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Two customers told us something the funnel couldn't. I was reviewing the marketing strategy for a health and wellness co...
10/21/2026

Two customers told us something the funnel couldn't. I was reviewing the marketing strategy for a health and wellness coaching business when we learned something interesting about two of its newest clients.

Both had gone through a buying journey that included a webinar. But when asked what actually helped them decide to purchase, they pointed to the same thing: the one-on-one call.

Now, I wouldn't tell a client to scrap their webinar based on two conversations. That's a good way to make an expensive decision with very little evidence. But I would want to know what happened during those calls.

Was there a question the webinar hadn't answered? Did hearing how the coaching would work for their specific circumstances make the difference? Had they been interested all along but needed a little reassurance before committing? We don't know yet. And that's exactly why I'd keep asking.

Marketing teams spend a lot of time studying what customers do. We track registrations, attendance, clicks, and conversions. Those numbers are useful, but they can't tell us what someone was thinking when they finally felt ready to buy.

Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is ask a new customer to tell you the story of how they made their decision. And then resist the temptation to fill in the blanks for them.

Because if you assume you know which part of your funnel deserves the credit, you might end up investing more money in the wrong place.

What makes your customers buy? đź”— Book your call here: https://calendly.com/sam-guidancegrovenc/brainstorming

10/19/2026

Your funnel may be measuring everything except the decision. I have a question for anyone who's spent hours building, reviewing, or optimizing a sales funnel: Do you actually know when your customers decide to buy?

I don't mean when they click the button, schedule the appointment, or enter their credit card information. Those are actions you can track.

I'm talking about the moment something changes in their thinking. The moment they stop wondering whether your offer is right for them and start believing it might be exactly what they need. That moment doesn't always happen where your marketing plan says it should.

A customer might attend your webinar, read several emails, and visit your website multiple times. Your analytics can show you every one of those interactions. But perhaps they were still unconvinced until someone answered a question they'd been carrying around for weeks.

Maybe they needed to hear how the service would work for their particular situation. Or they wanted to know what would happen if they struggled. The conversation that finally helped them decide might not even look like a major marketing event.

Here's where I think businesses get themselves into trouble. They become so focused on improving the steps they've created that they forget to investigate how people actually make decisions.

You can have a beautifully organized funnel and still misunderstand what's moving your customers toward a purchase. And if you misunderstand that, you may spend a lot of money optimizing the wrong part of the experience.

Ask a few recent customers when they knew they were ready to buy. Their answers might surprise you.

Follow for more customer truths.

10/16/2026

Before you invest in fixing a business, investigate why. Imagine spending $50,000 renovating a retail space because sales have been declining.

The showroom looks beautiful. You've updated the displays, refreshed the branding, and invested in advertising to bring people through the door. But what if the reason sales declined had very little to do with the store?

What if customers have been moving toward larger retailers for years? What if their buying habits have changed, or the category is becoming less attractive in your local market?

You might have made some excellent improvements to a business that's facing a much bigger problem.

I've worked with enough business questions to know that people are often eager to move directly into solutions. I understand the impulse. When money is on the line, doing something feels better than waiting.

But activity can get expensive when the diagnosis is wrong.

This is particularly important when you're considering buying an existing business, expanding into a new market, or trying to reverse several years of declining revenue.

At Guidance Grove Research, I help businesses investigate the questions that need answering before those decisions are made.

That might mean examining competitive conditions, understanding how customer behavior has shifted, or identifying whether the opportunity you see is supported by the market.

I won't promise that every struggling business can be turned around. Sometimes the research may tell you the opportunity isn't as attractive as it first appeared.

And I'd much rather you discover that before investing another $50,000.

Considering a business purchase, expansion, or turnaround? Book a brainstorming call with me. We'll start with the questions that could save you from an expensive assumption.

đź”— Book your call here: https://calendly.com/sam-guidancegrovenc/brainstorming

10/14/2026

Q: How do I know if declining sales are my fault or the market's?

That's a question more business owners should be asking before they start spending money trying to turn things around.

I recently came across a situation involving a tile shop that had experienced declining revenue for about five years. The owner attributed some of the struggle to getting older and not having the same energy for the business anymore.

Maybe he was right. But someone considering purchasing the business had a question I thought was much more useful. Was this particular tile shop losing customers, or was the entire market changing?

Think about the difference. If other independent tile retailers are doing well while your sales are falling, we need to look at what's happening inside your business. Perhaps your competitors have become more appealing, or customers aren't finding what they need.

But if customers across the market are increasingly shopping at big-box retailers, that's a different challenge. You could renovate your showroom, hire a new salesperson, and spend more on advertising without addressing the reason customers have changed where they shop.

And if you're considering buying that business? You'd better know which situation you're walking into.

A: Start by comparing your performance with the market around you.

Look at category trends, competitive activity, and where customers are spending their money. Then investigate what those patterns mean for your particular business.

The tile shop's declining revenue was real. What caused it still needed to be established. That's the part research helps you understand.

If your business is struggling, don't assume you know why. Investigate the market before investing in the fix. Talk to me instead.

đź”— Book your call here: https://calendly.com/sam-guidancegrovenc/brainstorming

10/12/2026

When revenue starts slipping, business owners tend to look inward. What am I doing wrong? Is my marketing getting stale? Have I lost my edge? Do I need to work harder? And sometimes those are exactly the right questions.

But I've seen business owners carry an enormous amount of personal responsibility for changes that may have very little to do with how well they're running their companies.

Think about a specialty retailer that's been operating successfully for years. Customers know the owner. The business has a reputation. The products are good. Yet sales keep declining.

