As we Americans think about celebrating Independence Day with parades, barbeques, and fireworks I came across a timely article on fastcompany.com: Lessons From the Founding Fathers on Leading a Breakthrough Meeting.  Since the deliverable that they created in that meeting they hosted in 1787 is still going strong, I guess we could learn a thing or two about managing an effective project. 

Here are some of my favorite points from the article:

• Do your homework ahead of time-to make sure that the document they crafted would last, the Founding Fathers learned all there was to know about governments past and of-the-day.  Researchers do the same: you’ve got to know what your company knows  so that your project answers the right questions.
• Invite the right people-politics are politics, whether you are running a fledgling nation or navigating the corporate conference room.  There are both official and unofficial corporate networks that we need to work within.  Nokia’s research team mapped the power and attitudes of its stakeholders, and MREB members can access interactive tools to do the same.
• Have a plan to start with-You need to give the project a place to start from.  For Research, that means understanding where senior decision makers are coming from.  Amway identified business drivers so that they could come to the table knowing how to address the company’s most important strategic issues.
• Get attendees to sign-on-At the end of the meeting, signing the document showed a strong commitment to the decisions made.  Formalizing support for your project is key to getting the organization to take action.  Hewlett-Packard has a great tool to record stakeholders’ level of agreement with decisions, and they record the final vote to hold folks to their support.
• Lobby strongly after completion-all projects need continued support to remain strong and applicable.  Existing knowledge must be organized and synthesized, and Research has to do what it can to drive engagement with the knowledge it collects.

Related Member Resources:

• Eli Lilly Identifies Key Unknowns
• Nokia’s Power/Attitude Matrix Tools
• Amway’s Business Driver Identification Framework
• HP’s Level of Agreement Tool

Listening: it’s a life skill.  And as researchers we probably think of it professionally more than others because it’s our job to “listen” to customers and the market and create insights upon which our organization can act.  And on those topics we sure have blogged before: Social Media Listening, Crowdsourcing Innovation,  even using questions to help develop research team members.

But, for us it’s about more than just data collection.  Listening is fundamental to business partnership.  It is our job to get to the questions the company really needs answers to, and to make sure that we are actually influencing our business partners’ decision making.

So when I saw a recent article from the HBR blog network on the discipline of listening I really started paying attention (quasi-pun quasi-intended).  Business author Ram Charan presents 5 tips for better listening:

1. Pan for Gold-seek the important nuggets in each interaction, and follow-up with questions to sharpen your understanding of those nuggets.  This active listening technique will help to guide your conversation down the most valuable path.
2. Frame their Reference-strive for empathy.  Actively work to understand where the person you are speaking with is coming from. 
3. Prime the Pump-set yourself up to receive, and broaden your listening base to get new, smart perspectives.
4. Take Your Time-we’re usually hopping from meeting to meeting, and taking time to listen to and then digest what someone has said can seem like a waste of time.  But, as a sticky note on my computer reminds me: “Stop and Think”  These insights will save you time in the long run.
5. Reflect-listening is a difficult habit to form.  Seek feedback from others on how you’re doing and try to honestly assess your own listening efforts on a regular basis.

We have found that “soft” skills like listening and influencing aren’t soft at all; they are the translational skills that will drive true success for market research in the future.  Learn more about the Skills for the Next Generation of Market Researchers.

This post was originally published by our sister program, the Sales Executive Council–we all can benefit from their travel expertise. 

Apple announced last week that worldwide downloads from its App Store recently surpassed the 30 billion mark (on average, that’s just over four apps for every person on Earth!)

For many, this stat is just the latest indicator of the increasing influence that smartphones and apps have had on the way we live our lives. Indeed, whether it’s work-related or not, there seems to be an app designed to help you accomplish just about any task.  (MREB members, see our upcoming work on Mobile Research to learn more about how our industry is using these technologies)

Now, with summer (and summer vacations!) in full swing, we thought we’d re-run our take (first published last fall) on some of the top travel apps to have. Below are our picks, organized to help you deal with some of the most common travel challenges:

Challenge #1: “Wait, so for how long is my flight delayed?”

App that can help: FlightAware

If you’re traveling after the first flights of the day, the time of your departing flight is likely to be determined by when the plane you will fly on arrives from another airport.  Many times, the departure boards don’t accurately reflect this.  So ask the gate agent for the flight number of the arriving flight for your plane, and FlightAware lets you track that flight live while it’s in the air.  You can search easily by flight number as well as flight route (departing and arriving airports).

***Note – don’t stray too far from the gate area even if your arriving plane is delayed.  The airline might switch planes to get your flight off earlier.

Challenge #2: “I hope there’s more than a snack machine near my gate!”

