THE POWER OF

VISIONARY INSIGHTS

DELIVERING THE RIGHT TYPES OF INSIGHTS TO ADDRESS CUSTOMERS’ UNCONSIDERED NEEDS AND DEFEAT THE STATUS QUO

This much we know: Creating and delivering insights is all the rage.

2

WHAT WE FOUND: A recent Corporate Visions survey, which polled more than 400 business- to-business marketers and sales professionals, found that 81 percent of respondents believe they’re using an insights-based approach as part of their marketing and sales strategy.

So we know most companies think they’re delivering insights to help them win deals, but what actually constitutes a powerful insight? And what types of insights are most effective at differentiating your solution and defeating a prospect’s status quo bias?

In other words, how can you know whether you’re actually creating action or just recycling data?

EXPLOREMORE

A consensus has emerged around the idea that delivering powerful insights can help companies develop demand generation campaigns that rise above the noise and sales enablement content that converts leads into actual pipeline.

81%BELIEVE THEY’RE USING INSIGHT-BASED APPROACH

3

Defining InsightsFinding out which types of insights are most effective in your marketing and sales enablement efforts starts with defining our terms.

The problem is, the concept of insights is somewhat amorphous, with various definitions and understandings often attached to the term. Due to the range of different meanings, it’s helpful to define insights in a more concrete way.

Reaching a more precise definition of insights will make it easier to develop and execute a purposeful insights-based strategy that yields measurable results.

4

Four Types of InsightTo get a more concrete understanding of the terms, we identified four types of insights that companies can create and deliver:

Anecdotal: Typically developed inside the company, insights in this category often focus on day-to-day issues like best practices and lessons learned from customers. Examples include customer success stories, testimonials, or a piece of advice or trick provided by an experienced user of your solutions.

DRAWBACK: Anecdotal insights tend to be limited in terms of moving the needle and actually helping prospects and customers see the need to do something different.

Authoritative: This is content that incorporates the work of respected third parties like industry analysts, consultants, or other poll takers who gather information from research and identify certain stats or facts.

DRAWBACK: Anybody in the industry can grab hold of these data points and turn them into insights. Thus, it can be difficult to say something truly unique.

Current: This category includes insights developed using content from original company-generated research and surveys. In other words, you go out into the marketplace through your customer and prospect database and pose questions to them, generating enough responses to create a credible, statistically valid survey. You then develop insights by commenting on the unique, exclusive data points you created.

DRAWBACK: While independently generated research and insights are often a net positive, one potential problem is that people may question the credibility of the findings if they keep tilting in favor of your solutions.

Visionary: These insights take the idea of original, primary research that you conduct, and unique, exclusive data points that you identify—and then go a step further. Instead of just adding a point of view that reflects the current realities of your research, you’ll give that research a forward-looking thrust, potentially looking a few years down the road to some of the emerging trends, issues, and challenges your data support. You can then provide content, conversation, and opinion around the most compelling topics, positioning you as an industry “sage” or “clairvoyant”—hence the name “visionary insights.”

INDUSTRYANALYST

OURCOMPANY

5

How Companies Rank and Deliver InsightsIn the same Corporate Visions survey referenced earlier, we explored what types of insights companies are using, and what they deem to have the most positive impact on their business.

… how frequently they appear in marketing collateral and sales tools. The rankings turned out as follows:

Anecdotal insights (USED MOST)Authoritative insightsCurrent insightsVisionary insights (USED LEAST)

Opportunity creation: The most important conversation

… how effective they believe they are at generating more engaging conversations and driving sales. Surprisingly, the rankings ended up in reverse order to those in the previous question:

Visionary insights (MOST EFFECTIVE)Current insightsAuthoritative insightsAnecdotal insights (LEAST EFFECTIVE)

?4

TURNING INSIGHTS INSIDE OUT Most B2B Marketing and Sales professionals believe they use an insights-based approach as part of their strategy.

Marketing and Sales teams typically produce four types of insight-driven content:

CONTENT CONFLICT

But there’s a disconnect between what Marketing and Sales people

view as most effective—and what they

actually produce.

IT COMES DOWN TO CONTEXTAcross all categories of insight-driven content, what really matters is context. Identifying relevant market data points is just the first step. The true keys to success:

Interpreting information to make it meaningful to client challenges

Crafting provocative questions and a distinctive point of view

Challenging the status quo—and differentiating in the market

Research based on survey results from 400 B2B marketers and sales professionals worldwide.

The right skills. The right story. For the customer conversations that matter most, create aligned insight-driven content for each stage of the buying cycle.

What we’ve learned

INDUSTRYANALYST

81%

Our survey results show

Looking to the future…

AnecdotalContent created in-house. Focuses on more tactical, day-to-day issues like best practices or lessons learned.

AuthoritativeContent incorporating the work of respected third parties like industry analysts.

CurrentContent centered on original, company- generated research and surveys.

VisionaryContent that leverages in-house expertise but looks to the future of the industry and defines what’s next.

1 2 3

As an objective expert…

MOST EFFECTIVE

Visionary

Current

Authoritative

Anecdotal

LEAST EFFECTIVE

MOST FREQUENTLY USED

Anecdotal

Authoritative

Current

Visionary

LEAST FREQUENTLY USED

INDUSTRYANALYST

INDUSTRYANALYST

POV

OURCOMPANY

OURCOMPANY

OURCOMPANY

®

LEARN MORE:Turning Insights…Inside Out

VIDEO INFOGRAPHIC

Respondents were asked to rank these four insight types on…

6

An Insights Conundrum?

