Wouldn’t it be nice if those new prospects did what you wanted them to? Or your customers, partners, vendors or even your employees? One of the most common problems businesses make is treat all those different groups of people in the same way. Luckily, the Circles of Care can help you overcome this problem.

In this post we’ll take a look at how the Circles of Care can be applied to a questionnaire, but really the rules and mindset behind the Circles of Care are generic and can be applied to anything.

Treat Them Differently

No matter what the case, the core idea behind the Circles of Care is the same: treat different people in different ways. Depending on your company’s size and the situation you may add a few circles or remove a couple, yet the idea of treating different people differently remains.

Let’s try to apply this to a simple thing like a questionnaire. Before we begin, I should add that I’m not an expert on questionnaires so don’t focus too much on the specific numbers but rather try to follow the mindset behind them.

The Questionnaire Example

Imagine you go to a website you’ve never visited before. You click around a bit and suddenly you’re asked if you want to fill out a 50 question-survey. Imagine we, at this site, asked you to fill out a 50-question-survey. Your answer would obviously be a resounding “no”.

In this example two clear problems arise: 1) You just found our website and still don’t know who we are - why should you care about us and our survey?, and 2) Where’s the bribe? If you’re going to do something for us, we’d better do something for you.

If we applied the Circles of Care we could solve this problem of treating a prospect like an employee (who’s obviously got more invested in you). Starting from the inner-most circle and moving out:

1. Founder / CEO - the founder shouldn’t really be answering questionnaires. He should perhaps write them (if it’s a small company), or at least look at the main take-aways.
2. Employees - max. 50 questions. An employee has obviously got a lot invested in the company, and hey, he’s getting paid to answer the questions. So reliability of the answers and likelihood of the questionnaire being answered is high.
3. Passionate Customers - max. 25 questions + symbolic gift. They’re passionate about you for a reason, and it’s not because you overload them with questions. But once in a while they’d be willing to take the time to answer your questionnaire with nothing in return but some sort of symbolic gift. Again, reliability is quite high while likelihood of the questionnaire being answered is lower.
4. Repeat Customers - max. 10 questions + tangible reward. You’ve obviously got a product they like, but they aren’t necessarily very loyal. In order to answer even a short questionnaire they want something in return. Depending on the behavior you want these customers to take in the future, the reward can differ, e.g. if you want them to try out the new product you just launched, you could offer them a discount or sample. Just keep the reward tangible and the number of questions quite low and you should avoid any reliability issues. The likelihood of response is defined by how generous the reward is.
5. Prospects - max. 5 questions + discount on next buy. This is the guy stumbling onto your website. He doesn’t care one bit about you or your (in his eyes) stupid questionnaire - unless there’s something in it for him. A discount on the next buy promotes two favorable behaviors: 1) answering the questionnaire, and 2) buying your product, turning the prospect into a customer. Issues concerning reliability of the answers may arise depending on how you attract traffic while the likelihood of response is solely based on the generosity of your “bribe”

As you may have noticed some circles are more likely to give you reliable answers than others. This basically comes down to how much you can trust these answers. It’s the ugly face of gifts, rewards and “bribes” (doesn’t really matter what you call it, it’s all the same), some people may just fill out the questionnaire as quickly as possible and cash in their prize.

You can work around this problem in many ways but it’s not really the point. The point here, is to treat different kinds of people differently. The amount of questions you ask them. The kind of prize you give them. Or if it was a sales material: the length of the sales copy or even the format. Perhaps prospects should be served an inviting video while passionate customers would like to know the gritty details about your offer (as they’re already sold on why your product is important).

So whenever you are about to interact with someone, pull out the Circles of Care and see how to treat them (depending on their respective circle) and if relevant: what to offer or bribe.

-Morten

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