Decoding Commercial Insight

What qualifies as insight? That is by far the most common question we’ve heard from members looking to implement commercial teaching in their organization. And rightly so, when you look at all the information surrounding us, it becomes difficult to identify what makes for world-class insight.

While looking up the definition of insight is helpful, we’ve tried to answer this question by explaining what it’s not—separating insight from some of other types of information conveyed through sales messages. We find this makes the distinction clear without having to resort to semantic nuances.

Starting on the outside of this diagram is General Information. This is the universe of information available to us and generally covers just about everything. We don’t process all of it as most is not immediately relevant. We simply know it to exist within our reach and often spend time filtering what might be relevant.

In arriving at an insight, our first hurdle is to be credible and actionable for it to capture the customer’s attention. The sales message must demonstrate an understanding of the customer’s world supported by real-world evidence. Without it, customers are likely to ignore or reject the message.

If the information is both credible and relevant, it lands in the next tier of Accepted Information. The problem is accepted information sounds like everyone else’s information. It doesn’t teach the customer anything new; rather, it confirms something that the customer already knew.

Therefore, the second hurdle to arriving at an insight is to be newsworthy. Without it, the customer is unlikely to do anything about the information, at least nothing they weren’t already doing.

Messages that are both credible and newsworthy fall in the next category of Thought Leadership. This is by far the most infamous of them all as most companies actively strive to be “thought leaders” in their industry, mistaking thought leadership with insight. And for good reason—information in this category teaches the customer something they wouldn’t have found out on their own. Except, it doesn’t really drive action—customers learn something new but don’t necessarily act on the information.

We find the third hurdle to insight is for it to be frame-breaking—it should disrupt the customer’s status quo by conveying a new idea while at the same time juxtaposing the cost of current behavior to the potential of alternate action, creating both an emotional and rational response from customers.

Overcoming this hurdle brings us closer to Insight—information that is frame-breaking, that clearly places the new idea over the current behavior, and forces the customer to take action. But, without the insight leading the customer exclusively to the supplier, it is just free consulting. The customer is free to take the idea out to bid, opening the opportunity up to competitors to win the business.

The final hurdle to arriving at an insight is for it to lead back to our unique capability that only we can offer to customers. Only when an insight leads back to us is it called Commercial Insight, as it makes us the sole supplier that can help the customer take action on that insight, better than anyone else.

Looking at your own sales messages, do you find yourself taking commercial insights to market? Or are you guilty of disguising other types of information, such as thought leadership, as insight?

SEC Members, to learn more, review our latest work on Shaping Demand Through Pre-Funnel Engagement. Also, register to attend the first in a series of day-long Challenger Workshop sessions on how to develop an organizational capability to build commercial insights.