The domino effect: How sales leaders are reinventing go-to-market in the next normal

Sales has always been a “sensing” organization, attuned to changes in customer sentiment, shifts in demand, and the requirements of different buying stages. But those senses are being flooded as customers shift to digital engagement, leaving sellers with more channels to cover and more interactions to manage.


The pandemic has amplified these challenges, exposing weaknesses in existing sales models and gaps in digital readiness. In many ways, this data revolution in sales matches what happened to marketing departments three to five years ago, when they were forced to reorient their functions to be more analytically driven. With more data flowing in from nontraditional sources such as video calls and webinars—few of which are captured by current sales processes—understanding which customers to focus on, what they care about, and how they want to engage can often feel like a guessing game.

However, some sales organizations have reduced that guesswork. They are bringing science to sales and are harnessing data in ways that deliver double-digit gains in return-on-investment (ROI). These organizations start with centralizing commercial operations and generating insights from internal and external data sources, including web and email scrapes, information from virtual calls and pitches, and other analyses. These improved insights allow sales organizations to be more agile in aligning their resources and adapting their operating model. To hardwire these capabilities, smarter automated processes are built into a new operating models. Performance metrics and coaching are then tailored to the needs of the company and the requirements of the individual salesperson

Web3 and Metaverse

 

If the web’s second generation introduced interactivity, web3 is poised to change interaction itself. Enabled by digital identity and powered by blockchain technologies, the Internet’s third iteration is more open and decentralized—ushering in an entirely new digital economy.

Web3 has the potential to introduce new opportunities across a variety of sectors, yet it will impact many industries’ profit pools by removing the traditional intermediaries in value exchange. Tokenization, blockchain payment rails, and decentralized finance (DeFi) are pushing financial institutions to rethink business models and market structures. Digital rights ownership (NFTs) will enable consumer brands to reimagine loyalty programs, engagement, and brand experience. Moreover, the metaverse will transform the way people engage with technology and commerce, propelling companies to rethink how they interact with customers in new virtual environments.

We help you unpack web3’s implications and establish a future-back view of how it could impact your industry. We assess opportunities and threats, reimagine your business model with new digital experiences, support product launches, and chart a course for long-term value generation. Our web3 and metaverse consultants bring experience from many fields, having completed more than 100 cases with clients ranging from incumbent financial institutions and leading private equity investors to consumer products companies, retailers, media and gaming companies, and even web3 natives. In a rapidly shifting landscape, we’ll help you separate the noise from the strategic actions you must take to prepare, adapt, and ultimately thrive in the next digital era.

Insights & Analytics

Translating consumer insights and big data into concrete initiatives that drive above-market growth.

A company’s ability to drive above-market growth hinges on the depth of its consumer insights and how well it translates those insights into effective action. Our area of work is made up of more than 130 dedicated insights and analytics experts and professionals—with more than 900 years of collective experience in 12 countries and 25 cities across the world—focused on helping our clients do exactly that.

To develop deep customer understanding, we employ a range of quantitative and qualitative marketing research approaches plus big data techniques that are both innovative and pragmatic. We’ve grouped our capabilities into two areas:

Consumer & Shopper Insights

Insights into consumers can help companies spark innovation, uncover the most promising (though not always most intuitive) sources of growth, and develop or maintain successful products and brands. nexra’s qualitative and quantitative marketing research approaches, tools, and techniques help our clients discover why their customers behave as they do at every phase of their purchase decision journey, understand their customers’ experiences, and dig deeply into their best drivers of customer loyalty. By applying these insights, our clients can develop innovative and differentiated marketing strategies that include effective value propositions, segmentation, branding, product design, pricing, and customer experiences.

Advanced Analytics

nexra’s Consumer Marketing Analytics Center (CMAC) accelerates the potential of big data by translating insights from advanced analytics into action across the marketing and consumer-facing organization. Using its global team of analytics professionals with deep expertise in all aspects of big data acquisition and interpretation, CMAC has acquired a track record of success identifying and applying best practices to create insights-driven organizations across a range of industries, including retail, consumer goods, banking, insurance, telecom, media, and healthcare.

What we do

Our goal is to help our clients develop a set of practical and interlocking capabilities that reveal—and maximize the profitable use of—the data appropriate to their situation. We do this by:

Discovering insights by analyzing multiple data sources. We identify and source both relevant internal and external data, and help upgrade the necessary IT infrastructure. We focus on speed to deliver consumer insights quickly, sometimes in as little as 10 days.

