What do you think about doing this kind of check up on your research?
Pitney Bowes sales force forms what it calls reality commissions. 'You can go out and academically study the market and draw some conclusions about what your customers want, but at a certain point you need a sanity check on all your assumptions,' states Synnot (Kathleen Synnot, marketing VP, Pitney Bowes). Small groups of sales reps, sales engineers, and leasing agents form the ad hoc committees that help give the company a better feel for what its customer wants.
Reality checks are also provided by focus groups of customers, used extensively by the company's quality-customer satisfaction group."