Do Penguins Eat Peaches? And other unexpected ways to discover what your customers want. by Katie Tucker published by Practical Inspiration 2023
Summary…
I proposed this book to our Fabulous Networking Book Club based on its catchy title. How could a book about market research with a title like Do Penguins Eat Peaches possibly be dull? I was not disappointed.
Katie’s writing style is practical, to the point, full of examples and with a touch of humour. I set out to read a chapter a day but there were some days when I was motivated to carry on reading, so I finished the book in around a week based on half an hour reading every day.
At book club we like structure. We like to know where we’re heading, we like chapter summaries, and we like to know how to do whatever the book claims to be about. This book had that in spades. The introduction told us how to read the book and trailed the contents. Each chapter started with a story from Katie’s newsletter and finished with a summary of the key points of the chapter. There were practical examples and suggested exercises throughout. By the end of the book we had several ideas for how to do market research.
The target readership is small business owners and I thought it hit the spot. Some of our readers felt it was a bit more ‘corporate small businesses’ and thought their customers would be reluctant to help them with market research. (Is this an excuse?) Katie did highlight that we can all make them!) However, we did agree that we could all benefit from a question bank and incorporate some of those into conversations we already have with our clients.
There were lots of practical activities, tools and suggestions to make this a really useful reference book. Katie is clearly well read and knows her subject but some of our in print readers found the references at the foot of the page annoying. Those of us reading on Kindle didn’t have that problem.
Key lessons
- Stop guessing what our customers want. Ask them!
- Be curious. It doesn’t kill the cat or us! Curiosity, empathy and courage are skills we all need.
- Create a question bank which we can call upon whenever we want to garner some customer insights. The answers could lead to some great marketing messages/content ideas.
- Create a ‘discussion guide’ to keep conversations with customers on track.
- Shift thinking about the problem we solve for our customers and substitute with thinking about how we help them to ‘get a job done’. This can lead to effective marketing which feels less manipulative than some of the ‘we’ll take away your pain’ techniques.
- Spend time on ‘sense making’ to establish patterns in responses and to organise our collected data.
- Be transparent with your audience. Why am I doing this survey? What am I doing with the results?
- Ask for advice not feedback. This makes it easier for your audience to be constructive and helpful.
Would I recommend this book?
Yes. I believe research is an important activity for small business owners and especially for start-ups and those thinking of launching a new product or service.
