Yeasayers, naysayers and the dead-on truth

Editor’s note: Bernard Schwartz is a senior project director at Genactis, a Fort Washington, Pa., research firm.

I am sitting in the backroom of a focus group facility watching a female interviewer chat with a gastroenterologist. She is slumped over, perspiring slightly, and looking quite tired. He is energized and having a wonderful time telling the entire world why the data she has just shown him on how Product X can prevent breast cancer is a complete lie and bogus research. Until now, she’s had it easy, as many of the respondents were polite and a few were even enthusiastic. One even exclaimed, “If this data is really true, this is great news.” This current guy is systematically taking the product concept apart, fact by fact, and he’s correct in his views more often than not.

I can see her shrinking away, increasingly discouraged by the negativity of this intelligent, articulate respondent. She is losing confidence, showing obvious fatigue. She hangs in there, though, and completes the interview. The respondent stomps out of the interview triumphantly; she slinks into the back, expecting us backroom types to be severely critical of the interview. Despite her obvious discomfort, I am delighted with the respondent and the outcome of the interview, and I began to think about writing this article for her.

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It is an axiom in qualitative marketing research that, in any given research project you are likely to encounter a few yeasayers and naysayers. These are respondents who view the world in their own, pre-determined way of thinking, and tend to view any given product or concept through a consistently optimistic or pessimistic lens.

Yeasayers will take extra effort to please the interviewer. They try to identify the “right,” expected answers to interview questions. They invariably approve of the interviewer and the product; they can point out features and benefits that even the manufacturer of the product has not yet thought of. Yeasayers are the “good guys and gals” who consistently to seek affection and affiliation.

Naysayers, of course, are the people who take extra pains to see the negative side of everything. They doubt that things will work, they don’t believe any information presented to them, they hate all underlying concepts. These folks will make an extra effort to tell the moderator what is wrong with the product, and they are masters at pointing out flaws in everything.

Of course, lots of the people we conduct research with are objective, neutral respondents with good judgement and an open approach. These middle-of-the-roaders can be counted on to be “fair,” and they can provide you with their objective views. In my experience, however, even these respondents tend to lean one way or the other, and you must be aware of their yea or nay tendencies in order manage them.

How to recognize true yeasayers and naysayers

First let’s consider the naysayers. This group tends to trouble researchers the most, and at times, interviewers can have a real, visceral reaction to naysayers. The best way to identify a naysayer is to monitor your feelings and reactions during the interview and recognize what is going on quickly.

Some fairly sure signs of a naysayer include the following:

• You begin to feel anxious, unsure of the direction the interview or group is taking.
• Naysayers can drain your energy and make you feel tired - these people are not easygoing or easy respondents.
• As the interview progresses, you begin to feel worried about how your client is reacting to all this negativity.
• You begin to anticipate rejection, anger, and negativity as you ask questions.
• You begin to use questions that may suggest or require a negative response, for example, “You are probably not going to like this either, but…” You struggle to remain cool and objective.

For yeasayers, the same process of self-monitoring applies. You are less likely to have a gut reaction to these good guys, and the realization that you are dealing with a yeasayer can sometimes be gradual. Your respondent could be a yeasayer when:

• You recognize that s/he is overtly trying to please you.
• The respondent deliberately, somewhat artificially uses your first name many times during the interview.
• They avoid thinking critically, even when a negative aspect of the product or service is being considered.
• You become concerned that the respondent is not being honest or thinking critically; the responses just don’t ring true.
• The unrelenting positive responses become boring to you.
• The respondent uses his/her positive energy to control the interview, go off the subject, or dismiss your agenda

Coping with yea- and naysayers

First, you must value both personality types for what they can bring to the research process. Yeasayers can point you toward the most positive aspects of a product or idea - the best yeasayers can put a positive spin on almost anything. They can develop a unique selling proposition on the hoof, for example.

When dealing with yeasayers, I’ve found the following can help.

• Practice “unconditional positive regard.” Value the respondent’s positive outlook for what it can bring to your research without judging him or her as a person.
• Yeasayers should be challenged to personalize their observations, and elaborate on ideas or comments: “What does that feature mean to you?” “Tell me more about why that is an important feature. What could it mean to you?”
• Yeasayers can test objections voiced by naysayers in prior interviews. Often a strong, bright yeasayer can refute or deflate the strongly voiced objections of naysayers.

Naysayers, on the other hand, constitute the acid test for a concept or idea. These respondents excel at using their great intelligence and personal resources to find out why things don’t or won’t work. Really effective naysayers are the cynics, skeptics, and Doubting Thomases who are needed if we are to help clients refine ideas or product concepts. They can deflate grandiose, wrong-minded ideas with a single phrase. Always keep in mind that naysayers are doing their best to help by identifying all that is wrong. After all, you asked them to evaluate something, and they can’t help but do so critically. Naysaying, by definition, is how naysayers think - it’s what they do! It is their job to identify what is wrong, not what is right. They will only identify and recognize positive things reluctantly, and it is much more fun to be critical and rejecting. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I REALLY LIKE NAYSAYERS.

