Snow removal is not Washington D.C.’s strong suit.  On Monday, all federal agencies enjoyed a two hour delayed opening because of a whopping 0.7 inches (1.8 cm) of snow that fell here over the weekend. Perhaps the city should forgo the plows and heavy machinery in favor of some of the tools featured in this article, which promise to make snow removal easier and safer.

With the importance of good tools (and the importance of good insight) in mind, the Market Research Executive Board has compiled some of our best insight generation exercises, worksheets, and practice guides into one easy-to-use toolkit. (The best part? Our tools carry little to no risk of back injury!)

Insight generation is one of the most important and most difficult tasks of any market research function.  MREB research has shown that a shift to make quality insight generation a priority is associated with a 70% increase in business impact. These 15 hands-on tools are designed to support you and your team in scoping and focusing your efforts, thinking creatively, and framing your insights in an actionable and impactful way. MREB members, access the toolkit here.

Last week I started a series of posts on the five consultative skills that researchers can build to improve business impact:

1. Insight
2. Business Problem Solving
3. Influence
4. Communication
5. Synthesis

With insight already covered, it’s time to address skill #2: business problem solving.  More than two-thirds of the research leaders that we spoke with think that it takes 7 or more years to develop the skills to act as a consultant to business partners—and business problem solving in particular can turn into a problem of time.

To avoid losing productivity from junior researchers and the crippling replacement costs for senior ones, we have seen research departments train to apply existing logic skills to speed up the natural process of gaining business-specific experience.   

For one company, Research found that the team excelled at project execution, but their impact on the overall business was lagging.  They were answering their business partners’ questions, but still not addressing the real business need.

To help speed up the team’s ability to ensure match between research request and the underlying business issue, researchers cooperatively work with business partners to identify the root business problems BEFORE doing any research.  By formalizing an analysis tree framework, the team can use iteration to make sure that they identify key issues and sub-questions.  As the VP of Marketing put it,

“Delaying the start of our project to go through this process was a bit painful, but in the end I feel much more comfortable that Research understands my issues.”

MREB member, see the details of the Business Issue Diagnostic Approach here.

This week I present the last of a series of posts sharing results from surveys on our Primary Research Forum.  (check out past posts on communication trends, data collection trends, and scattered research teams)

Our members weighed in on their biggest priorities as they work to become more of a strategic partner in their organization, and the response rate shows that this goal resonates well with researchers, but the action plan for how to get there isn’t as consistent:

Taking a look at the three most popular priorities:

1. Getting business partners more engaged in the insight generation process—as with most business initiatives, getting stakeholders involved early does improve the uptake of results, and we’ve seen some research departments gain a lot from looping their partners involved in the process.  In one example, Eli Lilly trains its line partners on insight generation to help them create, understand, and apply insights to achieve growth.
2. Ensuring that research is focused on projects that matter—the ever-popular Issue Sensing and Agenda Planning: we have an entire topic center on our Web site devoted to it!  And the key here is to not only diagnose their issues properly, but to also have some proactive issue sensing in place to make sure you’re addressing the needs that business partners don’t even know that they have.
3. Understanding the drivers of business impact—knowing what your partners are looking for to create impact means that you yourself will create impact.  We’ve worked with line partners to understand, in general, Research’s highest value activities, but you also have to examine your individual organization to identify specific business drivers.  We’ve seen this work at Amway, which identified core business drivers and now transforms product-specific research into compelling answers for strategic concerns.

So, what do you think?  Did we miss any priorities that will help Research functions become more strategic?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

This week, our colleague Patrick Spenner of the Marketing Leadership Council shares his perspective on B2B marketing issues for 2012.

Each year, MLC surveys our members about their top challenges looking ahead.  As we read the tea leaves in the survey results, here are our thoughts on what’s creeping into (or storming) the B2B marketing consciousness for 2012.

1. Voice-of-Customer 2.0. Marketers are grappling with what kinds of customer data are most important to collect and how to make hay out of the data.  This topic received the most “top priority” votes by a big margin, so we’re making it the subject of MLC’s primary research initiative in 2012.Early hypothesis from the MLC study team: marketers are over-investing in collecting and analyzing data about the customer, and not enough in gathering information and insight about customer context, which is critical for generating commercial insight (see #5 below)
2. Skillset Reset. There’s a creeping sense among B2B CMO’s that their marketing teams are in need of a capability overhaul.  With the rise of “no man’s land” in the mid-funnel (you can read more about it in MLC’s 2011 research) and rapid changes how buying centers are making purchase decisions, out-of-date marketing skillsets are being laid bare.As one example of B2B marketing teams aggressively managing the skillset transition, consider the example of Cisco starting to “badge” and reward its marketers on their social media impact.   I wrote about this in a blog post on the Present and Future of B2B Social Media.

