Henry Ford had listened to buyers, he'd have built a faster horse" is a classic example. Customers wanted faster transport. He provided it.

In the same way, focus groups wouldn't have told Apple to invent the iPod. But they would have told them they wanted something smaller with way more storage capacity and even how much they were prepared to pay.

More recently it was obvious to anyone with half a brain from the success of smartphones and netbooks that a much simpler laptop which could give people video, web and email on the move would be a success. But vendors were still asking the wrong questions and tweaking their netbooks and laptops until Apple produced what the customer had been telling people they wanted all along.

Customers know exactly want they want. But if you ask the wrong questions, you get the wrong answers.

I am reading a very interesting book right now that addresses this very question from an anthropological perspective. The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do, by Clotaire Rapaille, discusses how effective marketing techniques (should) vary widely based on.. well culture.

This is a perspective many marketers often overlook, especially in the context of market research. We design formulaic questionnaires focusing on our product, our service, and perhaps on the buyer's requirements. But what we tend to pigeonhole is the mental mapping our target audience brings to a product: what do we think of when we think FASHION? What are our earliest memories of PHONE? What are our most powerful memories of CAR? and so on.. Rapaille argues that where market research falters is by failing to tap into our 'reptilian' brains. As intelligent conscious beings, when responding to survey questions, our logical cortex happily provides all the answers we think companies want to hear: 'I want a car with good gas mileage; I want a phone that can access the internet; I want clothes that make me look attractive, etc'. Yet, based off decades of what Rapaille calls "discovery sessions," different trends (perhaps more organic or primal in nature) emerge, and these trends vary greatly by culture.

I'll borrow a classic example. When Chrysler was creating the PT Cruiser, they commissioned Rapaille to conduct discovery sessions on the American code for CAR. Despite mountains of research that showed people wanted great gas mileage, strong maneuverability, advanced features, etc. these discovery sessions revealed something much deeper. Rapaille's basic methodology is to ask people 1. their first memory of [CAR] 2. their most recent memory of [CAR] and 3. their most powerful memory of [CAR]. What he discovered, despite the logical answers survey upon survey offered, was the American code for car is IDENTITY. Americans associate cars with everything from sunday drives with the family, to first 'encounters' with high school lovers, to a symbol of status and wealth, etc. These sessions revealed the deeply rooted way Americans think of CAR, and afforded Chrysler a powerful conception for what turned out to be major break-out sales on a new model of car.

But the story of the PT Cruiser reveals another notable aspect to this approach. When Chrysler was acquired by a German auto manufacturer Daimler-Benz at just about the same time the PT Cruiser was coming out, the new executives sneered at the car (which as it turned out, was only mediocre in areas like handling and fuel economy). They allocated manufacturing of the new vehicle to one plant in Mexico, as they assumed no one in their right mind would be interested in such a ridiculous looking vehicle. Rapaille argues this was certainly in part due to the German code for car being ENGINEERING. Germans pride themselves on manufacturing intelligent cars with superior technology, handling, safety, etc. As it turns out, the PT Cruiser made a remarkable splash in the American new car market, and manufacturing was backlogged for months and months to meet the high demand. These two very different mental maps of CAR made for 2 very different effects: German execs responded quite negatively the car's lack of engineering prowess and (understandably) miscalculated the response Americans would have; Americans responded quite positively the car's great sense of identity and rather nostalgic look and feel.

So to tie this anecdote back to the question, customers do know what they want in a product... but they may not be immediately aware of how they relate to it. And while features and economy are often top of mind, behavior is often dictated by far more powerful associations, motives, experiences... all of which can vary based on culture.

They know what they want within the scope of what they know... In a sales training session years ago, the instructor ask the group of experience sales reps if "the customer was always right". Some said yes, some said no. The instructor said 'No. That is a good motto for customer service, but in sales the customer does not know what they need. Have you ever had a prospect tell you that they bought a certain product but regretted the purchase later? Weren't they wrong when they bought it? Think of the worst car you have ever owned. (Some chuckles from the crowd). Now, on the day that you bought that car, weren't you sure you knew what you wanted and made the right decision? You were probably congradulating yourself on the deal you got. How did that work out?'

