 |
 |
 |
| SmartMarket™
Planning
Omansky Group LLc: The Customer
Insight Process
Actionable Assets
We begin with the recognition that information
is just another form of data, and data, while
of value, becomes just another commodity.
Information that can be transformed into intelligence
represents the next value-added level for
a research project. The highest level of value
we can provide to our client, however, is
intelligence that we transform into customer
insights. The insights and the conclusions
they lead to in our analysis, become actionable
assets in the process for improving marketing
and sales performance.
Different by Design
There are several interesting differences
with our insight-driven approach. This starts
with an understanding of a client’s
marketing environment based on a specialization
in the medical industry and our previous wide-ranging
project experience:
-
We begin with a thought
process that allows us to get closer to your
customers, and we view your Representatives
as your internal customers. For us, the focus
is not only on identifying the obvious influencers,
but digging deeper to uncover the more subtle
factors.
-
The Discussion Guides reflect
the fact that the real issue in many cases,
will not be the one directly revealed by the
respondent. We focus on patterns of responses
as well. These may help us identify deeper
issues.
-
We designed studies with
a structure that enables us to evaluate responses
by their quality and intensity rather than
feedback of specific, rote words at their
face value. For example, where appropriate,
we may probe "between the lines"
and give respondents a chance to react to
how "other people have described"
a particular feature or process. We can then
engage them on the basis of how strongly they
agree/disagree and that, in turn, opens up
more possibilities for us to dig deeper into
thoughts and feelings. In many deals, it is
thoughts and feelings based on perceptions
that drive buying decisions.
A Deeper Approach
We’ve developed interview approaches which
sometimes need to compensate for only having one
data point (respondent) at each account, dictated
by the project’s time/budget limitations.
We accomplish this in two ways:
-
Probing in depth, we will
network to identify and reach the one individual
most likely to provide a heads-up, balanced
point-of-view within a target account, for
example.
-
Probing the target account
respondent in depth for their own feelings,
attitudes, and observations, and even those
beyond their own, motivating them to project
themselves into their colleagues’ frame
of mind. This requires highly skilled interviewers
who can, on the basis of only telephone verbal
clues, instantly assess and adapt to a respondent’s
environment, and quickly gain their trust
and respect.
-
The key objective for our
interviewers is to elicit the direct articulation
of personal feelings from respondents. This
is a significant portion of the value delivered
because it gets us to the respondent’s
core emotional attitudes/perceptions. We’ve
found that the most effective method here
is to not ask for it directly. Often, we go
beyond the discussion guide and use a non-linear
research technique to help us achieve this
goal.
-
We've learned that success
comes from being aware that developing deep
customer insights is not a science, but an
art. Our interviewers need to be relentlessly
curious about what motivates customers and
passionate about digging for the second "right
answer" – the one that’s
less obvious to everyone, especially our client’s
competition.
-
In the end, we’ve
learned that delivering the greatest value
to you as our client is an unbiased view of
your company, people, and products from inside
the customer’s mind. This deliverable
bottom line becomes a powerful means for developing
strategies and tactics to convert your customer
wants into customer wins.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
