I wrote recently about the barriers to creating shopper insights (or any insights for that matter!) A lack of training and not having an effective insight process are two of the biggest factors. In addition, people don’t allow enough time, or expect insights to arrive on demand. But even with all of these things in place, some people seem to be more effective at creating insights than others. Why is this? It isn’t intelligence, nor availability of data. Perhaps some people have an innate ability to do this? Maybe, but I’m not convinced. In my experience, the biggest reason people struggle to create shopper insights when they need them, is that they aren’t insightful in the first place. Now bear with me – I appreciate that might sound rather grandiose. It isn’t meant to be. Being insightful is something that anyone can be, and it can be trained. And if you want to create better insights in the future, you need to do this. Being insightful is what we call the Zeroth Step of the Shopper Insight Process.
A simple Shopper Insights Process
As explained in a previous article, uncovering insights begins with hypotheses. Hypotheses are a simple mechanism to give us focus as we dig into data. This is the second step of the insight process: digging into Evidence to prove or disprove hypotheses. These first two steps loop: hypotheses take you into evidence. While looking for evidence for the first batch of hypotheses, more hypotheses are uncovered, and so on. Once that is done, we work out which opportunity is biggest (we call this ‘sizing the prize’) and then build a story, using the insight, to explain it all.
So how does one become insightful?
But before all that comes the Zeroth Step of the Shopper Insights Process: Being Insightful. Anyone can uncover an insight, but those that have completed the Zeroth Step? Well, they are simply more likely to find more, bigger, more valuable insights. Its as simple as that. So how does one become more insightful? Read on!
Six steps to becoming more insightful
Read
Reading stuff, immersing yourself in your industry and what is going on is the most powerful way of becoming insightful. Read things related to your business, your category, your market. But also read other stuff. Read this blog (don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already!) Check out other blogs. Read about what is going on in other countries, categories, channels. Read completely unrelated stuff. Put time aside in your calendar to read. Set up a newsfeed like Feedly to serve up a mix of content that you can dip into whenever you want. Clip what you find interesting and read it again in a couple of weeks. Take notes while you read – the very process of writing seems to make our brains process differently.
Go to stores
Go to shops. Lots. How much? More than you do right now. Go to the channels where your brand is sold, but also check out other channels. If you are in food, go to a toy store. Again – mix it up. Take photos when you are there and make sure you look at those pictures afterwards. (It’s amazing how often you see something different in the photo than you saw when you were in the store!) Take notes. Take a colleague. Discuss what you notice. I guarantee you’ll see different things. Don’t just look at your own brand. Don’t just look at your category. Look around the whole store. Check out what is going on, and ask “why did they do that? What are they trying to achieve?”
Give yourself time
Both of the previous steps will prime your brain to be more insightful, but even as we step into action, there are things we can do before we get going to encourage our brains to be more insightful. The first is to give ourselves time. Please don’t sit at your desk at 10.00am in the morning and think “Right – I’m going to find an insight” and expect it to happen. The insight part of the brain doesn’t like working to order. Give yourself plenty of time. Look at the data as far in advance of your deadline as is possible. How often have you worked a research project where you spend a month selecting the vendor, a month designing the research, three months in fieldwork, two weeks processing data, then expect the insights to come together for a presentation a week later? If it was worth waiting half a year for the data, its worth waiting a few more weeks for the WOW!
Ponder
Taking time to think, sleep on it, go for a coffee or a drink and day dream a little. I know in our world of ‘always on’ and ‘productivity first’ these concepts might appear unfashionable, but maybe that’s why we don’t get the insights we want. In my experience insights spring from the most unexpected places. I’m reading a novel and I get a nagging feeling in the back on my mind. I’m having a coffee and I wonder about a different way of cutting the data. I wonder to myself why a certain behavior is happening. Then I go back to the data.
Socialize
Talking about stuff, a bit like writing stuff down, seems to activate the brain in a different way. Countless times, a new ‘aha’ has occurred to me while talking things through with my team. Often insights pop into the open during a workshop with a client. Sometimes when I’m talking to my wife. Socialize. Talk about and around the data and the problem.
Practice
As with most things, we get better the more we do them. I’m convinced that one of the reasons that the engage team are able to find insights from data where our clients have struggled is that we simply do it more frequently. As consultants we dig for insights on a daily basis. We also follow all of the other five steps here (As well as hypotheses and the rest of the insight process. So get in the habit of digging for insights – it gets easier I promise!
Start now. The Zeroth Step is an ongoing way of being. Start working now at being insightful, and next time you need an insight, the chances of it showing itself are going to be significantly higher!
A disclaimer: none of these steps are guaranteed to give you a paradigm shifting insight. But in my experience, each of these steps will help enormously, and improve both the quality and the quantity of insight you deliver.
If you’d like help developing an insightful team, get in touch. Or if you just need help digging into the data – no problem. We have a wide variety of solutions which will step change their skills, as well as delivering massive business value in terms of sales and profit. Get in touch now and we can discuss what might work