In general while customers don't know what they want per se they do know the pain they're in. To Gary Buck's point if they really are able to succinctly articulate what they needed you ought to hire them on your design team. Finding a way to ease or eliminate their pain is your goal. You want to provide them with a pain killer, not a vitamin. Doing this in a way that delights customers beyond mere satisfaction is the key to repeat business.

There are many methods for soliciting customer feedback. There's traditional quantitative analysis whereby you survey a bunch of people and make decisions based on trends in the data. There's qualitative analysis where you actually talk to live people either in a small group or in a one-one-one setting. There's usability panels where you watch people do the work on your product and note their collective experiences. There's even the method of getting your product out there quickly then making adjustments once the reaction ("feedback") comes in.

My favorite method is getting close to the customer much like Katz and Buck suggest here. I recommend being on site with your customers or brining them into a focus room that you own or rent. Think of the "Hear one. See one, Do one" way of learning to really get at the heart of their pain. Hear what the customers have to say they are going through. Listen to them explain the pain, their workarounds and the results to the business. Watch them do it. Try it yourself if you're able. Don't interview customers alone yourself. Always take an associate. One of you is the interviewer. The other takes notes. Record everything. After about seven to eleven users you'll start to see trends between the customers. You'll need to spend quality time focusing after collecting this information to go through your notes, recordings and individual memories to clearly summarize what you heard and what you should do next.

Finally, the customers don't get the last vote. You do. This is the hardest part. Someone needs to be in charge of making the final call and living up to its successes and failures. Your customers are not responsible. You are. Don't let a committee in your company be in charger either. Appoint one person the final czar able to make the "in"/"out" decisions. You will have dozens of these decisions to make and someone needs to be responsible to make the final call. This may be your business owner, your designer, your PM or your CEO. But someone needs to step up.

To tackle this issue, I highly recommend Bill Stinnett's excellent book, Think Like Your Customer, which should be required reading for anyone in Sales and Marketing, especially if you market high-value products and services.

A glaring Marketing Operations disconnect for many companies is our tendency to over-focus on What and How we want to sell, when we really need to develop a deeper understanding of What, Why and How our customers buy. Those of us in marketing and Marketing Operations need to assert leadership in aligning our company's sales process with our customers' buying process.

The healing starts at home. Our collective lack of effectiveness in supporting one of our primary customers, Sales, surely speaks to the growing emphasis today on Sales and Marketing alignment.

Yes, Sales and Marketing have equal roles in this often dysfunctional relationship. Yet it is incumbent on us as marketers to take responsibility for cleaning up our side of the house if we want a shot at a healthy, mutual partnership with Sales. If you've been in a long-term business relationship or a marriage, you know what I mean. Our unilateral thinking and actions impact the overall health of the system, for better or for worse.

So how does all of this relate to Stinnett's book? I've gleaned a couple of key insights below that are especially meaningful to me. I also discuss some possible implications of these insights, which I recommend my fellow marketers and MO practitioners seriously ponder:

1. We need to remember our customers are buying a desired outcome, not a solution. Our organizational focus should be on understanding the gap between our customers'/prospects' current state and their desired future state – the motive, the urgency, the payback, the consequences of inaction, the means to act, the perceived risks in acting.

Implications for marketers: We can best support Sales by providing the process and means to better understand this gap. We also need to deliver collateral and marketing programs that attract prospects interested in bridging the gap. We need to continually ask ourselves some key questions to ensure that our selling process is not just aligned with the customer, but with our business goals. How well can we fill the gap for the customer and still meet our profit objectives? How can we support Sales to ensure that new sales reps are properly trained to act in accord with this customer-centric approach?

