The most important day in fantasy football is draft day. Players study and prepare for weeks. On this glorious day, you go through numerous rounds of picking your team. You win or lose your whole season on that day. But it takes several months to find out. Sure, you can make some moves and a couple trades, but a pig is a pig, no matter how much lipstick you put on it. Most of the time you cannot make up for the bad choices you made on draft day.
Similarily, the most important day of your research study is the first session with your client. You can make or break your whole foll0w-up season right here. This is why I stress the importance of making their first encounter enjoyable while getting as much locating information as possible. Just like the fantasy draft, as soon as the first encounter is done, your attrition rate is determined by the events that occurred. Specifically, the client’s impression of you and the amount of locating information you received. Over the following months, you will find out if you won or lost.
If you are out looking for someone and you see the neighborhood postal worker, talk to them. Ask them questions that can help you in your search. For instance, “Do you know if the Hendersons still live in the blue house?”
Don’t force it. If you are casual about it, you may be surprised by what you find. Also, check out this post for a story along the same lines.
So who else from the neighborhood can help?
In order to get a high follow-up rate for your research, you will have to employ marketing. Sorry. Just to get clients into your study, you will have to use marketing. A great place to start is the book “Made to Stick.” Essentially, in order for someone to remember an idea (like coming back in 6 months for an interview), you need to paint a picture with several different brushes, such as:
Instead of explaining all of this, let me use an example. At the end of your first session, you can tell the client:
A. “We need you to come back in 3 months for a follow-up interview.” or
B. “Next time you come in you’ll answer a few questions for about 20 minutes, and you’ll walk out the door with $30. Plus, you’ll feel good about doing your part to make sure a 17 year old kid won’t have to hear a doctor tell him he’s got HIV. “
Which one do you think is a better sell? “B.” They can visualize it and get a taste of the emotional payoff.
So make it stick. Paint the picture. Your clients will remember it.
As always, hit me with your best comments. Pat Benatar rules.
The project I worked on needed a new company car for our outreach/tracking efforts. So one day we came to work to see an old blue cop car. It was the only car the University had available. We work with illicit drug users. Yikes…
So that afternoon we went to look for a client at a spot downtown (which happened to have some “activity” going on). Right when we pulled up in the cop car, a small group of people go crazy, throwing little packages all over the place and dropping into a dead sprint.
Not the most effective presentation.
Lesson: Anything associated with you can affect your follow-up efforts. Clothes, cars, tone in your voice, behaviors…you name it. Think about it all before you cause a riot.
A co-worker of mine (Greg) was looking for a woman that hadn’t been in the study for years. I generated a possible address for her and Greg was off. When he pulled up to the address, he saw an older guy working on the front garden. Greg said “Hello” to the guy as he walked up to the front door. The guy gave a grunt and kept working. Greg knocked a couple times. No answer. As he started to knock a third time the guy stopped working.
“There’s nobody home,” the guy snarled.
“I’m trying to get ahold of Julie Ferguson,” Greg said.
“There’s nobody here by that name,” the guy barked as he went back to the garden.
Greg paused and started to walk back to the car. Then Greg turned to the guy.
“What kind of flowers are those?” Greg asked.
The guy stopped and glared. Then he dropped the tough guy routine.
“These are a rare kind of Magnolia,” the guy responded.
“I do gardening too,” Greg stated. “They look good.”
“Thanks.”
Greg turned to walk towards the car.
“Julie doesn’t live here, but her mom lives in the upstairs apartment,” the guy shouts to him.
Greg left a card and spoke with the mother the next day. She got the message to Julie, who lived an hour away. We performed a phone interview shortly after.
If Greg would have turned and walked away, how much more time would he have spent trying to find Julie? A lot. Especially since we had no idea she lived out of town.
Research isn’t prison, but it can be drab. It doesn’t have to be. You can be professional and abide by all the rules while still having some life in your project. If a research participant enters your study and enjoys the overall experience, they will likely come back, or make it easier for you to bring them back. But if it’s all business and no life, it’s a harder sell. So here are some ways to make their first experience more enjoyable:
1. Don’t be a robot.
You may be in research, but you are a person. Show it. Have a conversation about something other than the research. One time I had a new client in and he wouldn’t give me any contact information. I set the locator form aside and commented on the Denver Bronco hat he had on. I told him it was too bad that the Minnesota Vikings were going to kick their butt this year. He laughed and started razzing me back. We both had a good chuckle over it. Then I went back to the locator form, and he would have told me if he wore womens’ underwear. The banter took less than one minute.
Also, if someone asks you how you’re doing, tell them. If you’re tired, say it. Remember, you’re a human being.
2. Make them laugh Even if you don’t have a funnybone in your body, you can still make them laugh. Just put something funny on your desk or wall. Maybe something like this.
If you get people laughing, they will associate you with something positive. Hence, it’s easier to get them in.
Note: There are a lot of funny research clients out there, so if you run across one, you have permission to laugh also.
3. Nip Uneasiness in the Bud This is easy. Just ask them if they have any concerns. Make sure you let them know you won’t be offended. Many of the clients I did this with stated their concern about confidentiality. Knowing this, I would point to the locked cabinet where we stored the information. Then I would go through the confidentiality agreement with them. It worked every time.
The sooner you incorporate music (life) into your research, the sooner your clients will stop and listen. And keep them coming back for more.
If anybody has any other funny pictures we can put up on an office desk, comment with it.