Apps that can help: GateGuru and Point Inside

Running late to the airport and trying to figure out where you’re going to grab lunch?  These two apps are great for finding out what is around your gate area.  GateGuru offers a search by terminal area as well as ratings from fellow users.  For the more visually oriented, Point Inside provides terminal maps of restaurants and other services at major airports.

Challenge #3: “Those clouds look pretty bad… Are we going to get rained out?”

Apps that can help: MyRadar and The Weather Channel

MyRadar is a straightforward app that provides detailed radar information near your area, as well as a continuous loop to see where storms are headed.  You can also scan to other areas of the country to see the weather at your arrival destination.  The Weather Channel is a great app for forecasts and other weather data for cities/airports around the world.

Challenge #4: “There are so many restaurants around – where should I go?”  Or… “Please tell me there’s more than this truck stop to eat at around here!”

Apps that can help: TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon, and OpenTable

I like both TripAdvisor and Urbanspoon for their ability to show you what restaurants are around you in an easy to use format.  Both also offer the ability to learn how other diners have rated these restaurants. OpenTable also does this, and helps to snag a reservation quickly and easily.

Challenge #5: “I wish I could fall asleep, but the TV next door is keeping me awake…”

App that can help: SleepMachine

Nothing is more frustrating in my book than having a super quiet hotel room and being woken up by every door slam in the hallway, or traffic from the highway outside, or the guy next door watching SportsCenter with the volume on 11.  For my fellow light sleepers, I highly suggest SleepMachine.  You can select between several sounds, including a fan, white noise, even crickets (for those who sleep outside, I guess).  Or you can combine different sounds to create a unique, sleep permitting sound.

Those are some of the apps we find most helpful when on the road. Feel free to suggest others you find useful in the comments section below.

Now that it’s officially summertime, we’re excited to announce that MREB’s 2012 Resource and Organizational Benchmarking survey is open for participation! Last year’s benchmarking results showed several interesting trends, including continued flat budgets, yet an overall optimistic outlook for budgets in 2012. 

This year, we’ve streamlined the survey to make it shorter and easier to complete. But as always, the survey will measure key metrics such as:

• Budget level
• Resource allocation by project type
• Organizational structure
• Staffing levels
• Services provided
• Vendor spend

This one-of-a-kind budget and spend benchmarking service is an exclusive benefit of MREB membership, as it collects unique data to help you compare your resource allocation against peers and to understand emerging trends within the function. It can also be valuable when explaining budget or staffing proposals to senior executives.

As a participant, you will receive a detailed custom report in time for the 2013 budget planning cycle, including an overview of the unit’s services, staffing, and budget. Depending on the size of the specific data set, we can cut data for company size, geography, budget, industry, function, or business unit. We’ll also create an online, interactive tool that lets you query the database directly to obtain the most frequently requested benchmarks.

To receive your custom report by August, don’t forget to complete the survey by June 29^th.

Questions, comments, or concerns? Email Doris Jwo at djwo@executiveboard.com.

Related Resources:

• 2012 Resource and Organizational Benchmarking Survey
• Resource and Organizational Benchmarking Data
• Budgeting and Resourcing

Related Blogs:

• Budget and Staffing Benchmarking: Here to Help You

Amongst business executives, Big Data remains a divisive idea, and for good reason. While no one can deny that there is great potential in untapped data, it’s hard to say whether current use of this data truly informs better decisions. Still, in a recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a group of over 600 senior executives reported that big data initiatives had improved their company’s performance by 26%. The strict definition of “performance” in this case remains ambiguous, but a reported 26% improvement certainly isn’t to be ignored.

The jury is still out on what big data can do, but the same report also revealed some of the major issues that companies need to solve before they can make good use of large volumes of data. A major obstacle lies in extracting data trapped within different functional silos. Big Data just isn’t helpful if companies can’t find a way to integrate data hidden all over the place and bring it to business executives in a way that helps inform decisions.

Market researchers seeking to build an insightful analytics function see the issue from the other side – it’s hard to establish an organizational structure that best engages stakeholders early on while ensuring that analytics becomes firmly embedded into decision making processes. In too many cases, analytics is still viewed as merely a reporting function.

To overcome these issues, analytics teams need to move from a reporting role to a strategic role, and tailor reporting and internal team structure to the specific types of projects being requested.

MREB members, learn more about organizing the analytics function to best serve key stakeholders and see examples from the Home Depot, Clorox, and Caterpillar.  