(Continued)

Yes. At first, customers seem to know what they want. However, once the shopping starts what the customer wanted becomes less clear. I think instead of asking the customer to tell you what they want, have the customer tell you about their goals and the challenges they face reaching those goals. As Michael mentioned, when one is a market leader customers come to you for both the question and the answer. In addition, market leaders tend to group everything into some nice acronym like ERP, BSM, ESM, CRM, etc. While this makes the products or service easier to market and sell, it makes it less clear that to the customer that it meets their original needs. Consider a customer looking for an easy method to manage their mailing list. If there are no clear customer requirements for mailing list management, the customer probably purchases a complete CRM system, struggles to implement it, finds it difficult to use, and still has no easy method to deliver the monthly newsletter to the association membership (true story). I believe that the way to know what the customer wants is to understand the problems the customer wishes to fix and then addressing only those problems within the customer’s schedule and budget.

It depends on the customer, but my experience is it's best to give the customer the benefit of the doubt. Usually I've found that a customer who doesn't appear to know what they want is really struggling with how to articulate what they need. As salespeople, we're often too eager to offer a solution without truly understanding the nature of the problem our customers are grappling with. We need to get in their shoes to really understand what they are trying to accomplish because every customer is really buying some type of outcome or experience, not necessarily a product, service or solution. In addition, these days most customers don't have the authority to buy on their own initiative. They may be positioned to champion our offer to the buying committee, but only if we equip them with the tools to explain to their bosses and peers how what we have to offer will advance their business and what the implications might be if they decide to pass.

Since we are in the business of listening to what customers want it all comes down to asking the customer the right questions and knowing what questions to ask. Over the years in working with many clients large and small, the real challenge is presented by the fact that many of our clients know what they want, but construe it to us in a disorganized function, i.e. the CEO reads an article on the latest technology gadget and brings it to IT and says, let's look into this, or IT personnel attend a seminar on the latest and greatest and run in a different direction. This is clearly inefficient and ineffective. So the challenge lies in bringing all of these wants together to determine the benefits it brings to the overall goals of the company.

Larry -- spot on.

Asking customers 'What do you want?' usually produces the answer: 'More of what I have right now, but for less money.

Is it any wonder that most companies invest in adding more features to products and services only to end up discounting the price? This happens because we end up following what customer research tells us to do most of the time.

Companies that successfully innovate always seem to find latent demand... demand that customers cannot express and that their competitors do not or cannot see.

Think Zappos. Or Apple with iPods.

Question: Why didn't customers express need for a better way to buy shoes? Or a more light-weight, higher quality way to enjoy music on-the-go?

Answer: Because they couldn't fathom it. Not because they didn't want one.

A nineteenth century focus group on personal transportation would have likely asked for better horses, less expensive maintenance, more comfortable carriages or longer lasting riding boots. It's unlikely that anyone would have asked for a car.

Instead of asking customers what they want, ask what they don’t want. People tend to be more specific when they are critical. Criticism is actually an optimistic and constructive act. How so? To criticize requires an assumption that something better could exist.

In simple terms, when people explain what they don’t like about something, whether they realize it or not, they are silently explaining what they do want.

Jim York hit the nail squarely on the head -- your goal in querying customers in any way isn't to find out what they want -- it's to find out what they NEED. Much of the traditional approaches I have seen to this all ask very (unintentionally, I believe) leading questions that are too tightly tied to the product or service in question. And as a result, the answers are misleading -- because the participants are biased by their own experiences with that product or service, and tend to answer along lines that support their ego's view of themselves.

What I've seen in conducting user research and testing is that people "level the playing field" for themselves in these situations because the majority are fearful of looking foolish -- they think that if they admit something confuses them that it's an indictment of their intellect or ability (which of course isn't the case :-)

That's just human nature, and it skews results. So the goal is to ask questions that reveal habits, thinking and behavior, rather than specific actions or thoughts directly tied to the product at hand. You need to know how the majority of your customers think, the habits they take with them into every experience; the things that affect their perceptions, the visual, verbal and mental models they are familiar with. The more you know about their triggers -- motive, incentive, desired reward -- the easier it is to accurately predict how they will react to certain features, functions or presentations.

