I’ve just finished a series of workshops with a client helping them discover and create actionable insights. The work they did was excellent and has created around twenty-five million dollars of extra revenue which can be delivered immediately. Not bad for a training program. And more than that. This approach built capability, and changed the very essence of how the business works together. Don’t believe me? Read on! I’ve just finished wrapping up the final coaching sessions, and asked the team for their feedback. In particular I asked them to share the key learnings for them, and what were the main elements that helped them create such amazing value for their company from a series of workshops. The answers themselves are really insightful, so I have summarized them here. Each of these learnings could help your team discover a multi-million dollar insight too!
How to create actionable insights: Go see the real world
Actionable insights aren’t usually found in the data. They are found by getting away from the desk, and touching the world of the people you want to understand. If you are looking for shopper insights, that is about going to stores, spending time in stores, and connecting with the shoppers there. Desk work has its place, but big ideas don’t usually lie in your data. They lie beyond that, and that requires going out interacting with the world you are hoping to understand.
How to create actionable insights: Focus on the “why”. And the “why not”
Data is fabulous, don’t get me wrong. But data, in my experience (and the experience of this particular group) is rarely the starting point of a great insight. Why? Because data usually gives you lots of what, when, where and who information. While this is interesting and valuable, big insights lie in the ‘why’. Actually, that’s not strictly true. The really big insights lie in the ‘why not’. By understanding why consumers or shoppers DON’T do something, we get a deep understanding of the situation, but also a big clue as to what the solution is too. Unblocking the ‘why not’ is key to unlocking the value that lies behind the insight.
How to create actionable insights: Take your time and be persistent
Insights don’t usually announce their presence – they take a bit of time to uncover. The insight process isn’t a simple, linear beast: it has iterations and blind alleys. Its frustrating, but when you get out at the other end and you’ve found something genuinely new, and valuable, its worth it. But you won’t do it in an afternoon, or even in a couple of days.
We understand this, and structure our “actionable insights” programs over a few months, with a series of workshops and coaching sessions. That way we introduce the team to the real process rather than the theoretical one. We show them (and support them) through the frustrations of not having enough data, of hitting a dead end, of finding that the insight is impossible to execute or not as valuable as first thought. And we work the process live, using real data, so that at the end of the process we have real, actionable insights (in this case twenty-five million dollars’ worth of real insight). Any other methodology doesn’t work, and doesn’t deliver the value. Sure, it takes a little longer than the usual training program, but the results speak for themselves, and the return on investment is huge.
How to create actionable insights: Be insightful
One of the benefits of taking our time with the program, is that we are able to introduce the team (and allow them to practice) The Zeroth Step of the insight process. Not many people know it, but it is by far the most powerful. By allowing the team to consistently practice the behaviors that will make them more insightful, the chances of high value increases.
How to create actionable insights – Remember that consumers and shoppers are different
I know I’ve said this many times (and blogged about it a fair amount too!) but it is a message which has yet to be received by many, is less understood than you’d think, and is absolutely critical. Consumers and shoppers are different. When you find a great consumer insight – don’t stop! Look at the shopper angle too. Shoppers and consumers see the world differently. They see your brand differently too. Driving growth, and making your insight actionable, will require changing both consumer and shopper behavior. And that often means that there is a shopper element to your insight that you might have missed.
How to create actionable insights: Remember that consumer and shopper go hand in hand
Whether you want to create an insight into consumers or shoppers, its sometimes hard to separate. This makes sense when you think about it. After all, actionable insights are likely to need changes in both consumer and shopper behavior to actually create value. So the big secret in finding shopper insights is to NOT go looking for shopper insights. Go looking for insights, period. Explore consumers, shoppers, and retailers. What you discover will inevitably have a bit of shopper and a bit of consumer in it (after all, shoppers buy to meet consumer needs, so we can hardly understand shoppers without understanding consumers too!) I guess what I’m saying is to free your brain to explore whatever. Don’t pen your brain in with instructions and filters.
Think consumer, shopper and retailer all the time
Whether building consumer strategy, shopper plans or retail customer plans, we need to keep each ‘customer in our minds’. Even when we are focusing on the consumer, keeping one eye on the shopper and one eye on the retailer (I know – too many eyes!) is a valuable skill.
Work as a team (And with an outsider) to create actionable insights
Insights is about changing paradigms. And the best way to change paradigms is to listen to other people’s points of view. We all see things slightly differently after all. Other people from other functions is great, but if you can bring in people from outside your organization (like us for example!) the paradigm shifts are likely to be greater.
These key steps create commercial value and build long term capability – and change the way the business works
Insights approaches like this are powerful. They create commercial value by identifying opportunities to deliver growth AND by making sure that these are implementable. They build capability too: these processes and techniques are replicable and sustainable. But what I like most about this approach, is that it changes the way people work together. To quote the Sales Director of this particular client: “you’ve somehow changed every conversation in this business. Meetings are different. Presentations are different. People are having different conversations. People are asking different questions”. I’m pretty sure the value of that shift in behavior is worth a lot more than twenty-five million dollars.
This isn’t designed to be a guide to creating actionable insights (I’ve written countless posts on the topic so feel free to check them out here and here. But it is (almost) verbatim from a group of consumer and shopper marketers, who have just seen that this approach to creating actionable insights really makes a difference. Applying just some of this will help you on your insight journey. And of course, if you really want to create millions of dollars of value from a tiny investment in training and coaching, then please get in touch. We can only run a small number of these programs at a time as they are intensive and need specialist resource, so if you have any interest at all, please get in touch now. No obligation at all.