Today I am excited to introduce you to someone who has worked on the Classy Career Girl team and helped me create a survey to re-design and re-launch our Love Your Career Formula 2.0 program in September-15. She created an AMAZING survey for all of the clients who had been through the program previously and gave me an improvement plan that I used during the entire launch to make the 2.0 program better than ever for our participants.

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If you have an idea for a new business, there is always one place you should start. Gathering feedback from your potential future clients so you can identify the frustrations that they are facing, what their goals and dreams are and how you can help. The best way to get this feedback is either by talking to them or by doing a survey.

Since helping me, Rebecca has also actively gotten involved in our Corporate Rescue Plan membership community and officially launched her business, Creative Habitat, to help busy moms and mompreneurs carve out time to invest in their creativity. I couldn’t be more proud that she officially quit her job last month!

So, if you are looking to launch a business or maybe make some changes in your business, you’ll love this interview with Rebecca, my survey expert. I’m confident she can help you as much as she’s helped me. So let’s dive in.

How to Create a Survey That Grows Your business

Here are the five sections you need to have in order to create a survey successfully:

1. Audience

What is this group like? Who am I gearing this question towards? Put yourself in their shoes and pretend as if you were taking the survey. If you know the audience really well, make the survey a little more complex. I made this survey for Anna a litle more complex because the audience had already built a relationship with her and I thought a ten question survey would be ok because I wanted to get as much information as possible. How well do you know your audience?

2. Objective

What type of information are you trying to get from them? When I am starting something new, there is so much information I want to design a program to meet their needs. But, sometimes you just need to hone in on one focus. What is one problem that you have? Your objective is which social media would I be able to reach you best? Focus in on the one problem that you want. There are a lot of questions you can ask related to the multiple platforms.

Choose three tools that you feel like they all have. I try to summarize key components of the question that I am trying to uncover. I would summarize them and come up with three questions. I look at the cross section and narrow it down to something that is more simplified and ask a question that is something more related. I start with one general question and then I break it down a little more into a specific question.

You don’t want to overwhelm them. It’s good to have an introductory question that allows you to introduce what you are asking and that leads them into more specific questions so it is easier for them to answer a question.

3. User Experience

Put yourself in their shoes. Think about how they will approach your survey. You want to start broad if they don’t know a lot of the functionality of the questions you are asking.  If you were taking your own survey, what time and place would you want to take it? Make sure you send it out at the right time.

4. Incentive

I always try to set a goal in the advance for the response rate I want. If you write out your goal, it helps push the process and keep seeking those survey results. Sometimes it is about trying different things and try sending out in the morning and in the evening. Catch people at a time that may be the best for them. Think back to the user and what time are they most available and likely to check their email. Sometimes I’ll even send out individual emails with the survey or make phone calls.

Rebecca recommended a free coaching call as an incentive for Anna’s survey. Anna decided not to do it because she was on a road trip and didn’t know what state she would be in. We decided instead on $10 Starbucks card and we could just email a digital link. We do both love the free coaching call incentive though. When Anna was getting started and sent out her first survey, she just gave out a free interview guide. She emailed people and put that link everywhere and she got 70 responses. That’s why people were signing up to take the survey. They wanted that interview coaching workbook! The more you can learn about them and talk to them, it could turn into a future client.

Warning: The automatic survey did end up in people’s junk mail. It might need a check in or a phone call. If they didn’t respond, it might just end up in junk mail.

5. Analyzing Results

Reviewing the results and putting it into an improvement action plan. Actually take action with improving your business with the results you receive. Find someone to review the data with you and help you take action with improvements in your business.

What Survey Service To Use?

Surveymonkey.com it’s free. It’s the most widespread free and accessible one. There is so much you can do with this free software tool.

Here is the survey that Rebecca mention in the podcast interview to see the variety of survey questions and unique way we asked the questions.

Here are the questions we asked in our survey:

We had 10 questions. I knew that all 10 questions would be ok since Anna already had a relationship with this group. If I was developing a survey for people who Anna had never worked with, I would have limited to 5-6 questions and I wouldn’t have done as many different types of survey questions. This should just take about 2 minutes.

Audience: Previous members of Love Your Career Formula coaching program

Objective: Wcomponentsenets of the program did they most value and what time were they most likely to put effort into their goals. I was trying to gauge their timeframe. I was also looking for suggestions and how we could improve the program.

1. Rank

Survey Question: Please rank the Love Your Career Formula coaching resources starting from the most valuable to you.

I looked at the program and I had a ranking system.  We had training videos, Anna’s guides and forms, bonus audios, tip of the week and coaching calls. I broke down the offering and gave them a ranking. This lets me know what was most valuable to the most people.

2. Value

Survey Question: Which of the resources was the most valuable to you?

Anan has so many resources and PDFs that she was offering so I gave a ranking scenario. This time there were 12 and I asked them to only rank the top 3. I am continuing another question with a ranking. I am trying to make it similar as the first one and a little simple but I am also getting more details.

3. Suggestions

Survey Question: Are there any additinal coaching topics you wish were covered in Love Your Career Formula?

Yes or no. If yes (multiple pronged question), I added a comment box to give feedback and I made sure it was limited to 100 characters.

4. Time Commitment

Survey Question: Was the LYCF time commitment what you expected. If not, what surprised you.

The first two questions required more ideas and ranking. It takes a little more work to provide a comment now. Keep this in mind. Comments are not required. It’s just a way to get a little more information. We are making questions a little easier to answer as we go so they don’t lose interest.

5. Time They Would Study

Survey Question: What time are you most likely to take action in progressing your career goals?

Three options. Morning, afternoon or evening. I also have these bubbles for weekends or weekdays.

6. Accomplishments

Survey Question: Please list 3 actions you are most proud of taking as a result of participating in the Love Your Career Formula coaching program.

This time I gave them three comment boxes with action 1 action 2 and action 3. I want to keep them motivated to continue the survey.

7. Future Suggestions

Survey Question: What method would you prefer for future group coaching.

This is where I gave them some ideas for what they want in the future. They can choose all three or just one to see how open they were to different ways of receiving Anna’s coaching. Teleconference, live video conference and other where they could specify what they wanted.

8. Live Event Interest

Survey Question: Would you be interested in attending a live event? Yes or No. If yes, how far would you be willing to travel for this.

I am trying to get a lot of information out of this for ONE question.

9. Accountability Partnerships

Survey Question: If paired with an accountability partner, which would you prefer?

I am trying to gauge their flexibility in the different ways.

For the comment section, you can limit the number of words. You just want their quick ideas. That is a way to keep your results shorter depending on what your goals are.

Competitor Analysis

Doing a competitor analysis means looking at people who are doing the similar thing you are doing and are trying to reach a similar audience. You can’t analyze everyone. But, get a grouping that have the most similarities and compare and contrast pros and cons. The focus on what your business mission is really your key to success. You can’t copy all the good ideas. You have to choose the best and make sure they are in alignment with your mission and move forward with that. I took some key ideas an suggestions for that.

I think it’s important not to copy and create your own mission for your own busines. But, be aware of what is out there and what you can do even better than your competitors. Sometimes we are scared to asking for help or getting feedback. I don’t want to hear the bad stuff but being comfortable with accepting good and bad is crucial. It’s all about improving. The previous membership site wasn’t bad or terrible but there is always ways that we can be improving and growing and benefiting our clients even more.  How can you take it to the next level and help your clients even more in the future.

Make sure every year yo ugo out with another survey and learn something new and update with something new you learned.

Another way to get surveys too is having someone else outside of our business like Rebecca do this for you. A lot of interns have business plan projects and maybe there is some college student that can help you do something similar to this.