Throughout my life, I have been told time and time again that data is crucial.
Whether as an academic studying a Masters in Economics and Market Strategies, Business Administration during my MBA, or in my professional career as a Sales Manager, it’s always the same. You can never have enough data.
Is that completely true though? Is it not better to focus on the quality of data rather than on the quantity of it?
I used to approach conversations with clients by asking numerous questions and then applying different frameworks to come up with the strategy for them. When I started at Danger Farms, I was introduced to a different way of thinking - quality over quantity.
We hold back on the surveys and tooling and focus on a conversation with our customers, and their customers, tangents and all. Canned questions will get canned responses, but when things flow naturally, we tend to end up with little bits of gold.
As an example, we don’t throw ambiguous, overused phrases in with our clients like Minimum Viable Product, because it’s subjective to both parties. Instead, we ask them what matters to you? and what does success look like? By tapping into the human ability to create stories and envision, we are able to extract the data that we truly need to make the right decisions that will influence our delivery, and lead to a better solution for our customers.
You might have heard about GIGO, a popular concept amongst people who are interested in tech and mathematics, which means garbage in, garbage out.
A business idea won’t be successful if you haven’t spoken with the potential audience, a sales meeting won’t be fruitful if you haven’t asked the right questions to the potential client, a cake won’t taste good if you haven’t used quality ingredients.
While writing these paragraphs, I came up with my personal version of the acronym: gold in, gold out, and this is going to be my personal and professional commitment.
If you agree with the importance of data and if you want to share the ways you stay committed to it, please comment below or message us. We would love to hear your opinions!