I actually find doing customer research for consumer products rather easier than B2B. When I talk to product managers at B2C companies, they tell me that visiting a consumer is much easier than trying to get face time in a corporate setting. Presumably you know what kind of consumer you're looking for. Do you have any colleagues or friends who fit the profile? Go talk to them about their problems to understand better how your solution might meet their needs. Listen carefully for the terms they use (rather than vendor language); few people refer to what they do as a workflow or a process, yet that's what we think of as vendors.

My friend Barb is an avid photographer and she was contacted recently by a product manager of a photo management product. They got together and talked through how Barb manages her pictures. They took a few dozen pictures and loaded them into Barb's computer and walked through moving them from camera to PC to the software and ultimately to Shutterfly. As a "thank you" the product manager paid for the Shutterfly book that they created. Could you do something similar?

In our seminars we suggest that you visit three to ten people and then do a survey of a hundred to see if you've gotten statistically valid results. Go visit a few people and then run a survey and you'll have all the info you need to make sound business decisions.

Answered by Steve Johnson