Related blogs:

• Analytics as Competitive Advantage
• The Shiny Object Syndrome in Analytics
• Using Data Analytics for Insight

Related member resources:

• Changing Role of Analytics for Market Research
• Integrating Analytics into Market Research

Companies pursuing transformative innovation are able to generate up to twice the product sales of their peers, but CEB research found that three out of four executives think their firms lack breakthrough ideas.  CEB’s second quarter installment of Executive Guidance, Transformative Innovation, explores how business leaders can accelerate innovation globally.

CEB’s work has found that weakened ideation networks, stretched management, and ineffective global working relationships are causing many companies to be hard-pressed to restock their innovation pipeline with breakthrough ideas.

Here are four steps to reignite transformative innovation at your company (along with some Research-specific resources to help you get going):

1. Repair and Reconnect Dispersed Internal Networks to Drive Idea Exchange: MREB members, we have a lot of information on obtaining diverse and unique perspectives, including an example of a formalized internal intelligence network at GM

2. Manage Social Media and Crowdsourcing to Generate Ideas: here is some insight on making open innovation work for you

3. Enable Staff to Self-Assess Ideas to Improve Idea Quality: assessing idea quality can be hard, especially when ideas are at different stages of definition.  MREB members, see Johnson Controls’ objective criteria to prioritize and assess all NPD opportunities regardless of how well-defined they are.

4. Rebuild Effective Global Relationships to Encourage Collaboration: here are some tips for managing dispersed/virtual teams and offshore research teams.

To learn how you can reinvigorate innovation in your organization, read CEB’s Executive Guidance.

Related blogs:

• Right People, Right Question is the Mantra of Open Innovation
• Managing dispersed Research teams? Realign your management style
• Crowdsourcing Your Next Big Idea

This week’s guest blog comes from Ian Lewis, Director, Research Impact Consulting at Cambiar.  Ian was an MREB member when he led the Consumer Research & Insights team at Time Inc.

Cambiar launched the Future of Research Study in 2011, with invaluable help from MREB members. We learned that most corporate market researchers expect major transformation of the research industry that will be evident within three years from now. The key drivers for this change are management demands to deliver more, faster and with less resource; technology; the digitization of everything; the empowered and connected consumer; and the globalization of the middle class.  Joe Tripodi, CMO of Coca-Cola, said it best: “If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevance a whole lot less. “ 

In 2012, our study focused on the reality of transformation - on what corporate researchers are doing and what is happening with research transformation in 2012. We kept a few benchmark questions looking ahead to 2020, to see how expectations are evolving.

Here are some of the questions we addressed corporate researchers (Manager and above):

• How much of the corporate research budget goes to strategic research? How does this relate to satisfaction?
• What’s happening with ways of working – are corporate researchers becoming thought partners, conducting more strategic research and making the “Now What” recommendations using storytelling?
• How are new research tools and information sources being integrated into research solutions? Which new tools are taking hold and which aren’t?
• What’s the extent of synthesized analysis, and with which information sources?
• What kinds of people are being hired today, and what types of training are being provided?

Now here’s a glimpse at what we’re learning, and we’ll expand on this in the June 25 webinar:

• The drumbeat for transformation is growing.  Read More »

Much of market research’s work is an effort to understand what it’s like to walk in the customer’s shoes, i.e., asking questions that aim to get at motivational drivers, designing studies to understand behaviors in store or when interacting with service. But individual research studies are often looking at one step in the customer’s walk rather than the whole journey. A lot can be gained by mapping out the whole walk in a customer journey model—a map, image, or framework that describes a series of stages a customer traverses when interacting with a company’s products or services.

Here are some tips on making a model, and making it work for your research department:

1. Keep the customer central

Where as in some foundational knowledge exercises research might map out everything it knows in groups based on type of research question, or relationship to business unit, a customer journey map puts the customer before Research or the business. A model can look like a roadmap, pinwheel, flow chart, or set of swim lanes. The important thing is that it centers on the customer.

Theta Communications* customer journey model:

 *pseudonym

2. Use the model to synthesize and communicate insights

A Customer Journey model is a useful tool for organizing and framing an information synthesis process. Research insights can be organized by stage in the customer journey, and model-based research products can highlight and communicate key customer understandings and gaps in company knowledge.

• Sara Lee put together a customer journey framework as a means of de-siloing and sharing research findings between multiple functions in the company responsible for generating customer insights—specifically, shopper and consumer insights.

3. Use the model to structure new research studies and questions

A customer journey model can be a valuable tool around which new studies can be designed. Basing research on a cohesive customer model leads to customer-driven business strategy and outcomes.

• Southern California Edison used a customer journey model to map how customer satisfaction is a result of interactions with groups, rather than individual business functional units. By describing business processes through the customer’s eyes, the journey modeling process allowed the company to achieve cross-functional customer satisfaction improvements.

