When embracing a consumer’s perception as part of your strategic process, you’ll want to avoid going into an aggressive defensive mode. Instead, what you need to do is to empower them even though you have a disagreement with their perception of how your process works.
In order to empower consumers, you must learn about their individual concerns and deal with them as part of your entire strategic process.
By asking them, “what is your biggest concern,” and then giving them a genuine uninterrupted opportunity to respond deeply, consumers will eventually “break” and come forward with what’s truly worrying them about you, your process or myriad other concerns.
Most importantly, once we know the truth, we must not get defensive and instead embrace those concerns and offer a solution or an alternative that in turn empowers them to make a more informed decision and get through false perceptions.