   Ask yourself: how sweet/spooky would it be for 20% of your pay to rest on your social graph?

3. Disruption. Uncertainty is the lurking leviathan swimming beneath the surface of commerce these days (cheery, no?)  This came through in our survey loud and clear, as the third most popular topic was how to manage risk in changing customer buying behavior, emerging markets, technology and the like.  All we can suggest here is to build your house out of bricks, not sticks.  In commercial terms, that means delivering insight to customers (see #1 and #5).  Read more about how Research helps identify the right insights to teach in Supporting Sales: Embedding Insight into the Sales Process.
4. Going Global. I wouldn’t call it new, but the Global Marketing topic continues to be a top priority for the half of the MLC membership that doesn’t see a continued growth run in Western economies.  See MLC’s resources on global marketing organization structure, and then get ready for new best practice case studies, showcase profiles and tools to help marketing leaders manage the global transition, due in Q1 2012.  And check out MREB’s new resource center for specifics on Research Supporting Global Business Needs.
5. Content Marketing Hits the Breaking Point. As marketing automation, segmentation and targeting continue to evolve and penetrate marketing activities, there comes a tipping point at which creating version X+5 of an email for sub-segment Y  to be delivered at trigger Z in the lead nurture program simply becomes unsustainable.  We believe many marketers on the content marketing train will hit this point, to be followed by a period of navel gazing, to be followed by a period of content rationalization, to be followed (depressingly) by content proliferation again.Smarter angle: the answer isn’t more content, it’s commercial insight.  Cut off the long tail of content creation (those white papers are languishing out there, anyway) and re-invest the time and energy into insights that can fuel “commercial teaching”.  MLC and its sister program, the Sales Executive Council, have written extensively on this go-to-market approach.  Commercial insights trump relevant messaging all day long as drivers of loyalty and purchase in the B2B space.  This is the rocket fuel of successful go-to-market strategies these days, and it’s the heart of what makes the Challenger Sale work.

Mobile! Just kidding.  Not ready for primetime for most B2Bs…yet.  We’re seeing more near-term value creation from mobile as a sales tool than for marketing purposes.  Maybe 2013…

MLC will be doing research in most all of these areas in 2012.  If you’ve got expertise in any of these areas, we’d love to chat.  Please email me: pspenner@executiveboard.com.  Or, if you want to share your point-of-view on 2012, drop in a comment below.

Guest blogger Christopher Frank is the co-author of Drinking from the Fire Hose: Making Smarter Decisions Without Drowning in Information (Portfolio/Penguin, September 2011). He previously spent 10 years at Microsoft as senior director of corporate research, worked at Accenture as a consultant in the consumer and technology practices, and founded an online start-up called Drei Tauben Ltd.  @chris_j_frank  

Imagine yourself in a conference room, 20 minutes into a meeting when the presenter finally makes it to slide four of a 42-slide deck. At least you can read this one, unlike the others, which were crammed with numbers and charts. You look around wondering if anyone else is following the presentation. Rather than searching hopelessly for one relevant piece of information, what you really desire are insights to see clearly into complex situations. 

Regardless of your industry, job or target customer, we have become data hounds. The business climate worships numbers – and rightly so since figures hold weight. Facts are supposed to make you more confident in your decision and certain of your direction. However, in our information economy, the challenge lies in keeping your head above the flood of data, learning how to separate real information from disparate facts and applying the judgment to inspire others to act.

The goal seems easy: identify the data you need, use the information to yield fresh insights and then deliver the new learning to fuel growth. Then why is it so hard? It seems like every meeting and conference call becomes a futile effort to survive the data deluge. In essence, data is unfortunately the main character and any meaningful dialogue is a supporting cast member. Given the increasing pace of data flowing at decision makers and the business survival challenges facing companies, this needs to change and change quickly.