Details of how Sara Lee, Southern California Edison, and other companies put their journey maps to use are available to members in our newest whitepaper: Using a Customer Journey Model for Synthesis and Strategy.

This week’s guest blog comes from Dalia Naamani-Goldman of the Customer Contact Council, a sister program of the Board serving heads of customer contact.

There is something about a business-to-business relationship that enables companies to be very direct and surprisingly honest and candid with customers.

Forget beating around the bush with “How well are we doing as a company serving and supporting your needs?”  It is not uncommon to ask on a B2B relationship survey about customers’ thoughts of their experience with your company, but also perceptions of how your company stacks up to others.  Some B2B organizations even go so far as to directly ask for examples where service delivery fell short of expectations.

It is clear that the major revenue at stake in a B2B relationship drives a higher level of accountability and transparency, but it is curious that in today’s increasingly competitive environment that B2C service organizations are not similarly direct in seeking customer input.

B2C customer experience surveys typically ask a variety of CSAT and loyalty questions, but they primarily focus on the positive, of what’s working well.  “How well did we exceed your expectations?” and “How satisfied are you?” are common customer experience survey questions we see, for example.  Rarely, however, do B2C surveys get at “What went wrong?” or put another way, “Where did we fail?”

Of course no need to proactively offer mea culpa or call full attention to what went wrong.  The key is to embrace the idea of focusing on what went wrong in the customer interaction.  And then of course to fix it.

One of the smartest and simplest approaches to this we have seen is just modifying customer experience survey questions to focus on failure points.  Two sample questions that come from technical support organizations include (CCC Members, to see the full example, click here):

“If you weren’t able to obtain the help you were seeking, please explain why.”

And

“If your problem was not resolved, what will you do next?”

Both questions get at where service and support failed but in a productive, helpful way without creating a negative customer sentiment.  And both are in line with the B2B lesson that organizations can be more forthright in seeking customer insights without negatively impacting customer relationships.

Have any companies experimented with being more assertive and direct in seeking customer feedback?  What have you tried, and what have you learned?

Related Member Resources:

• Driving Action with NPS® and Other Loyalty Metrics
• Conducting Customer Loyalty, Satisfaction, and Profitability Research

Related Blogs:

• WAR: the latest in an alphabet soup of loyalty metrics
• Exploring Loyalty by Customer Demographic

This is a guest post by Alexandra Chiou of the Sales Executive Council, our sister program for heads of sales.  We wanted to share for two reasons: 1) it shows the types of insights that sales folks can share with customers to help close business, and 2) sales folks sell insights to customers just like we have to sell the insights to our business partners. It’s always nice to find the similarities between our jobs and those of our business partners!

We know that your best sellers succeed by teaching customers something new about their business.  But what sales messages are your sellers sharing with customers and prospects? And how do you know when you have an insight versus a catchy but fleeting idea?

Our most recent findings from this year’s new research study (which SEC members can access here) reveal that many companies struggle to discern thought leadership from true insight. They often arm their sellers with newsworthy sales messages that grab customer attention but have little lasting impact, and alone are insufficient to create a sense of urgency that translates to customer action.

While we all know and agree that insights are the key to successful selling in a complex environment, companies struggle to generate commercial insights and to know what good insight should look like.

So what exactly is insight anyway? This year’s new SEC research reveals the key ingredients and a basic definition of commercial insight. We think of it as having a few key components. The first component is:

• Be credible/relevant – Demonstrate an understanding of the customer’s world, substantiating claims with real-world evidence. (MREB members, see how Volvo’s research team coordinates with sales and marketing to uncover the appropriate topic to investigate)

While every insight must have this baseline requirement, it alone is insufficient—you’ll merely have a catchy idea that probably won’t stick. And that is thought leadership in a nutshell – food for thought, but unless it really reframes customers’ current thinking, they will most likely move on to the next new and shiny thing they see. That’s where the next two differentiators come into the picture:

• Be frame-breaking – Disrupt the customer’s current logic, revealing an underappreciated aspect of the customer’s environment or a flawed assumption.
• Lead back to your unique strengths – Refer customers specifically to areas where you outperform competitors. (MREB members, see how Condé Nast generates effective teaching to support multiple years of sales activity)

This last component, while not important to the customer, is especially important for you as the supplier. If your commercial message meets the first two criteria, but it doesn’t lead back to you, you have just done some free consulting that may benefit your competitors—you have a sharp message, but it’s not commercially viable for you.

Related Blogs:

• Challenge Convention like your Best Sales Reps Do
• Teaching your Sellers to Teach
• Setting up a Shopper Insights Shop

Related Member Resources:

• Supporting Sales: Embedding Insight into the Sales Process
• Volvo’s Value Discovery Workshop
• Condé Nast’s Sales Platform Study