Here in South Louisiana, as on much of the Gulf coast, we’re getting ready–making sure that the batteries, water, food, gas, and other supplies are ready, that our families will be safe and secure if the worst happens and Gustav follows its predicted course.

And like other business owners, I have the dual concern of ensuring that not just our family but also our business is safe and secure.

We’re lucky, on both fronts:  We have a good disaster preparedness system in place.

What does that mean?  For our family, it means we won’t be scrambling today and in the days to come, starting from scratch to make sure we’re prepared.  Because our generator, our food and water, most of the things we’re likely to need are already in place.  We just need to add the last-minute items, such as gas to run the generator and extra supplies of water.

And in our business?  There’s not really much to do.

• Our insurance policies are up to date (once the warnings go up, you can’t make changes) and we have copies of everything scanned into our computer files, along with tax records and other items we’d need to apply for post-disaster SBA assistance.
• Those computer files?  Our offsite data backup system ensures that ALL of our files are backed up constantly–and we can access those data from any location.  That costs us less than $50 per year, per computer.
• Because our business is home-based, our generator and power inverters can perform dual duty, ensuring that we can charge cell phones and operate laptops.  We have extra batteries for all of these things.  And our family disaster supplies take care of our “staff.”

What about YOUR business–would you be ready, if your business lay in Gustav’s sites?

We talk constantly about the need for a survey system, as one of the integral systems and processes of your business.  That’s critical.  But having good information about your customer base doesn’t matter if those data, and your business, aren’t protected.

Even if your area isn’t hurricane-prone, you’re vulnerable.

All businesses are vulnerable to fire and terrorism, for example.

Almost everyone is vulnerable to at least one type of natural disaster, whether it’s earthquakes, wildfires, blizzards, tornadoes, or some other threat.

And if you think it isn’t a big deal, that it isn’t worth the investment, consider the fact that 42% of New Orleans’ small businesses failed to reopen within the first year after Katrina.  Sadly, data show that the ones who did survive aren’t ready now, as Gustav prepares to enter the Gulf.

Do yourself a favor–use Gustav as a reminder to get your business ready for the worst.  Because if the worst happens and you AREN’T ready, none of the other systems and processes matter.

One of our clients, who was using Survey Monkey to adminsiter his survey, asked whether he should use the setting that allows respondents to “back up” in the survey, to review or change the answers to prior questions.

That’s a great question, because it CAN affect the pattern of responses.

When we construct surveys, it’s critical to ensure that any question that might affect another is placed AFTER that other question, not before.  So, if you were asking a client about (a) his or her post-coaching outcomes and (b) the situation pre-coaching, you DON’T want to ask about the outcomes before you ask about the pre-coaching situation.  Doing so could “contaminate” the response to the pre-coaching questions.

I you have a situation like that in a survey and you’ve carefully ordered the questions to avoid contamination effects, you might decide that your settings should not allow a respondent to “back up” in the survey.  However, if no such situation exists, I see no problem with allowing a respondent to review or change his or her responses.

Blog surveys, e-mails, interactions on Facebook, and other forms of social media provide WONDERFUL ways to hold a conversation with your customers and to court potential customers.  In our opinion, EVERYONE in business should be implementing a social media strategy.

But social media and blogs can’t provide a systematic picture of your customer base or your target market.

Let’s think for a minute about who is most likely to post on your blog or fill out a survey there, to send an e-mail to you, to communicate with you on your Facebook group:  It’s typically the customers who are most motivated.

That means you’re most likely to hear from customers who feel strongly, one way or the other–often, customers who either love your products or hate them!  Clearly, that won’t provide a balanced view of what your customers think, as a whole.

It also won’t give you an accurate picture of who your customer are. We’ve talked about the importance of understanding your customers’ characteristics, because such traits as their age, their gender, their level of education, and their income have been shown to affect the kind of products and services they buy.

So let’s think about this issue for a minute, in relation to a blog survey or social media.  Here, too, you’re likely to get a very skewed picture if you rely solely on these methods of gathering information.

For example, although the age range of people who use social media is increasing dramatically, it’s still skewed toward younger users.  So you’re far less likely to hear from older custoners on a blog survey than you are to hear from your younger ones.