Putting Yourself Through Data Rehab
How do you find the truly essential nuggets of information and use them with confidence to make decisions and effectively lead your teams? The answer, ironically enough, is found in asking questions. The right questions help leaders zero in on the most important information to keep strategic initiatives on track and drive team progress and innovation.

We identified seven core questions – not complex analytical questions learned in business school, but a product of business experience. Read More »

From à la mode To à la carte

Burgundy is apparently the new black this season. Or, as the luxury brand Salvatore Ferragamo calls it, “ox blood”, a less romantic shade but equally pricey. While the priests of high fashion tend to set the agenda, in research it’s the other way around with business partners dictating what is à la mode every season/quarter. Not infrequently, by the time market research scrambled to get a piece of research done as ordered, business partners’ interest has already shifted somewhere else.

Market research is certainly not blind to this constant lag in relevance and subsequent lack of influence.  Our survey of market researchers this year shows they are keenly aware of the gap between how many people in each function could benefit from MR’s insight and how many actually do. Without going into details in the graph below, let me direct your attention to one data point: MR estimates that 89% of sales people could benefit from MR’s insight yet is currently only able to influence 49%. This means 40 reps in 100 are deprived of some valuable MR information which could potentially help them cross-sell, up-sell or build better customer relationships, think of that in terms of lost revenue.

Our most progressive members bridge these knowledge gaps by following an “à la carte” approach instead – building a menu of foundational knowledge topics aimed at providing smart answers to non-strategic requests while deploying its best people to tackle strategic ad hoc items. The process of constructing such a platform could be simpler than you think:

• Select topics for long term, cross-functional/ cross-geographical relevance. It’s worth spending time finding overarching themes and identifying drivers for future growth. Alticor does it through a “top down + bottom up” approach while GM decides on topics based on whether it’s slotted for “Comprehensive Learnings” or the one-page “Customer Pulse”.
• Let business partners choose how much they want to read. Alticor’s strategic reports runs about 15-25 pages, yet allows skimming by highlighting key points and graphics. Alpha Company’s Foundational Knowledge Platform is in the style of a wiki, which is both broad and deep, but consists of bite-sized nuggets of info which makes it easy to use.
• Piggyback on existing channels for insight distribution. Since most of the work was done in choosing, reorganizing and repositioning content, little investment is needed on the distribution side. Intranets and newsletters are voted the most popular distribution channels, but secured drives are another option if access needs to be restricted. 

We all know the importance of asking the right questions. (Sir Francis Bacon’s assessment that “a prudent question is one half of wisdom” was surely an underestimate.) So, how do you train your line partners to ask the types of great questions that lead to great research insights?

You need to teach them to imagine knowledge that doesn’t yet exist and to focus on these unknowns in the research-scoping process. In other words, encourage your business partners to start thinking about IWIKs. What is an IWIK? No, it’s not a misspelling of one of George Lucas’ furry creations. It stands for “I Wish I Knew,” and it’s a great way of making sure you’re asking the right research questions.  

Because better data and better synthesis are often inadequate for producing differentiated insights, line partners must focus their questions on key drivers of consumer behavior so that we as researchers can collect the right information capable of propelling significant business impact.

MREB Members, read about how Eli Lilly successfully used the IWIK process to educate their line and ensure that key unknowns were translated into questions with high potential for differentiation.

It was a real delight to see so many of our members at the Corporate Researchers Conference in Chicago September 21-23.  As I reflect on the event and continue to speak with several of you who joined us and our co-sponsors there, I’m struck by how practical and actionable the discussion was. 

I’d love to hear from you what you took away from the sessions.  To kick off the discussion, let me share a few of mine:

• Finbarr O’Neill, formerly a senior auto industry executive, now CEO of J.D. Power and Associates, spoke powerfully of executives’ need for “good enough, actionable information.” Our latest quantitative research confirms how business decision-makers are willing to trade off speed for accuracy of information, especially when they see a decision as urgent.  Leading companies like Motorola Mobility are using existing knowledge to respond quickly to urgent business questions, significantly increasing Research’s impact.  Click here for more detail.  
• Ian Lewis, our friend and longtime member at Time Inc., spoke insightfully of the consequences of information proliferation.  First, business partners suffer from “information fatigue.”  Second, survey research has lost its edge as a uniquely valuable resource.  This has profound implications for the role and priorities of the market research function. 
• Chris Frank from American Express and Paul Magnone from Openet shared a lot of great thinking on how to focus business dialogue on the essentials – and avoid the feeling of Drinking from the Fire Hose.  One of my favorite nuggets was the value of focusing any research inquiry on “essential questions.”  One way to think of these is to ask yourself (and your business partner) what “I wish I knew,” the one fact you wish you had or phenomenon you wish you could explain.  We’ve seen this technique successfully implemented at a number of companies.  Click here for more detail. 
• Last but not least, our member Jen Miff from Motorola Mobility, paired with the Board’s own Martha Mathers, shared her team’s staffing model, which enables greater focus on synthesis.  If you missed the session, hear this replay of Jen’s discussion of this practice during an MREB webinar last year. 

