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How Cross-Functional Teams Drive Impact

Shari Aaron, Radius Insights, Radius Global Market Research 2021/08/shari-aaron-bio.jpg

by Shari Aaron

Executive Vice President, Growth & Innovation

Cross-functional teams bring tremendous knowledge and perspective to insights work, particularly when it comes to strategic initiatives like segmentation. Identifying and prioritizing your target segments is one of the most strategic and business-building efforts your organization will undertake, and assembling a cross-functional team will elevate the impact of this work. Importantly, this team will become advocates and ambassadors of the learning, sharing stories and findings from the research throughout the organization, and ultimately elevating your team’s insights to truly impact strategic decision-making.

Companies conduct segmentation studies to better understand and prioritize key target audiences that are most likely to drive growth for the organization. By going through the segmentation research process, stakeholders and business partners can provide valuable input on who their core customers are, and what will drive these customers to be loyal to your brand.

Building a team approach for your segmentation work will make you better equipped to uncover and address a holistic range of elements that matter to identifying your optimal targets and messages. You’ll also be positioned to embed the final outcomes in future decisions taken by your organization and agency partners.

Building a team approach for your segmentation work will make you better equipped to uncover and address a holistic range of elements that matter to identifying your optimal targets and messages.”

Tips on building a cross-functional segmentation team:

  • Team members across various departments should be involved in briefing the research partners
  • Consider members from product development to brand and marketing, or finance, as they each bring different perspective on how your company can coordinate their efforts with your target consumers
  • Be sure to include all critical departments that require action or are impacted by this segmentation work
  • As you begin to share the learnings of this work, hold special sessions to socialize the outcomes of the segmentation
  • Seek to build a shared language and understanding of your key targets/audiences
  • Craft engaging sharing sessions, as recounting the issues that each stakeholder revealed in the early ‘discovery’ stage will drives efficiency, engage the organization, and increase adoption rates
  • During a formal share-out of the segmentation, assign various personas to the team to present a key segment or persona, as this shows they understand the results and are eager to put customers first

Improving segmentation work for a home improvement company.

During a recent segmentation study for a home improvement company, we held discovery and alignment sessions with more than 20 members of the organization. These team members included the product developers, R&D team, sales and business leaders across the B2B and Consumer teams. This enabled us to understand the long-term growth potential of the company’s products, and to build a segmentation study that would include the high-tech advancements that the company is planning. For this work, we also included the media agency in order to integrate critical information that could be used in the media planning and buying process.

The team had approached this work as one joint solution that could be used for the both the B2B and B2C business groups. However, through the course of this research journey, the teams realized that the needs and buying decisions between these groups were very different, and would best be suited by different efforts. By working together through the segmentation process, the various stakeholders were able to gain alignment, and together, bring their learnings to senior management. This resulted in a cascade of business decisions that benefited the growth of the organization.

Case study - Improving segmentation work for a home improvement company.

Through the course of this research journey, the teams realized that the needs and buying decisions between these groups were very different, and would best be suited by different efforts. By working together through the segmentation process, the various stakeholders were able to gain alignment, and together, bring their learnings to senior management.

The best strategic segmentation studies inform and impact future work across many stakeholders within an organization.”

Creating impact for all stakeholders

The best strategic segmentation studies inform and impact future work across many stakeholders within an organization. Involving your cross-functional team members from the start of this research can better ensure the outcomes are fully leveraged. And most importantly, provide maximum impact on growing your business.

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