Composing such questions, of course, is difficult, because OUR natural tendency is to ask about the tasks at hand, e.g. "what frustrates you most about this entry method?" But you have to take more time and dig deeper into their psyches, influences and motivations (and you have to convince upper management that the time and money is well spent, which is another story entirely). How you craft these kinds of contextual inquiries is practically a novel, and I don't have time to go into it here -- but I WILL tell you that the right approach results in three things being proven true:

1. What people say they do and what they ACTUALLY do are two different things,
2. If you do usability lab testing afterward, you find that people for the most part do exactly what you thought they would, and
3. The insight that comes from this kind of questioning is worth its weight in GOLD.

To get back to the original question, it reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide. They asked the computer a question and got the answer. Then they had to build another computer to find out what question they should have asked.

Isn't that the perfect analogy for our current market research industry? They ask the wrong question, then blame customers for providing the "wrong" answer.

The problem is that the questioner is trying to close it down into the little boxes the client wants statistics on, often so they can tout a headline figure to the media. But data isn't like that.

For example, I drink real ale. How many times have I been asked to do a survey and comment on how I see, for example, Budweiser against Miller. The implication is that I'm a drinker - I must have a view. And the people at Miller or Budweiser need to know. But to me, they're saying which do you prefer - rat piss or vomit.

We need a none of the above box in all surveys. And surveyors need to be able to correlate subjective data.

When I do a survey, I always include a comments box. And the greatest insight always comes from those comments. Doesn't keep the statisticians happy, though.

I think Gary B gave a very good answer on this. I would like to add to it that in my experience there is also a lot of changes in requirements over time. The goalpost does not stand still and any 'solution' delivered will need reviewing to see if it is fit for purpose over time. In this respect customers will or will not be aware of their need for change, sometimes until it is too late.
I am sure an initial combination of:
* Customer interview
* Customer behaviour observation
* Best practice guide from the industry
would serve well as the initial demand is to be panned out. That said, the 'best' solution may be too much for some, so keep in mind to make small incremental steps to be successful.

Following that a continuous business improvement program should be in place to make sure the steps for further enhancement is being made.

This of course does not really apply to buying pens, so it is more towards solving 'complex' needs.

Like most people in business, I am both a customer and a supplier, so as a customer, I might need / want an item without knowing the full extent of the capabilities or even what is possible at all. In the field of technology, we are getting to the "if we can think it, it is possible" situation and the average user needs to know the difference between science fiction and real possibilities. So it comes down to asking the right questions, not what do you want, more what are your objectives and expectations around this purchase, whether it is a data projector, new ERP software or a cell phone. The experience of the salesperson should be to match the requirements to the basket of available products.

Dissatisfied customers tend to be those that get what they seemed to be asking for but not what they actually expected which comes back to Gary's comment about the difficulty of articulating the requirements clearly.

Unfortunately, customers want everything. The question that needs to be addressed is "What do they need?" There is a big difference between the two. Using processes such as a Needs Analysis and a structured Walk-Thru will help to identify how their needs can best be addressed based on resources. This needs to be done early in the process since not understanding what needs to be done will waste time, money and resources. This will also lead to re-work and higher maintenance costs.

From running a research department for a billion dollar division of a Fortune 20 technology company, I found that customers are experts on thier circumstances and their problems with existing products and can provide insight by reacting to concepts for new solutions. They are poor, however at imaginging new solutions because they don't know what is possible. In short they know what they need but not necessarily what will best satify the need.

It's a good question, and one I've written about elsewhere. The answer is yes and no. If you survey customers, they will say they "want" all kinds of features and customer support, but customer behavior often doesn't reflect what they say on surveys. Hence you get weird things happening, like customers saying they don't deal with companies who offer poor customer service, but then they go back anyway.