Designing programs based on the insights generated. We work with leaders and frontline users to develop internal processes and incentives as well as a culture that uses insights for profitable decision making. We build prediction and optimization models, for example, to focus on the biggest drivers of value. These models balance complexity with ease of use. In setting up programs, our aim is to create an ongoing “insights factory.”

Delivering insights-driven growth for the short- and long-term. We develop simple tools for the front line and provide training in how to use them to extract meaningful insights from complex data sets. Our state-of-the-art, ISO-certified data center in Atlanta provides IT and data-support infrastructure. Our teams are fluent in a wide range of crucial software languages.

How we help

Customer-lifecycle management. By using proprietary customer data and analytics, clients can acquire, develop, and retain high-value customers more profitably and effectively—and drive the necessary organizational changes from the C-suite through to the frontline.

Marketing return on investment. Our tools track activities along the entire customer decision journey to bring transparency to marketing return on investment. By optimizing the effectiveness of marketing spend across the board, clients can free up 10 to 20 percent of their investment to reinvest for growth or take as bottom-line savings.

Pricing and promotions. Our suite of proprietary methods, innovative research, analytic software solutions, and economic simulators for complex scenario analysis aid clients in pricing, promotions, and trade terms to optimize return on sales.

Assortment optimization. Adopting an analytically driven approach to assortment optimization helps clients determine which items should be stocked where to maximize profit. Our approach has the flexibility to optimize at multiple levels, from department and category down to microspace.

Examples of our work

Our consumer-insights generation helped a global consumer-goods manufacturer redesign both its product portfolio and packaging.

Through a rapid deployment of existing solutions and custom-built designs, we partnered with a client to capture an immediate opportunity—in pricing and promotions, marketing-mix optimization, and campaign effectiveness. We applied a proprietary tool to develop targeted recommendation models for acquisitions, revenue generation, and customer retention, and an implementation team to help build and support it.

We built a test lab for a client who wanted to improve the execution of campaigns and analytic models by testing them before they went into the field. We tested marketing vehicles, monitored and measured performance, and ran peer-group models to continually improve results.

Our approach helped unify a leading Internet company around a global and enterprise-wide strategic segmentation of customers, enabling effective prioritization and coordination of marketing and product-development activities.

Following a merger, we collaborated with a retail bank to conduct conjoint-based research into current customers and cross-bank shoppers to achieve financial targets and improve market share.

Featured capabilities

Customer Insights drives growth by leveraging consumer, buyer and market insights. By integrating hard scientific methods, objective facts, and cutting-edge analytics, Insight Solutions help companies generate a 360° view of their customers.

Category Solutions helps retailers and consumer goods companies develop effective assortment strategies based on buyer behavior data. We leverage point-of-sale data, syndicated 3rd party data, and online competitor insights to help category managers sustainably improve commercial performance.

Marketing Solutions comprehensively cover the broad spectrum of tactical and strategic decisions that CMOs are responsible for and help them drive significant topline growth and marketing budget savings by improving mROI and leveraging personalized marketing messages.

Performance Management integrate data from multiple sources to create a single source of truth that helps leaders identify commercial improvement opportunities at the account– and product-level.

We have invested millions of dollars to develop proprietary tools that analyze and visualize data in real time to draw out true insights:

Our innovative approach to measuring the impact of social media (SocialGRP), and our leading Next-Product-to-Buy modeling are two examples of proprietary techniques designed to deliver lasting impact.



Market research and competitive analysis

Market research helps  find customers for your business. Competitive analysis helps you make your business unique. Combine them to find a competitive advantage for your business.

Market research blends consumer behavior and economic trends to confirm and improve your business idea.

It’s crucial to understand your consumer base from the outset. Market research lets you reduce risks even while your business is still just a gleam in your eye.

Gather demographic information to better understand opportunities and limitations for gaining customers. This could include population data on age, wealth, family, interests, or anything else that’s relevant for your business.

Then answer the following questions to get a good sense of your market:

  • Demand: Is there a desire for your product or service?
  • Market size: How many people would be interested in your offering?
  • Economic indicators: What is the income range and employment rate?
  • Location: Where do your customers live and where can your business reach?
  • Market saturation: How many similar options are already available to consumers?
  • Pricing: What do potential customers pay for these alternatives?

Competitive analysis helps learn from businesses competing for your potential customers. This is key to defining a competitive edge that creates sustainable revenue.

Your competitive analysis should identify your competition by product line or service and market segment. Assess the following characteristics of the competitive landscape:

  • Market share
  • Strengths and weaknesses
  • Your window of opportunity to enter the market
  • The importance of your target market to your competitors
  • Any barriers that may hinder you as you enter the market
  • Indirect or secondary competitors who may impact your success

Research, Consulting, GTM, Ecosystem

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