We invited some of our clients with the most senior and demanding roles in insight to discuss the challenge of using insight to drive action – here’s the inside track on their toolkit.
Back yourself
Be the initiator! It could be that no one else in the business is talking about something you have identified as important yet. Your deep customer knowledge, firmly rooted in data and fresh insights, gives you an unrivalled ability to challenge thinking and spot chances for this understanding to add real value. Maximise the impact of insight updates by leading the decision on which hot topics to pursue. Projects begun, owned and driven by insight teams are often the most talked about and powerful.
Influence the influencers
Optimise your talent for bringing teams together, uniting work streams and tuning into different cultures, needs and wants. Sharpen your antennae for picking up on the questions that face each part of the organisation – so that your expertise can gain traction amongst stakeholders and shape decisions. Here your personality could be a big part of gaining influence!
Play to their biases
Note stakeholders’ irrational biases as you do customers’. We all have them! Use learnings from the field of behavioural economics to grab attention and persuade them to act. For example: making things as easy as possible, or evoking a sense of FOMO.
Show them the money
Showcase the commercial opportunity or risk. Putting a £-value next to problems and solutions always grabs attention! Use multiple data sources whenever you can as this means predictions about an action’s commercial benefits are more likely to be accurate and believed.
Design meetings to pack a punch
Stimulate talk and collaboration with pre-reads that don’t have to be reads! Instead ask your audience to pre-watch or pre-listen via video or podcasts. Allow time and space for discussion. And, of course, for longer sessions the magic ingredients are a nice room, good coffee and cakes!
Make it accessible
Keep things simple. If you stick to 1 – 2 big messages or a small range of bite-sized updates your work has far more chance of being remembered. Making customer data and resources easily accessible is a must.