In terms of new features, it's also yes and no, but it's often up to the company to anticipate what customers will want in terms of things that are not on the customer's radar. Eg. How many customers would have asked for GPS in an iphone? Not many. But it's a great selling point now, and in the future.

In many ways selling has moved from...well...selling, to being an advisor, information provider and helper, and one reason is that it's almost impossible for any person to actually understand all the technologies in enough detail to know what to buy. They look for help to decide what's best. They expect listening and straight shooting.

I am surprised at the shallowness of some of these comments - as if the customer is dingy and can't make up their own mind....that only we can determine what they need.

Customers shop based on their existing product knowledge, period. Many times their knowledge is faulty because it is based on advertising and what friends and family recommend - and now also what they see on Social Media avenues. It is our job to educate them as to all the options we have available that can potentially serve their needs. And if they don't communicate their needs well enough for a sound purchase decision, it is usually because we have not listened between the lines well enough or asked enough questions.

And customers do and should get the last vote. It is not our job to STEER them in any direction. The best sales person is the best educator and listener. It is only when we don't do our job well that the customer makes the wrong choice and then we both suffer for it.

The rule for successful selling is Listen, Ask Questions, Shut Up, and Keep Listening!

Lots of great comments here.
I believe there are two types of requirements, those that require an organization to innovate and those that are improvements to existing products.

1. Innovation: giving customers something they never imagined was possible. After they become aware that it is possible, it becomes a want or a need. I agree that many customers have difficulty articulating something they would like but don't know is possible. Entrepreneurship and innovation are key here. When a new product / service is invented, and accepted, customers will then want to 'improve it'.

Innovators have to listen to the market place differently than those who need to augment existing products.

2. Product / service improvement. Products/ services that exist can often be improved if we listen to our customers. One of the techniques is to have the service organization listen to customer questions. If the customer is asking if the product does something or how to do it, and the product functionality isn't there, this could be captured as a 'requirement' by the service organization.

Wordperfect did a presentation on this at a seminar I attended years ago. If the customer called asking how to do something and it was not a feature of the software, the customer service person was trained to keep asking questions to understand what the customer was trying to do. Then they would capture the request in a data base and pass it the marketing and development organization.

Which improvements get funded? After a number of requirements are gathered and aggregated, the balance between customer requests and affordability enters the picture. If you cannot afford to make all the improvements, which ones do you invest in..those with the highest number of requests, those from the largest accounts that buy the most from you? Those that make you unique? Those that catch you up to your competitors? These questions are not simple to answer but any product requirements process needs to have a process to decide what is in and what is out of the next product.

I recently reviewed a product called FeatureSet http://www.featureset.com/ (the review will be post on my blog on Jan 27th) which does some automation of the data gathering and adds the ability for customers to vote for their most desired features.
(Please note I have NO affiliation with FeatureSet).

There are many ways to listen to customers, social media, software, complaints, service requests but one thing is clear. Companies who want to improve their products and retain marketshare need to be listening.

I would say it depends and that my experience is mixed.

For instance, working for a market leader in the financial services sector a rift would often open up between the business developers who were out there 'listening to customers' and the model and risk experts waiting for input. And when that happened it was almost always the case that what the customer were really doing was come looking to us (as market leaders) to provide both the questions and the answers -- assuming we already had faced and solved whatever problem/difficulty/issue they were facing.

However, working as a product developer I'd say that to elicit what customers need and differentiate it from what they would like is all important. Poorly executed research will ever so often return no useful info simply because it fails to make the distinction (why choose anything if all is for free)

I subscribe to the same playbook as Gary Buck. I would add that sometimes, the best feedback is what consumers can always give you and that is an even better understanding of what they don't want.

There have been a lot of great answers so far. I would add that, from a psychological perspective, there is always a small bias in self-reported data, meaning that people unconsciously answer in a way that puts themselves in a more positive light. Of course, the impact would be greater in an assessment about personal behavior (such as "how often do you eat sweets?") but I have seen more subtle examples of this in business too. People want to do the right thing, and that desire can impact what they articulate.

