Darlene is the president of Direct Opinions, a market research firm that specializes in customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and market business intel surveys. Her company gathers data from customers, employees and markets, then helps those clients analyze the data to enhance their business operations and increase revenues, as well as, profitability.
“As a customer acceleration consultant, I work with my customers to identify and better understand, their challenges. I then use the accumulated data to help drive an immediate actionable strategy. We connect the dots between data, strategy and action, to get results.”
There are many companies that can gather data and deliver it to their client, but do not actually help them digest, or make sense of what was collected. What separates Direct Opinions from other market research services is their ability to gather relevant information, gain insights and assist in creating a strategy for success.
“There is an art and a science to what we do. What questions need to be asked? Who are the people, or groups that need to be surveyed to find accurate data? These questions need to be determined before the first survey is conducted.”
Throughout her over 20 years in this business, Darlene has seen too many businesses get bogged down by focusing on a certain customer satisfaction score. She believes there’s more to it. It’s understanding where you stand with your customers, where you’re at risk, where your opportunities are, even for your prospective customers, what are the opportunities out there? Her focus is to take that data and those scores, and use it to help drive business growth.
She makes it her goal to help every client reach the next level. She wants her businesses to actually understand what their clients perceive, what risks the company has with their clients, plus what future opportunities are available.
“We want our clients to understand the data and use it to accelerate customer relationships.”
Every business realizes that finding new customers is expensive. Performing the correct market research and gaining more understanding of past and current customers many times leads to increased sales to current clients at a much lower cost than seeking entirely new ones.
“How can a business make more money from its current customers? How do you make them happier in the process, so they buy even more from you in the future? That’s what customer acceleration™ is all about. That’s how it’s different from customer satisfaction.”
In her early career, Darlene worked for an IT company and was very successful. At the age of 27, she became the youngest, as well as, the first woman in that company, to be handed her own region, the state of Ohio. The company was committed to customer and employee satisfaction.
Implementing her training to maximize customer satisfaction and employee awareness, her region grew from $2 million in sales to over $27 million in just six years.
“We had the number one region, with the top recruiters and sales force. We hit our annual production number in the first six months of the year.”
The company she was working for incorporated many tactics she used. From that, she learned she could use her experience to help even more companies and decided to go out on her own. That led her ultimately to Direct Opinions.
Darlene has found that many times executives want to build plans and strategies but have never gathered the correct data from their customers to help guide their planning.
One example of Darlene’s “Customer Acceleration™:”
In our initial meeting with a new client, he laid out a list of lofty goals, but had not surveyed any of their customer base to better understand what they really wanted or needed. We completed 100 customer interviews and immediately found their second largest customer, valued at over $800,000 in annual sales, was leaving. The salesperson was telling his boss that the reason the customer’s sales had been gradually dropping was because they no longer needed their products and services, which was not true. The client loved the company and didn’t want to leave, but increased shipping fees and longer lead times for product delivery was causing the large customer to seek alternate suppliers. We presented our findings on Friday afternoon and on Monday morning, our client was able to save that relationship.
Darlene’s data also led to the discovery that the company’s sales team was not actively pursuing additional business opportunities with their smaller customers. Her survey found that those bottom tier customers really loved them, but because no salesperson ever called on them, they didn’t know about additional services and products available. The company found they were able to increase sales to these bottom tier customers by 40%-70%.
Darlene tells her clients that her work always pays for itself, just like in this example.
Today, Direct Opinions includes a knowledgeable staff of 25 employees, many of whom are the skilled interviewers, including several who have been with her for over 15 years.
“Being able to accurately compile the data and create a viable strategy requires experienced interviewers. Additional follow up questions to better understand what the client really feels and what they are thinking become important in the overall process.”
Darlene has been recognized as an ‘Outstanding Female Entrepreneur in Northwest Ohio’ and by the National Association of Women Business Owners.
She is on the Board of Directors for Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Cleveland, a global membership of small to medium size businesses. She just finished a term as the President of EOA, which is an accelerator group of business owners under $1 mil in revenue and has been mentoring and coaching other members for over six years.
“It’s an amazing organization (EO). To be able to have a group of friends, plus I consider them family, that I can rely on. It’s very lonely being a business owner, it’s nice to have a group of people to support you.”
Darlene maintains a balance in her life by engaging in a variety of activities including ballroom dancing and shooting guns.
“I trained with a former Navy Seal for two years, and I love it. I also enjoy hiking, cooking and creating crafts.”
She also realized the importance of enjoying the journey.
“I kept thinking, I’ll make a lot of money, get a certain house and then I’ll be happy, successful and fulfilled. But I found, there are times when you’re going to take steps forward, and then you’re going to take steps backward. I think the goal is to enjoy the journey along the way, and not get lost in those steps, “I have to do this, I have to do that. You may never get to that end point.”
So now Darlene focuses on experiences and memories and doing things to push herself out of comfort zone and challenge herself versus obtaining things.
To find out more about Darlene and her company Direct Opinions visit the website: https://www.directopinions.com/ or find her on LinkedIn. Also, to learn more about customer acceleration read her blog post: Customer Acceleration vs. Customer Satisfaction.
