Use closed question
In the case of the discussion about the future, I think a close question is better than an open question.
For example, we need to make a story about why the current product can’t solve the issue and future products may solve it.
Closed question
“We think our industry will face a lack of data bandwidth in the 5G era and will face slower data speed issues with some bottlenecks. Do you agree on this scenario or have another scenario?”
Open question
“Do you have any issue in the 5G era?”
In my experience, I got more feedback on the closed questions. No one knows the future so it’s important to make our assumptions and show our idea. it’s much easier for our customers to say “Yes” or “No” and may comment about our assumption itself or idea.
Be specific as much as possible
In addition, it’s better to be specific as much as possible to get clearer feedback from customers. If you can provide more specific and detailed conditions like the following underlined part, you may get clearer feedback. I usually try to put some numbers based on my wild guess even if the value may not be correct, it may work. (Who knows about the future?) For example, we may say
The assumption with a specific number
“5G will be adapted with 7.5Gbps download speed in 2022, we may see bottleneck of 3.2Gbps lower data bandwidth in the connection with current product spec. We think we need to achieve at least 10Gbps allowable downlink to remove this bottleneck.”
Assumption without a specific number
“5G will be adapted with higher download speed in a few years, we may see bottleneck of the lower data bandwidth in the connection with current product spec. We think we need to achieve higher downlink to remove this bottleneck.”
If we provide the assumption with a specific number we can get more feedback. For example, we may have feedback like “7.5Gbps speed is too early in 2022, it might be 5Gbps speed in 2021 and then 7.5Gbps in 2023. or “10Gbps is not enough high to remove the bottleneck. We need to consider the speed loss in the connection part so we need more headroom to enjoy 5G max speed”
The point is to try to be specific. If our assumptions and idea are specific, customer response is also specific. I prefer to have a quantitative discussion with some value rather than a qualitative discussion.
Thank you for reading this post.
Please also check the detail of making a plan of presentation. Discussion is a part of items.
Getting customer feedback is important and this kind of prework is very helpful for the discussion. It’s much better than discussion from the scratch. It’s worth trying.