That means you can’t accurately estimate the age range of your customers from a blog survey.  But it also means much more than that.  It means that, if the views of older customers differ from those of their younger counterparts–as they do on most issues–you’re going to get a skewed picture of EVERY attitude and behavior you measure.

This illustration shows you, then, why blog surveys and other forms of social media are limited in their ability to give you accurate information about your customer base.

Should you do blog surveys?  Absolutely.  Poll widgets and other mechanisms for conducting surveys on your blog CAN tell you about what blog readers think (at least it tells you what the people who chose to respond think).  More importantly, it gives them a voice, another way to communicate with you.

The ideal strategy is to engage in an ongoing conversation with your customers through blog surveys, through other social media activities, AND through surveys.  Each of these elements provides a unique aspect of the ongoing communication with your market.

Back in “the old days,” programming a survey was a monumental task–IF you could afford the expensive software to do it.  As a result, doing surveys often lay beyond the financial reach of small- to medium-sized companies. Now, however, inexpensive, easy-to-use survey software programs ensure that even the smallest company can integrate surveys into the systems and processes of its business, which means they can “get inside their customers’ heads” as well as a Fortune 500 firm.

That means EVERY entrepreneur should be thinking about how to integrate surveys into his or her business.  Here are some tips on places to target:

• Write surveys to evaluate customer satisfaction with your major products.  Send a suvey link to EVERYONE who purchases the product, within 2 weeks after purchase.
• Periodically survey your customer base to get ideas for product creation.
• Survey your list regularly to gauge their satisfaction with your communications–newsletter, e-mails, etc.
• Use surveys to generate evidence that your products work.
• Use surveys to generate referrals.
• Use surveys to elicit testimonials.

These are just a few of the ways you can integrate surveys into your business.  Online survey software packages can be obtained for as little as $200–which means if you’re not doing surveys in your business, you should start doing so, right away.

Start integrating surveys into all aspects of your business and watch your profits soar.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  Although these words were penned in the 19th century to describe 18th-century France, they could just as easily describe our current economic and social situation in the US.  As the experiences of affluent Americans and those of their less-advantaged counterparts become more and more divergent, it’s increasingly important for you to know what your customer base and target market look like.

What do we mean?  The characterization of current events in the US is increasingly different, depending upon your situation–in other words, the “view” increasingly depends upon “where you sit.”

From one perspective, foreclosures, precarious markets, rising gas prices, and escalating food costs are the dominant features.  These are the people who are losing their houses, struggling to make ends meet, making hard choices between feeding their families and paying their electric bills.

But then there seems to be an “other America,” one in which many are feeling only a mild pinch from increasing prices, profiting and even prospering in the midst of the economic downturn.  They’re the folks who are looking for opportunity, following Baron Rothschild’s admonition to “buy when there’s blood in the streets.”

How can this be?  How can the experiences of these two groups of Americans differ so dramatically?

Because the “gap” between those two groups has risen dramatically since the 1970s and has now reached a level not seen since the late 19th century.

What does this mean for you?  Many things, potentially.

Most of all, it means you need to understand who your customers are.

• What level of products can they afford–are you producing items that lie outside their reach, or are you “under-pricing” items that an affluent market can afford easily (and might be more likely to buy at a higher price, if they take price as a marker for quality)?
• Where does the  pain of your customers lie, what problem can you solve for them?  Are they part of the middle class that’s feeling the effects of rising prices, or are they part of the more affluent segment that is looking for investment opportunity?
• How can you find opportunity in the midst of this recession?

You don’t need a crystal ball to answer these questions, you just need a good survey system in place to gather information on your customers and your prospects.

It isn’t rocket science–the information you need is basic and it can be collected easily.  Knowing what kind of products or services your customers are producing, how their businesses are doing, whether their income levels are rising or falling, whether they think your products are meeting their needs, whether the changing economic realities have changed their needs–these are the things you need to know.

Now more than ever, it’s critically important to know your market, your prospects, and your customers.  Making surveys one of the cornerstone systems of your business can help ensure that you not only survive the recession but also prosper from it.