Giving your customers a glimpse into the future can be one of the most powerful advantages in today's complex retail environment. By showing them foresight through insight-led story telling, you provide incredible value and make it easier for shoppers to make educated decisions about their businesses. It’s an invaluable skill that will differentiate you from other CPG sales teams – so don't miss out on this unique opportunity to inspire those who matter most!

What are my customers’ future needs, pains and pinch points?

It makes sense to start every story with the audience in mind - yet so often we start with the insights and our own agenda.

Getting better at customer foresight gives the business a means of evaluating past actions, a better grasp on current activities and trends, and the foundation for creating effective plans to meet future challenges as well. But to improve customer foresight, teams within the organization must have the mindset and the skills to keep a focus on the future of the customer experience. To help your team achieve this, consider:

An inquisitive environment

Build an environment where any member can question the status quo, by ensuring that employees asking these questions are heard, responded to, and rewarded. Challenge your team to start to look forward in the way that they tackle everyday problems. Too often, a leader will ask for reports that support decisions that have already passed, reinforcing a focus on the past. An inquisitive environment rewards employees for thinking about tomorrow — finding the real value of analytics by identifying and filling the gaps in our understanding.

Using the 0:20:80 principle, a team’s focus should be:

• 0% on what happened yesterday

• 20% on what is happening today

• 80% on what is going to happen tomorrow

This is a mindset, not a framework.

Break siloed thinking

The average team wastes seven hours per week dealing with siloed information — a productivity loss of 350 work hours per year. This was echoed in a McKinsey Global Institute Report which highlighted the barrier that siloed information creates to the advancement of data analytics within companies. Time and again we see huge value locked with the walls of organizational project teams; and while technology may contribute to lack of collaboration and information-sharing, the core problem is a cultural one.

Maintain your team’s enthusiasm to share insights where they can add value elsewhere. This involves both actively encouraging information sharing with other departments, and actively seeking data from outside sources. Leveraging alternative perspectives from outside your projects can have a multiplier effect — adding context to everyday activities, and pushing the team’s desire to understand more about the team, the organization, and the business environment.

The idea that “information is power” — and behaviors that contribute to withholding data — must not be modeled, tolerated or supported by leadership for companies that are looking to unlock the value of data analytics, and support a future-focused customer experience.

Finally…

Transform your customers' story into a riveting narrative! Uncover their biggest ambitions and delve deep into the issues that currently challenge them. By skilfully crafting tales which demonstrate knowledge and expertise, you can gain trust as an authority in the industry - inspiring business success for all involved.

see6 is an AI enabled platform that helps sales teams transform their insights into compelling stories to grow sales.