Editor’s note: Jim Spanier is president of James Spanier Associates, a New York research firm.

When you hire a moderator to conduct your focus groups, the best feedback you can receive from those who attend the groups is that they were “great groups.” During the past 20 years I have moderated many focus group discussions and sometimes I’m complimented by my clients and told that I led a “great group.” But occasionally I walk into the back room and am met with glum faces. Later I am told that the group was disappointing and that the client did not get what he or she wanted.

Now, the strange thing is that most of my “great” groups have been those in which respondents happened to like a client’s product, service or advertising material, while the “disappointing” groups have always been ones in which the client’s offerings were little- appreciated.

This is not meant to trivialize any client’s desire for a positive reaction to what they are testing in their focus groups. Clearly, much time and effort had been spent in creating and perfecting a product, service or ad by the time it comes to me to be shown to respondents. It’s only natural for those who have championed these offerings to believe that if something is not well-accepted, perhaps things would have been different with a different moderator.

But would they have been? The answer is yes, occasionally that may happen, but in most cases the results would be equally disappointing even with a different moderator. So rather than falling back on blaming the moderator, as a marketer what should you do to maximize your learning experience from focus groups that are evaluating a product or service?

Accept any product rejection as learning.  If respondents don’t react positively to what the moderator shows them or reads to them, that likely means they have not been offered a compelling idea or product. Either the benefits have not been sufficiently well-communicated or else those benefits do not appeal strongly enough to respondents for them to become interested in what has been presented. When this happens, it’s not the role of the moderator to disabuse respondents of any mistaken ideas they may have about the product or persuade them to like it.

If focus group respondents misunderstand the product or ad, then your consumer, who won’t have a moderator to act as a spokesperson for either, will probably misunderstand as well. So realize that you will have to restructure your initial concept for consumers if the focus group respondents are not responding positively. Take the respondent’s comments into account and redesign your concept, product introduction or ad so it is clear what you are offering and what the benefits to consumers are.

To give yourself every opportunity for the results of the groups in fact to be positive you should:

Brief your moderator thoroughly on the product. Don’t simply go over the discussion-guide questions with the moderator. Instead, brief him or her on the ins and outs of the products or concepts you will be testing. Show the moderator how the products work and how consumers will use them.

Recently I was asked to moderate groups that called for respondents to use some new earpieces. What I was not told was that if you wore glasses, as I do, the frames would interfere with putting on the earpiece. When I tried to demonstrate to the respondents how to wear the new earpiece, it wouldn’t fit on my ear. As a result, they thought less of the product than they probably would have otherwise and the client was understandably upset.

How easy it would have been for that client to arrange for a run-through of all the stimulus material before the focus groups began! Anyone wearing glasses should have first taken off those glasses, put on the earpiece and then put their glasses back on. But in this situation, the product models were brought in to me only at the last minute, just before the start of the group.

Consider an iterative process. Don’t accept your concept presentation as being written in stone and something that can’t be altered as you proceed from group to group. Be prepared to change it from one group to the next if that seems necessary. Often you will learn something in the first group that will enable you to revise the presentation of the concept or product and make it more appealing to respondents in subsequent groups. For the same reason, consider doing a number of focus groups, certainly more than two, so that you can continue to improve your presentation based on learning from earlier groups.

Take the time

If you want your groups to be great, take the time to brief the moderator thoroughly on all the products he or she will be demonstrating and make sure he or she can demonstrate them seamlessly to the respondents. Also, brief the moderator on the technology behind any product, so answers can be provided to some of the respondents’ unexpected questions. Finally, realize that if there are problems with the acceptance of the product in a focus group, the problem may reside not with your moderator but instead with the way you chose to describe or demonstrate the product to respondents, or indeed with the product itself.

This last point is the hardest to accept, but ultimately it is one of the reasons why we do research. You should recognize that “great groups” are not just those groups where the respondents think your new product is great. No, “great groups” can also be those where you learn the limitations of your product.