When you are dealing with a true, hard-core naysayer, I’ve found that the following principles can help.

• As with yeasayers, unconditional positive regard applies at all times. It is the interviewer’s job to accept the respondent for what s/he brings to the interview, to find value in what is being offered, and to harness their unique intellectual skills to achieve research goals.
• Be careful not to dismiss the negative attitude; embrace it when you can. If they have used their energy and intelligence to tell you what is wrong, use all of your skills to get naysayers to tell you more of what is wrong (and perhaps how to fix it)!

- “Why won’t that work?”

- “What could that mean to the product?”

- “How can it be fixed? How would you fix it?”

- “If that issue were fixed, how would it affect your view of the product?”

• Make the negative energy (or your perceptions of negative energy) into something positive. After all, you and this naysayer are working together happily to identify and solve problems, appraise a concept, evaluate something. A naysayer is really a friend, colleague, and collaborator with a unique, valid point of view - even if it may be a little hard to take, at times.
• After hearing them out and allowing them to vent fully, the interviewer can then invite and encourage positive answers. “Now that you’ve pointed out all the problems so thoroughly, what’s good/new/different about this?”
• Some interviewers effectively use humor with naysayers, for example, “There’s no need to sugarcoat it, Mr. _______, just say what you mean,” or “Gee whiz, is there anything good about this thing?” This can work for some naysayers, where a short laugh and some relief from the tension gets them back to reality.
• In a focus group, trust the group to help you place the naysayer’s comments in perspective. If the naysayer is overwhelmingly negative to the point of weighting the entire group’s viewpoint, appeal to both the naysayer and the entire group to change the direction of the conversation. “We’ve spent a lot of time pointing out the flaws here, what are the positives?” Move on to the positive part of the agenda, or change the focus so respondents with a positive point of view are able to voice their opinions, too.

You can use the comments of yea- and naysayers to challenge middle-of-the-roaders’ views and opinions, too. Can their moderate views withstand the more intense reactions of strong proponents and detractors? How much conviction do these middle-ground respondents really have for the product or concept?

Yeasaying, naysaying and qualitative analysis

OK, so in any given research project you are likely to run into some people at the extreme positive or negative end of the spectrum. If there were a normal distribution curve, the standard bell curve, most respondents would fall into the middle-of-the-road range, with smaller numbers at either extreme end.

In a “normal” situation, the bell curve clearly peaks at just about the middle and most respondents are neither yea- nor naysaying, and only a minority of respondents manage to be passionate either way. In this case, the analytic process involves characterizing a fairly uniform range of opinion, with few outliers serving to “inform” the middle range of opinion. It is important to avoid single respondent weighting, or allow your few nay- or yeasayers to overly influence your research findings. The analyst should carefully note the “conventional wisdom” emerging from the middle-of-the-roaders while acknowledging, perhaps, the minority points of outliers.

On the other hand, if your research has not awakened any strong feeling from any respondents, be concerned. Worry about your methodology, analysis, and your client’s product. What about the interviewing itself: Is it bland? Are you asking questions that will give you a good read of the subject?

The fact is that whatever the stimulus is, it has failed to awaken the ire or interest of either yea- or naysayers.

When the bell curve is skewed toward negative or positive respondents, you can be more confident that the product is attracting the interest and perhaps passion of the subjects. In fact, clearer research findings might result from a graph that is skewed either toward positive findings or negativity. In either case, you certainly will have more to talk about!

Where the voices of these habitual “outliers” emerge strongly in a project, analysts need to get a handle on how great that impact has been on their views. Before forming conclusions and recommendations, you need to understand what the main threads of the research are, and how strongly habitual advocates have influenced them. Has your encounter with one or two characters contributed overly much to your view of the issues? Have you overly identified with outliers?

One possible approach to analysis in the face of large numbers of yea- or naysayers is to methodically review interview notes, tape transcripts, transcriptions and literally count the positive and negative reactions. Is the trend of the interviews numerically positive or negative? What is the range of opinion on any given issue? How sensible and relevant are dissenting (positive and negative) opinions? Have one or two articulate respondents overly influenced your views? Where you have been exposed to several strong yea- or naysayers, it can be helpful to verify gut feelings and your topline conclusions with objective analysis of the impact yea- and naysayers have had on your findings.

Harness energies

Strong characters, these yeasayers and naysayers. But to be an effective qualitative researcher and analyst, we need to harness their personal energies, make their intellects work for us, and then keep their voices in perspective. These folks are always a challenge, but in my opinion are often valuable respondents.