The way to address that is by focusing on what a few people mentioned: the underlying needs. By approaching the sales or product development in a consultative way, you can start with the customers stated wants or needs and dig deeper to figure out what's underneath. Doing so can often lead to the most innovative and creative solutions.

I was in a recent discussion concerning the "17 camels problem" that might be germane to this topic as well. (In a nutshell, the "problem" is this: dad dies, leaving 17 camels; will says oldest son gets 1/2, second son gets 1/3, third son gets 1/9; nothing can be divided out evenly; "wise man" shows up with another camel and adds it to the 17, making 18. Son #1 gets 9 (1/2 of 18), #2 gets 6, #3 gets 2, and the "wise man" gets his original camel back.)

The real "problem" is that the will did not add up to 100%, but the ASSUMPTION is that it did. The division is only 94.4% (1/2 + 1/3 + 1/9). I watched this discussion go on in several different kinds of forums, from live seminars to on-line blogs. Virtually everyone ignores the FACT that the "original error" was in the will and the assumptions based on that will.

I sense that most customers (I know this is true of many of my clients) come to the table with "original errors" of their own, and logical, but faulty, conclusions based on them. It is my job to help break down and assess the original intentions/needs, and help find those errors. Then we can move forward.

Just because the "customer is always right" doesn't mean they might not be wrong. For me and my business, I walk in with two assumptions:

1) That they are tell me what they honestly believe is right, and I get to do some digging about in an attempt to understand enough of what they are saying that I can confirm that it is real, workable, and can be done. If so, we move forward; if not, we address the issues.

From this perspective, I start by believing they really do know what they want, and why, and that *I* am the one who needs to come to an understanding of just what that is. I continue working with them until *I* understand it enough to put it into my terms as well as theirs.

2) I also bring in all of my expertise to help show them potential solutions they might not have seen/understood/thought of that can come closer to addressing what they want.

I also bring in some expertise (like HIPAA) that can help address some missing things they NEED but might not care about, either way.

So when I am finished with this process, what WE have come to is what is best for the customer, from my point of view and expertise as well as theirs. This might not look much like what they started with, but it wasn't because they didn't know what they wanted in the first place.

Lee

Excellent comments. I think it boils down to the disconnect between what customers think they want and what they really need. I found a short article by Mike Dalton that explains in detail this issue in the B2B area.

http://www.guidedinnovation.com/si/2010/01/13/what-customers-want-and-why-you...

Regards, Bill

(part 2)

2. We need to understand our customers' buying process and imperative to buy. Where are they in the buying process? What do they need to do next? Who else is part of the decision process? How can we enable our customer champions to take the next step in the buying process? We need to understand the motive behind the potential selling opportunity motive to support sales reps. Is the reason to buy a planned replacement, an unplanned replacement, a new purchase to keep up with the competition or a new purchase to get ahead? Is the initiative supported from the top-down or is it bottom-up? How does this initiative rank in terms of priority compared to other initiatives the customer might choose to fund? If we don't understand these fundamental buying factors, we won't be able to support Sales with strategic intent. We'll just be providing air cover, absent a battle.

Implications for marketers: The programs we establish, the campaigns we develop, the tools we create need to be geared toward helping Sales help our customers to buy. Does Sales believe our marketing programs, campaigns and sales tools contribute to gaining greater access to qualified prospects? Reaching "hidden" decision makers? Equipping customer champions to sell on our behalf? Is there significant tension for the customer to buy? Our credibility with Sales is at stake. Our sales reps need to trust that the leads we provide are legitimate qualified opportunities. They'll have much greater respect for us and the quality of our leads if we take the responsibility to nurture prospects until they are truly ready to buy. This means, when the customer has demonstrated that they know what they are buying, why they are buying and how they are going to buy it. The last thing we want to do is waste our sales resources on a sourcing decision ("Who will I buy from?") when we (and/or our prospect) don't have a strong handle on the why, what and how.

