Shopping is something we all do every day. Be it picking up a newspaper on the way to work, buying groceries for the week, or investing in a new computer, regular purchases are so integral to everyday living that we may often forget just how important and frequent shopping is. But, shopper insights functions haven’t forgotten! These functions serve as the research function within a consumer goods company that seeks to better understand shopping behavior and work with retailers to develop and implement ideas to improve sales. And with all the shopping we are doing, they are very busy!

Shopper Insights functions have responsibilities that are different from consumer/brand insights teams:

1. Figure out what the shoppers are doing and thinking!

• Shopper insights teams seek to understand the shopping behavior of a retail partner’s consumers at the shelf, store, and sometimes category levels. 

2. Deliver insights to retailer

• Shopper insights teams work closely with Category Management, Sales, and sometimes Shopper Marketing to produce insights designed to attract the interest of retail partners.

3. Work to share knowledge and findings with the brand/consumer insights function and the broader business

• Insights about how consumers act in a store setting can impact the internal business partners traditionally served by consumer insights functions.

Leading shopper insights departments are developing new organizational structures and processes to help them achieve all of these goals. A recent Market Research Executive Board paper describes two different ways companies organized to achieve these same goals:

• ConAgra Foods developed an organizational structure to facilitate for cross-functional collaboration and developed processes for research sharing
• Hershey’ s developed an organizational structure to facilitate knowledge sharing and developed processes for cross-functional collaboration

Details about how these companies set up their Shopper Insights functions are available in our new whitepaper, Boosting the Impact of Shopper Insights.

My colleagues at the Sales Executive Council recently published The Challenger Sale, a new book that confronts conventional wisdom in the sales function by showing that the best salespeople don’t just build relationships with customers, they challenge them.

In the book, Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson show that the best sales reps focus on pushing customers’ thinking, illuminating problems customers don’t even know exist and solutions to those issues.  I’ve blogged before about how Research is in a great position to identify what reps should be teaching, but I’ve also been struck by how the idea of challenging translates to the world of research communication.

A traditional consultative research department has the most impact on difficult but not urgent decisions, a group that accounts for only 10% of the value of all decisions made at the typical company.  So how do you increase your impact on the company?  You have to overcome entrenched beliefs and corporate overconfidence. 

And just like our colleagues in sales, challenging may be the posture to take—to correct misperceptions you need to create an internal dissonance that demonstrates the value of new information.

Stay tuned as we blog more about how researchers can challenge conventional wisdom and provoke interest in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, see if you have what it takes to be a challenger…put yourself in your sales reps’ shoes and play the Challenger Sale Game.

In their upcoming book The Challenger Sale, our colleagues at the Sales Executive Council upend traditional sales wisdom.  Surveying over 6,000 sales reps across geographies and industries, they identified 5 rep profiles:

1. The Hard Worker
2. The Problem Solver
3. The Challenger
4. The Relationship Builder
5. The Lone Wolf

And they found that reps in only one of these profiles consistently outperforms the others—the Challenger.  Challengers use their deep understanding their customers’ business to push their thinking and control the sales conversation.  And how do they gain this deep understanding?  Cue Research!

In a recent HBR blog, my colleagues Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson outlined how reps at W.W, Grainger changed their sales approach, going from asking the customer what’s keeping them up at night to focusing on a series of proprietary insights that Grainger has developed about the customers that prompt them to think differently about how to manage spending.  All of the sudden, the sales reps are able to show customers what SHOULD be keeping them up at night (and how Grainger can help them solve the problem).

Research is a great partner to help embed insight into the sales process, and many of you may see an uptick in interest from your sales team once The Challenger Sale is released on November 10.  So, where to start? 

MREB members, check out our essay on A New Research-Sales Partnership to read how progressive research departments drive revenue performance.  Then see how Condé Nast’s research team designed a comprehensive program that delivers consistent and effective sales support.