It’s a little ironic, but not surprising. After all, anecdotal and authoritative insights are typically the easiest to develop and deliver. For instance, most companies have customers that can submit a testimonial in favor of their solutions. And we all know there’s no shortage of thorough, highly credible research coming out of respected industry analyst firms.

While these types of insights can play a role in your messaging, they won’t consistently be able to serve as a differentiator in your marketing and sales enablement efforts. Because they’re easier to develop and deliver, there’s no guarantee that your voice will stand out from the crowd and be able to generate interest and activate intent.

When it comes to creating the urgency needed to instigate change, your messaging should aim to incorporate insights that belong to the more effective, but less delivered categories.

Interestingly enough, the types of insights companies deliver the most are the same ones they believe to be the least effective. Conversely, the insights they use the least are seen as most effective.

7

AUTHORITATIVE INSIGHTS

Don’t just pass along numbers; tell a story.

Delivering great authoritative insights starts with thinking about third-party data points not as interesting, isolated stats, but as crucial components of a broader point of view or story.

If you just share the data, you’re not providing enough context to help your prospects or customers use the information to guide them on a pathway to change. You have to shape a unique point of view or opinion about the data to help them see the broader implications of what they’re doing today versus what they could be doing tomorrow.

That contextual, storytelling component is what transforms a simple authoritative data point into a powerful authoritative insight.

INDUSTRYANALYST As an objective expert…

8

CURRENT INSIGHTS

Represent another step forward as far as crafting a distinct point of view.

With this approach, you’ll pivot away from third-party analyst data to create and interpret your own data by conducting original, primary research with prospects and customers.

Because your point of view is based off unique data that you’ve generated, you enhance your ability to package compelling insight-based content into your demand generation campaigns and sales enablement content.

You can, in turn, create visual stories for salespeople to take to the marketplace, either as a follow-up to leads you’ve generated or as introductory conversations, giving them the ammunition they need to succeed in the early-stage, opportunity creation conversations.

By generating original primary research, taking a snapshot of what’s happening in the industry, and providing commentary on what you’ve found, you’ve added value to your data points and enlightened your prospects and customers. This also creates differentiation in your messaging, because the content, and the data driving it, is exclusively yours.

Our survey results show…

9

These forward-looking insights, deemed by the market to be most effective, bear some similarities to “current” insights in that both rely on original, unique data points and interpretation generated by you. But with “visionary” insights, you’re taking the “current” insights model a step further.

The main difference between “visionary” insights and “current” insights involves a shift in scope from the present to the future.

To be visionary, you’ll have to look around the corner to what’s happening in your industry. Based on some of the emerging issues, trends, and challenges in the marketplace, you’ll develop ideas about the future course of your industry. And from there, you’ll develop insights designed to lead prospects and customers toward something, and away from something else.

Designed to break the status quo by addressing buyers’ unconsidered needs, visionary insight relies on you making a concerted effort to drive new ideas into the marketplace.

VISIONARY INSIGHTS Looking to the future…

Convince Prospects, It’s Time!

When done right, visionary insights can generate an enormous amount of momentum for your demand generation campaigns and sales enablement content.

Delivering visionary insights in the self-service phase of the buying cycle will help convert campaign-generated excitement into actual pipeline. Your reps will also be better prepared to thrive during the all-important first sales conversation, when their tools and talking points must address buyers’ unconsidered needs to help them defeat the status quo.

Because visionary insights are exclusive and typically garner the most attention, they give you the strongest foundation for merchandising your most provocative insights over all your marketing and sales activities. These assets will further cement you as a source of thought leadership within your industry.

By incorporating your own visionary insights into a range of assets, you also help ensure that you’ll tell a consistent, provocative story on both sides of the lead hand-off.

10

CONCLUSION

THE BEST INSIGHTS OCCUR when you can show an inconsistency or uncertainty in the way somebody’s thinking about doing something today.

That’s the distinction between insights and simply passing information along. Insights help you open a prospect up to the possibility of persuasion, doing something different, and leaving their status quo.

Conversely, by disseminating information that’s already out there, or that corroborates someone’s current position, you’re further entrenching their status quo situation and limiting how open they are to being persuaded to change.

This information can be thought of as true, but useless. Sure, it may be interesting enough and factual, but how much impact will it have on the marketing and selling pursuit?

To avoid trafficking in the “true, but useless” category, build a story—a distinct point of view—around your data points. And recognize that the closer on the spectrum you get to “visionary” insights, the more impact your demand generation and sales enablement messaging will have.

11

Call toll free: 1.800.360.SELL (US only)

Phone: +1 415.464.4400 | Fax: +1 775.831.9676

Email: info@corporatevisions.com

Copyright © 2015 Corporate Visions® Inc. All rights reserved.

Corporate Visions is a leading marketing and sales messaging, tools, and skills company that helps global B2B companies create more sales opportunities, win more deals and increase sales profitability by improving the conversations salespeople have with customers. Companies engage Corporate Visions to help in three key areas:

• Developing compelling messages to break the status quo, differentiating their solution, justifying a purchase decision and protecting margins;

• Deploying that message through tools and visual stories to enable salespeople to engage multiple decision-makers across the buying cycle; and

• Delivering sales skills training that helps salespeople confidently use these messages and tools to create, elevate and capture more value in their customer conversations.

Corporate Visions helps clients such as ADP, Motorola, Philips, UPS, Cisco and others align marketing and sales with a repeatable approach for developing and delivering winning customer conversations.

CONVERSATIONS THAT WIN

Conversations That Win