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Gather Insights – Reap Strategic Growth

In this article, Caroline Taich shares key steps that can be taken towards gathering insights for strategic growth.

I have been out talking with organizations about strategic growth. It’s a topic I’ve been attracted to throughout my career. When I think about growth there are three principles that I regularly come back to: Get out of the building. Prioritize your energy. Be clear on your definition of success. I’ll talk about the first today.

Get out of the building, watch, and listen. Don’t underestimate the value of talking to customers, competitors, staff, board members, and collaborators to gather insight. For example, one medical device manufacturer that I served early in my McKinsey career asked, how can we improve the performance of our sales staff? One way to answer to this question was to spend time with the top performers. I rode in the car with Michael, one of the highest grossing sales agents, observing him. I learned he was organized, and had a clear, prioritized list of all the decision makers he wanted to visit. I was impressed with his deep understanding of the product and its value proposition. But most importantly? He brought doughnuts on every sales call. Doughnuts got him an “in” to the hospital break rooms where staff hung out; this is where he built relationships, and gathered insight. We put “bring doughnuts” in the sales training playbook, and it helped!

Market research is something that I love to do and over the years I have developed a number of strategies to help me do it. Here are a few of my favorites:

 

Key points include:

• Use food strategically
• Give back 
• Focus and brevity

Read the full article, Gathering strategic insights for growth, on LinkedIn.