011 - Presentation - Survey Monkey - Tools and Technology

[00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:08] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. I'm your cohost Mike Parsons and as always, I'm joined by the presenter himself, Mr. Chad Owen.

[00:00:19] Chad: [00:00:19] I don't know why, but I always get a little sad when we reached the end of any of our podcast series, but we're going to leave you on a high note here because this is where all of your hard work finally pays off.

[00:00:31] Mike: [00:00:31] Indeed because the greatest [00:00:34] irony about this episode is that if you don't really practice the art of presenting surveys to others, then everything else that we talked about in the last six episodes goes to waste, doesn't it?

[00:00:45] Chad: [00:00:45] Yeah. And we'll just cut to the chase and give you advice. Don't pull up surveymonkey.com in a meeting and start scrolling through the results pages because that's not going to get you the results you're looking for.

[00:00:59] Mike: [00:00:59] No, no, no, because I think that what we have to remember, let's just assume that all of our audience are busy. They've got [00:01:08] surveymonkey.com open right now. They're getting all this great advice and, they're about to. Walk into the room and present. Everyone's like, so Chad, Mike, what have you learned right.

[00:01:20] The thing is that you know, we will have spent hours and hours and hours, days, and perhaps weeks working on this research. So, we'll have lots of the context and rationale and we'll be hanging on the responses of every single question. But the truth here is that you don't build products in isolation.

[00:01:40] You're often part of like a [00:01:42] core team, but perhaps there are stakeholders and sponsors and all sorts of people, third party partners, lots and lots of people, and let's say you've done a bunch of research using Survey Monkey and everyone's keen to like know what you found, the truth really is it's your ability to tell the story and just don't bombard them with numbers and don't read to them like in a rote manner.

[00:02:08] 42% of people said yes to question two. 38% of people said no to question [00:02:16] three. Because the truth here is, they have none of the real context insights and understanding. So, you need to be much more of a storyteller. And after years and years of learning, I think we've kind of cracked a very nice way for you to tell your story.

[00:02:30] So where does that start? Chad.

[00:02:32] Chad: [00:02:32] I'm going to call an audible here. I'm going to invert your framework here because you said something that fired the neurons in my brain. You said, you know, tell the story. So, I think rather than leading with the data and the numbers. Start with the recommendation of what you should do based on what you've [00:02:50] learned.

[00:02:50] And so if you can say, well, we need to test this thing in the market, you can say, well, we need to test this thing in the New York market because we had an insight from the data that there was, you know, strong scores in the Northeast. And we know that because, you know, 80% of people in the Northeast gave us a score of eight or higher.

[00:03:08] So, rather than starting with the data, you can start with the recommendation. It came from an insight from the data that came from the hard number. Does that seem like one potential strategy for sharing the information?

[00:03:20] Mike: [00:03:20] Bang on. Whether you, you know, lead strong or [00:03:24] you take them on a logical path, I think the real beauty is you can go either way. But the key thing is, be clear in what action you should take as a result of the survey. Because if you don't do that, everyone will deduce their own imagination, their own perception of what we should do, and you won't have alignment.

[00:03:46] Now, if you're working on a fairly big, ambitious early-stage product, you cannot afford for that misalignment. For example, I would be as bold [00:03:58] as using examples like this. We should only launch our MVP in the state of New York, and we shouldn't move out of New York until we get an NPS of 8.5 and above.

[00:04:13] Let me tell you the insights behind that. Like I would be really declarative in how I make my recommendations and then almost unpack that in the storytelling. Because when you do a big bunch of research work, there is so many nuances that could be [00:04:32] jumping-off points for people to go off the reservation and draw their own conclusions.

[00:04:36] If you want people to be aligned on the insights, you have to make strong recommendations and almost the very act of making a strong recommendation forces you to have good insights. And if you need good insights, you need to always go back to the data. And this is the three-part approach: have the data, have the insights, have the recommendations.

[00:05:00] I love the way you said it, like don't just open up Survey Monkey in the meeting, put it on the screen and say, [00:05:06] okay, should we scroll through? That is so perfect. That is like the worst meeting ever because someone says, stop, stop, stop there. Where did you get that data? Oh my gosh. We're off track.

[00:05:15] Chad: [00:05:15] And like you might get distracted by Survey Monkey's, awesome export features, and you're like, Ooh, I can just put this straight into PowerPoint. Again, you're missing the point of why you were doing this in the first place. Like go back to your research plan and figure out like, what you were trying to learn, and then, you know, use that data to make those strong recommendations just like you're saying.

[00:05:36] Mike: [00:05:36] I think this is a good sort of baseline. If [00:05:40] you're presenting key research findings, everyone in that room should have read and agreed with your research plan. I have witnessed people with really great ideas presenting research findings, and people have said, well, I disagree with the whole research approach.

[00:05:59] I don't understand why you did quant. You should've done qual. I don't understand why you did this. You should've done this another way.

[00:06:04] Chad: [00:06:04] Why didn't you talk to this customer instead of that one?

[00:06:07] Mike: [00:06:07] Right. But then you get in an argument about the means, not even the findings, and it basically [00:06:14] invalidates the findings because if someone says, I don't agree with the approach, so, therefore, I can't get on board with the findings, then you're sunk.