I hope these reflections are also interesting to those of you who missed the conference.  Perhaps we’ll see you there next year!

A few weeks ago my colleague Rick Karlton of the Sales Executive Council blogged about how pharmaceutical companies are leveraging digital tools during sales visits.  Playing off a Wall Street Journal article from a few months ago that looked to link increasing tablet use with declining sales employment in the pharma space, Rick makes the point that fewer salespeople are almost certainly a function of a slowing R&D pipeline, not technology.

Ideally, the proliferation of digital tools such as iPads will help a sales rep build trust with their clients rather than replace valuable interactions altogether.  In fact, Corporate Executive Board research over the last few years has found that the best way for a B2B or B2B2C company to differentiate itself from competitors is for the sales reps to teach, providing valuable perspectives, new issue education, and ongoing advice during the sales experience.  And this provides a fantastic opportunity for Researchers to partner with Sales in a whole new way.  But…

For many researchers, the relationship between our department and sales has been a bit dicey: while almost 90% of research departments support the company’s sales department, sales partners report substantially lower satisfaction and less impact than the other business partners that we serve.  And how frustrating is it for us when a sales rep comes to us for a single data point or updated sales figures?  But as sales reps work to provide differentiated information during sales meetings we must use our expertise in customer analysis to help select the right insights to teach customers. 

Once our departments work together to determine the insight that is newsworthy, valuable to the customer, and applies to the products and services we have to offer, then the technology can come into play.  As Corey Mull at the Marketing Leadership Council outlined, these applications can be a terrific way to illustrate your key points in a sales visit and a great way to better fit your offering into medical workflow. 

But it all starts with identifying the right insight to embed into the sales process. 

• See how Motorola spotted the research needs it shared with its customers
• Preview the online teaching tools Telus uses to deliver research insights to customers
• See how Condé Nast designed a comprehensive platform study to differentiate itself as an industry thought leader

As someone who wants to Google my keys if I can’t find them, a big, thick book is not where I usually go looking for information – especially when I’m in a hurry.

Unfortunately market research often reads like a “big, thick book” – chock full of information but impossible to use. Faced with a ream of information can you really blame business partners for asking Google? I do it all the time.

Turns out that big, thick tomes of information do serve a purpose – making people feel good. In a recent survey, business executives were most confident in a decision being “well thought out” when the supporting research was “comprehensive” and “accurate.”

But when asked if the supporting research made a difference in the business decision (not feeling good but having impact). A very different picture emerged. “Making a difference” requires market research to do at least one of two things: say something new or say something contrarian.

Now you may want to argue that one can drive business impact by making people feel good, we looked into that possibility too and found that the correlation between those two concepts is nearly zero — 0.006 to be exact. What it means is that while comprehensive and accurate information (the kind Research tends to provide) makes a decision appear “well thought out”, it does not “make a difference” in the decision process. If it is up to me, I’d stop massaging people’s ego and start sharing some news worthy information.

The first and most important step towards achieving that is knowing what’s news. What do people know already? What would be newsworthy to them?

• Proactively ask and help business partners articulate their needs and visions. This involves getting them to think at a level beyond silos and short term objectives. Johnson & Johnson avoided overlapping, low impact projects by getting research to work with business partners on identifying and prioritizing unknowns through a “Strategy-Driven Learning Agenda”. Similarly, Eli Lilly launched a “I Wish I Knew” process for business partners aimed at finding game changing questions that can improve understanding across the board.
• Find out what they know, then tell them what they don’t.  Instead of blindly throwing darts at the wall hoping to hit a pain point, asking business partners probing questions before and during the research process help eliminate much of the uncertainty regarding what and how to present. Members, see how one company discovered this through their “problem diagnosis and scoping process”.