Are you asking the right question to get your answer?
For example:
Answer: "Farmers aren't buying because we're too expensive."
Better question: "Compared with what alternative are farmers evaluating our price?"
Or:
Answer: "Farmers don't understand the product."
Better question: "What do farmers understand about the product, and what makes them decide that its benefits aren't worth acting on?"
Or:
Answer: "We need more awareness."
Better question: "What evidence do we have that lack of awareness is actually constraining growth?"
Or:
Answer: "Farmers don't want to change."
Better question: "What would make staying with the status quo feel riskier than changing?"
Better questions
The more experienced you become, the more important the questions become.
Because experience gives you more answers. But it also gives you more assumptions that feel like facts.
The trap: familiarity → certainty → assumption
The quality of your decisions is constrained by the quality of the questions you ask.
Before looking for a better answer, make sure you're asking a better question.
But. Not all questions are useful.
There are questions that confirm and questions that discover.
A confirming question is: "Do farmers think our product is too expensive?"
A discovery question is: "Talk me through the last time you considered buying something like this."
The first contains your hypothesis. The second creates space for the customer's reality to emerge.
"Would you use this?" is a terrible question if you're trying to predict behaviour.
Whereas "Tell me about the last time you encountered this problem. What did you do?" gets you closer to actual behaviour.
Are you answering questions you haven't properly asked?
Farming is incredibly dynamic. In such a multi-contexted environment, things are always changing - what was once true may no longer be so.
What once worked may become less effective.
What was once commonly accepted may have been refuted.
An old restraint may have been replaced with a new one.
True understanding is never static, given the ever-changing nature of farming and farmers.
The ability to challenge assumptions and update beliefs based on better questions is the best way to add certainty to marketing strategies and tactics