Cambiar Consulting

by Ian Lewis, Partner

I led client research departments for more than twenty years, and the thing that made me “groan” the most was when I received a draft PowerPoint exceeding 50 pages – sometimes 100 pages!   I recently interviewed an Insurance CMO, and he told of Sunday afternoons in Maine laboriously poring through research decks by the fireplace.  Another CMO said “Research tends to deliver 50-page PowerPoint’s – that’s not the pace of the business.”  A third CMO went further to say “The presentation should take 10 minutes. The conversation should last for hours.”

Why are we still delivering an obsolete product?  Do market research companies have a secret deal with the companies that sell paper and toner?

Do your team’s reports and presentations spark action by your clients?  Do they utilize storytelling techniques to engage the audience and make an emotional connection that is remembered and passed along?  Do they contain insights that connect with business action and impact?  Do they get to the “Now What?” (What your client should do) or do they stop at the “What?” (What you did or found).

Based on my experience as a client who has faced “Death by PowerPoint” too many times, here are seven things that – in combination – will get you started on the road toward killer presentations.  These seven are focused on business context, structure, insight and storytelling.  Our next blog will expand on storytelling, plus speak to format, design and how reports are utilized by the client.

1. Set a limit of 15 pages (this is generous) – the rest goes in an Appendix or on the client’s portal
2. Use just ONE of these pages for Business Context and Methodology
3. Make sure you know the business context and decision to be made, and that you get to the Now What? (What the client should do)
4. Know who the audience is for the presentation, and how it will be delivered (in person, by webcast, phone, or just sent?)
5. Write the story BEFORE you begin on the deck
6. Collaborate.  Don’t try to come up with insights in isolation.  Any good management consulting company gets a senior team together to work on insights and the Now What? – So why do researchers tend to work alone?
7. Make sure you have a true insight – an “aha” that connects with business action of value- not just “findings” that are now labeled “insights”

Want to improve your impact?  Cambiar recently launched Communicating For Impact Training Program in response to a number of requests for consulting and training in this area.  Our highly interactive, three-step program combines training in insight development and communications skills so that your team can create reports and presentations that deliver business impact for your clients.    We review your team’s reports and presentations, then incorporate our feedback into an interactive seminar, and follow up with individual coaching to make it stick.  Contact Ian Lewis – ian@consultcambiar.com or Simon Chadwick – simon@consultcambiar.com for more information.

An interesting thing happened at this year’s UK Market Research Society Conference: attendees inducted someone into the Hall of Fame who had been dead for over 100 years. They decided to induct Charles Dickens as the grandfather of market research. Yes, that’s right, that Charles Dickens! Why? Because, they argued, he was a keen social observer, a meticulous data gatherer, an integrator of information and a wonderful story teller who tapped our emotions in order to bring us to understanding of his basic social insights.

But, more than that, Charles Dickens made an impact. He wasn’t just telling stories for the sake of telling stories – he was telling them so as to impact the conscience of the British public as to the grueling lives of the poor, the disadvantaged and the dispossessed. He gathered his data, integrated it, sorted it and then told us the story in such an emotional way that it still has impact to this very day.

When did your last research project have such an impact?!

It’s not beyond us, you know. We can impact (and have done so) if we want to. Take AIDS in Uganda, for example. Uganda has had a lower infection rate than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa for decades. Why? Because a research study – a story really well told – convinced WHO to sell condoms in small roadside stores rather than give them away in villages, thus imbuing them with value and caché. Or, on a more prosaic level, the success of tampons in Italy after a research company insisted that the CEO of a tampon company (which shall be nameless) actually visit the country and immerse himself in its female culture.

Research has the power to have a very high impact! So why does it persist in under-performing? And why does it have such low self-esteem? Jim Collins regards researchers as the unsung heroes of Good to Great and Built to Last companies! Why unsung? What is that we need to do to consistently deliver impact and become “sung”?

–Simon Chadwick