The Six-Step Process for Developing Commercial Insight

Key Insight

Creating Commercial Insight involves a structured, six-step process designed to reframe how customers perceive value and challenge their existing mental models, moving beyond product-centric communication. The core framework uses a concentric circle model: the inner circle lists a supplier's key differentiators (e.g., functionality, running cost, reliability), while the outer circle represents higher-order outcomes that customers care about, independent of any supplier's capabilities (e.g., 'Improve student performance', 'Modernize school facilities'). The objective is to identify surprising or underappreciated connections between these two circles, generating potential Commercial Insights.

The initial steps involve comprehensively listing all product and company-level differentiators (Step 1) and then generating a wide-ranging list of measurable customer outcomes (Step 2). A common pitfall for marketing teams is thinking too narrowly about the 'customer,' often focusing solely on a single, traditional decision-maker. Instead, it is crucial to identify outcomes important to a broader array of stakeholders (e.g., superintendents, principals, teachers) and to go beyond common RFP metrics like printing cost per page, focusing on higher-order concerns such as 'Improve student performance' or 'Improve teacher effectiveness.' This broader understanding requires direct customer interviews and extensive industry research. Subsequently, these outcomes are prioritized based on their importance to customers and their likelihood of having hidden connections to the supplier's differentiators (Step 3).

The process then moves to mapping customer beliefs about what drives these prioritized outcomes (Step 4), which requires deep customer understanding of their internal processes, not just how they perceive the supplier. Next, teams hypothesize connections between their differentiators and customer outcomes, aiming to 'break the mental model' (Step 5). This involves brainstorming 'what if' scenarios; for example, if vibrant color, like interactive learning aids, could improve student performance and knowledge retention—an effect decision-makers from the pre-tablet era might overlook. Finally, these hypothesized connections are rigorously tested and validated through surveys and research (Step 6), ensuring they resonate with customers, challenge their existing thinking, and clearly link back to the supplier's differentiators, thereby building a strong evidence base for the new insight. For instance, Xerox's research found that 77 percent of students agreed color documents boosted their focus, interest, and memory.