The natural reaction is to start fixing things. Change the advertising. Refresh the showroom. Hire someone to help with sales. Maybe the owner starts wondering whether they're simply too tired to keep up anymore.

Meanwhile, customers may be changing where they shop. Bigger competitors may be taking more of the category. The way people discover and purchase those products may have shifted considerably. If that's happening, working harder at the same business model might not solve much.

Here's what I wish more business owners understood: declining revenue is evidence that something has changed. It doesn't automatically tell you what changed or who's responsible.

Before you make yourself the problem, find out whether the market is experiencing the same thing. Because the answer could change what you do next, how much you invest, and whether the business needs a turnaround or a different direction entirely.

If your numbers have been moving in the wrong direction, start by investigating what's happening beyond your own walls.

Follow for more customer truths.

10/10/2026

It’s tempting to think customer interviews are the easy part of research. Write some questions. Schedule a few customers. Ask what they think. Put their answers into themes.

AI makes that process look even easier because it can produce a polished interview guide in seconds. But the value of a researcher isn’t the ability to fill a document with questions.

It’s knowing when a question assumes something that hasn’t been established. It’s recognizing when your language is about to become the customer’s language. It’s knowing when to leave a question open, when to probe an unexpected answer, and when your original hypothesis needs to get out of the way.

That judgment starts before I ever sit down with a participant. The “skeptical” question is a perfect example. When I used Ai, it gave me a perfectly usable sentence. What it didn’t give me was confidence that the sentence would produce evidence I could trust.

That distinction matters when those interviews are going to influence positioning, product decisions, pricing, messaging, or where you put your next chunk of budget.

You don’t hire me because your team is incapable of asking customers questions. You hire me because the answers need to be trustworthy enough to make decisions from.

If your next business decision needs more than a good-looking Ai-generated questionnaire, book a brainstorming call with me. đź”— Book your call here: https://calendly.com/sam-guidancegrovenc/brainstorming

10/09/2026

Customers are remarkably polite. They almost never email to say, "I wanted to buy from you, but I couldn't figure out what made you different."

They just...don't.

Then the marketing meeting begins.

Someone suggests a new headline. Someone else wants a different image. Another person recommends increasing the ad budget because "we're close."

Maybe.

Or maybe your customers are seeing your message and thinking, "Sounds nice...just like the last five companies."

Your dashboard can tell you people didn't convert. It can't tell you they weren't sure why they should choose you in the first place.

That's the part I help uncover.

Before changing another headline or launching another A/B test, it is worth finding out whether your audience understands your positioning the way you think they do.

Sometimes the biggest marketing problem isn't performance. It's translation.

If your numbers have plateaued and every optimization feels smaller than the last, let's have a conversation. A fresh understanding of your customers is often more valuable than another round of testing.

đź”— Book your call here: https://calendly.com/sam-guidancegrovenc/brainstorming

I was reviewing an AI-assisted discussion guide when I noticed it had slipped the word “skeptical” into one of the quest...
10/07/2026

I was reviewing an AI-assisted discussion guide when I noticed it had slipped the word “skeptical” into one of the questions. Tiny thing. Easy to miss.

The sentence read well, but we hadn’t heard from the customer yet. We had no idea whether they were skeptical. That matters.

If I ask, “What made you skeptical?” most people will work within the frame I’ve given them. I might get a thoughtful answer, pull out a compelling quote, and walk away believing I’d uncovered something. Except part of that “insight” started with me.

I’d rather ask what they were thinking when they first encountered the product. Then I listen. If they say skeptical, now we have somewhere interesting to go. This is one reason I’m comfortable using Ai in research and equally comfortable questioning what it gives me.

Before you trust your findings, take another look at your questions.

Follow for more customer truths.

10/05/2026

I was reviewing an AI-assisted discussion guide recently and noticed the word “skeptical” had made its way into a question. Nothing about the sentence looked alarming. It was clear. Professional. It even sounded like the sort of thoughtful question you might ask in an interview.

Except we hadn’t established that the customer was skeptical. That word was ours, not theirs.

Ask someone why they were skeptical and you’ve already given them a frame for the answer. Maybe they were skeptical. Or maybe they were confused, curious, concerned about price, unconvinced, or feeling something we hadn’t considered.

That’s the trouble with leading questions. The obvious ones are easy to catch. The subtle ones can give you beautifully articulate answers to an assumption you accidentally introduced yourself.

AI can help draft a discussion guide. I use tools, too. But generating a good-sounding question and knowing whether that question will produce trustworthy evidence are different skills.

If you put the customer’s answer in the question, don’t call their response a customer insight.

Follow for more customer truths.

10/02/2026

If customers believe your competitor is better at something, you have a problem. But you don’t yet know which problem you have.

Maybe the competitor genuinely outperforms you and there’s work to do on the product. Maybe your product is already competitive, but customers don’t understand the difference. Maybe the thing everyone inside the company considers an advantage isn’t actually influencing buyers very much. Those lead to very different investments.

This is why I don’t think competitive research should end with a feature chart. I want to understand how buyers perceive the options, which differences actually matter to them, and where perception and reality stop matching. That gives you something much more useful than “competitor X is winning.” It gives you direction for what to do next.

If you’re making product or positioning decisions based on what you think competitors are doing better, book a brainstorming call with me before you spend money closing the wrong gap. Guidance Grove’s research work is specifically positioned around reducing uncertainty and replacing guesswork with customer evidence.

đź”— Book your call here: https://calendly.com/sam-guidancegrovenc/brainstorming

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