[00:06:22] Like as a product owner, you're sunk, like you're dead. Then you're also probably full of all this inspiration, excitement, and insight, and then you're like, oh, I didn't bring my defensive argument for the method of research because you're so convinced, but your stakeholders might not be.

[00:06:39] Chad: [00:06:39] This comes back to why we are doing these surveys in the first place, and it's to validate an idea, a hypothesis or [00:06:48] prototype or an MVP that you have. And so, you should be making these really strong recommendations for how you need to move that project forward and you can be confident in doing so because you have the insights from the data.

[00:07:01] Mike: [00:07:01] Absolutely right. And I think there's a real joy that you can find, looking at the data, asking them what does this mean? And then the next question is, what should we do? And the clearer and the more concise you can be about what you think we should do, we'll actually [00:07:22] provoke you to be really sharp on the insights in the data.

[00:07:25] Because if you are like, we should do this, we should test it only in California and only in San Jose because, and then if you will, as you're saying that going, I'm not really sure I totally believe this. That should be a warning sign that you haven't got the right insights because you're trying to draw a conclusion and a path to action that doesn't feel convincing. And it may be a continuous cycle of going back through the data,

[00:07:52] what's our data? What does this mean? What do we do? And you [00:07:56] might be kind of stuck in that. I think another practical advice, work in a pair. Don't try and crunch your big truckload of data on your own.

[00:08:07] Chad: [00:08:07] You'll get lost in the numbers. It happened to me.

[00:08:10] Mike: [00:08:10] You want to talk pivot tables?

[00:08:13] Chad: [00:08:13] I have named it my beautiful mind moment. I was presenting a spreadsheet of pivot tables to Mike, and at one point he just stopped me, and he just said, stop, you know, get out of the spreadsheet. I'd spent way too much of time with the numbers.

[00:08:28]Mike: [00:08:28] I was actually on the [00:08:30] subway and I was looking at the pivot tables on my iPad, and it's like the worst device you could possibly try and look at the world's biggest set of pivot tables. And I remember just scrolling out and out and out. It was like good to into like five-point font and whatever, and I'm trying to like, oh my God, I know why this is so much data.

[00:08:48] And I'm like, okay, let's zoom out a little bit. You know, Chad, we've been through a bit of a journey here because we've really traveled right the way through Survey Monkey, and there's been some really, really core learnings. And I think there's a huge [00:09:04] truth to the idea of think before you do. I think in the case of Survey Monkey, you really need to have a good research plan and know why you're doing this quant research and just take the care and the time with the designing and the previewing.

[00:09:19] Chad: [00:09:19] And keep it simple.

[00:09:20] Mike: [00:09:20] Yes, that was a good one. Keeping it simple. And your favorite one is the acceleration through the recruitment right.

[00:09:26] Chad: [00:09:26] Yeah. That buy targeted responses option, it can allow you to get results in just a matter of hours. So, if you're under some time constraints, it can be a real lifesaver.

[00:09:37] Mike: [00:09:37] And then [00:09:38] obviously get rigorous with the filter and the compare function in the analyzed results. And as we've been saying on this last episode in this series, really ask yourself, what do we learn? What do we do? And really think through the storytelling, the narrative of what you've learned. How does this propel us towards building a great product, telling a great story about this product, and I think you'll be in good shape.

[00:10:02] Chad: [00:10:02] Yeah, and don't forget you can link this quantitative survey with other quantitative surveys or go through the magic sequence of quant qual, quant, qual, that we [00:10:12] outlined in the first episode. So, you don't have to just rely on one survey, and you shouldn't just rely on one survey. You should, you know, approach learning from your customers in any and all ways that you can.

[00:10:25] Mike: [00:10:25] Absolutely. Well, there we go. We have the Survey Monkey series in the bag. What are tour I mean; we use this so much. The two other tools that we're going to cover this year, again, it'd be Otter.ai and dovetail. Also, huge fans of those tools. I mean, this is the innovator's toolkit. These three, I mean, this will get you a long way, [00:10:46] but we're going to segue out of tools for our next series and episode, and we may be going to what is definitely a home game for us, maybe our true love, which is drum roll. Chad Owen, are you ready to announce what our next series is going to be on the podcast?

[00:11:04] Chad: [00:11:04] I don't think it could be anything other than Design Thinking.

[00:11:08] Mike: [00:11:08] Ooh, so get your horses ready, because we'll be off to the races into a world of design thinking. All right, Chad, we're done on Survey Monkey, I think, don't you?

[00:11:19] Chad: [00:11:19] Yeah, [00:11:20] it was fun to share. It's a bit of a secret weapon of ours, I mean not so secret anymore now that it's on the BottomUp podcast. But you know, you can get a more in-depth masterclass on Survey Monkey and many more on BottomUp.io so be sure to check out our learning platform there. And yeah, I can't wait for the Design Thinking masterclass series here on the podcast Mike. I think we're going to have a lot of fun.

[00:11:44] Mike: [00:11:44] Yeah. Me too. Really, really love that one. I'm just going to have to not talk too much.

[00:11:48] Chad: [00:11:48] Yeah. Otherwise, it'll be 28 episodes. It would be a year's worth of content.

[00:11:53] Mike: [00:11:53] Exactly. [00:11:54] All right. Thank you to you, Chad, to our listeners here at the BottomUp podcast, remember you can find us at bottomup.io. Thanks again, and that's a wrap of the BottomUp podcast.