It really comes down to aligning our internal sales and marketing process (with our internal customer, Sales) with our customer buying process. This is a fruitful area for Marketing Operations to focus. Our contributions can make a real difference in our organization's ability to:

* Attract and win the right prospects and customers
* Nimbly and appropriately respond to sales opportunities, based on a sound understanding of where prospects are in their buying cycles
* Optimize our sales resources to focus on high-touch, ready-to-buy opportunities
* Empower our customer champions to be highly effective advocates of our value proposition
* Mobilize our marketing resources – programs, campaigns, collateral – where they will have the greatest impact

Hi, all...
I really need to know something, please. I hate to be this way. But I'm brand new to Focus. This (above) was literally my 2nd comment.

And I'd like to know why my comment was voted down. Truly. If my response to Larry was *really* that off-topic or un-worthy of being posted -- I'd like to know. I value critical feedback.

Will a few of you help humor me a bit on this with some candid feedback? This way I'll know when and where I should post in the future.

Thanks for considering. It's a privilege to know each of you.

Jeff: I couldn't answer you. I thought your comments were good.

I agree with two points you made:

1) That people don't know what is available. i see it the other way around: Our goal is not just to find something to market, but to be able to market it successfully.

Who would have thought that having a camera on my cell phone would be anything that anyone would want? It's a PHONE! But someone did, and now it's almost a requirement.

2) You can often find out what someone wants by hearing them complain about what they have to deal with.

I knew an inventor who lived in New York. He would ride the subway every morning and afternoon during rush hour -- just to hear what people were complaining about. While I haven't heard his name in years, I know he made some pretty good money with some of his stuff. I wish I could remember his name -- who knows, it might be a household name, and I'm just not smart enough to know it.

I have clients who are in the same business who know what they want, but we have found out the hard way that even though they submit a rider of what they want, that doesn't necessarily mean that's all you should pack. Luckily, we have a very sharp Lighting Director that can look at the list and notice, hey what are they trying to do with this gear list? We assume since they are in the business themselves that the rider is exactly what they need. But we have had situations where they didn't think of a simple adapter cable that will keep one of the components of their show from functioning properly. Not a good thing when they're taking the stuff two hours away and realize during set up, hey I need this. So they call us with the implication that we should have picked up on that and packed it with their order. Sending a truck from Baltimore to Virginia for one little cable teaches you to look at the list more in depth and think of little incidentals that mean a lot. Then there are customers who want to create an effect for an event and have no idea what they want. That's where the obvious questions come into play; i.e., how big is the room, how is the area set as far as power requirements. A lady wants 10 small par cans. Well, do you want to wash the wall with color or just have tiny accents. Makes a difference, we have to get a mental picture of what THEY have pictured mentally. A few simple questions can wind up determining that they really need something other than what they are asking for. How many outlets does this place have? Sounds silly, but it makes sure we give them enough cable and power strips to run around the room. Nothing like getting to the place and realizing you only have two outlets to try and put 10 lighting fixtures around a room. So sometimes you have to ask even the seasoned professionals questions to ensure they have everything they need and never assume that they have the item in their own inventory. For those who are not in the industry, a few simple questions makes all the difference in the outcome of their event in that what they asked for would not have created the effect they had in mind.

I thought your comments were right on too, Jeff. I wouldn't take it personally. Got one myself on another question that I gave a lot of thought to before I answered. Each person has their own criteria for what a helpful answer is, and just because one person thought your response merited a thumbs down doesn't indicate a trend or pattern. Now if you get a boatload of thumbs down, that's worthy of analysis (

I thought your comments were right on too, Jeff. I wouldn't take it personally. Got one myself on another question that I gave a lot of thought to before I answered. Each person has their own criteria for what a helpful answer is, and just because one person thought your response merited a thumbs down doesn't indicate a trend or pattern. Now if you get a boatload of thumbs down, that's worthy of analysis (

Thanks, Gary and Lee. Back to our regularly scheduled program :)