How to turn insight into action

The worst-case scenario for a research project is that it becomes an academic exercise rather than a catalyst spurring action.

So how does Adience ensure that insight always leads to action? We have three guiding principles:

• Involve internal stakeholders
• Go beyond the interviews/survey
• Tell a story

1. Involve internal stakeholders

At the beginning of a project, we involve those who will approve, or execute, decisions coming out of the research. Typically, this is done using a short internal survey or a workshop. This approach is essential because:

• It allows us to understand what questions the full team want to ask
• It helps us to identify some internal hypotheses that we need to validate
• By consulting them, they’re more likely to put their weight behind the result.

2. Go beyond the survey

Conducting interviews with the target audience is critical to any B2B research project, but typically it only tells part of the story. Often there is even more information available that could help us to obtain a better understanding of the problem. For example:

• Publicly available information, such as: the opinions of industry analysts; customer reviews; macro-economic data (e.g., business demographics); context on competitor activity
• Information that is proprietary to the client, such as: sales trend data; data on customer behavior

3. Tell a story

Research findings are often dry and inaccessible, but shouldn’t be. We use a variety of techniques to make our presentations memorable and easy to digest:

• Our proprietary approach to building presentations incorporates key principles of story-telling and visualization
• We use tools such as vox pop videos and case studies to bring the findings to life