Episode 5

05 - GRIT Report Sneak Peek: The State of Insights In 2022

Published on: 27th January, 2022

In this week's episode: Lenny Murphy, is joined by Nelson Whipple, GRIT Research Director at GreenBook, to talk about the upcoming Insights Practice GRIT Report!

GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report is the #1 strategic planning tool in consumer insights, and because we're just about 2 weeks away from publishing our 30th edition, we're celebrating by providing an ultra-rare GRIT Report sneak peek with Lenny and Nelson - the masterminds behind the magic!

Listen in to get exclusive details like:

  • Emerging Methods
  • Visualization Trends and Buyer Sentiment
  • Strategic Consultancy Supplier Trends
  • Primary Revenue Sources
  • Remote, In-Person, and Traditional Methodology Trends
  • Qualitative shifts + scalability
  • Permanent changes for 2022

Links From The Show:

  • GreenBook --> https://greenbook.captivate.fm/gb
  • Lenny Murphy --> https://greenbook.captivate.fm/lenny

Many thanks to Emily Fullmer, for producing and editing this episode, and to Zappi, for sponsoring this podcast.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join us at an IIEX Event!

Visit greenbook.org/events to learn more about events in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Use code PODCAST for 20% off general admission at all upcoming events.

Transcript
Lenny:

Hello everybody.

Lenny:

It is Lenny Murphy here with episode five of the green book podcast.

Lenny:

Before this, we were trying to think of some pithy star wars

Lenny:

reference for episode five.

Lenny:

We won't go there.

Lenny:

But what we are going to do is to talk about the upcoming grit report.

Lenny:

This is kind of a labor of love, uh, this, this session, because

Lenny:

we are going to be talking to our secret weapon Nelson Whipple.

Lenny:

And before I actually bring Nelson on, I want to give you a

Lenny:

little bit of background because he's a bit of an unsung hero.

Lenny:

I've known Nelson for gosh, probably 10 years or so, and an amazing

Lenny:

researcher and the opportunity presented itself a few years ago

Lenny:

to uh, bring him in, to help with.

Lenny:

Little did I know that that help would turn into an amazing collaboration

Lenny:

where Nelson has raised the bar on every single aspect of grit from

Lenny:

questionnaire design certainly through the analysis and in writing he's driven

Lenny:

the expansion of the usability of grit data to address other use cases and other

Lenny:

product lines that we are launching.

Lenny:

He has just made everything better.

Lenny:

He challenges me to be better.

Lenny:

In most recently for this grit report that is about to come out.

Lenny:

I was was ill during that time.

Lenny:

We were under a deadline.

Lenny:

He, He did most of the heavy lift from a writing standpoint.

Lenny:

It's, we've tried to keep it about 50, 50 this next report that is is coming out.

Lenny:

It's probably 90%.

Lenny:

And it's damn good.

Lenny:

So with that I would like to bring on my friend, my

Lenny:

colleague Nelson Whipple Nelson.

Nelson:

Welcome.

Nelson:

Thank you, Lenny.

Nelson:

And uh, going to be hard to follow that interim.

Lenny:

Everything I said is absolutely true.

Lenny:

And I just haven't had the opportunity to say that.

Lenny:

So, Nelson do you want to give the audience a little bit more background

Lenny:

on on you before, the grit era of your.

Nelson:

I spent most of my life working with four smaller consulting

Nelson:

firms on strategic projects for clients of all sizes in all kinds

Nelson:

of industries, mostly using contract analysis and building simulation

Nelson:

models, but also using other techniques, mostly quantitative work, but also.

Nelson:

Uh, But they call them quality quantum projects in some circles where do the

Nelson:

qualitative and the quantitative, so that you get marketing input the vocabulary

Nelson:

and so forth, built directly into it.

Nelson:

So I'm pretty sensitive to a lot of the different areas that we look at and also

Nelson:

what they're supposed to mean and the impact that they're supposed to have.

Nelson:

So when we look at things like this, the selection criteria for

Nelson:

suppliers and methods, you know, there's always at the top of the list.

Nelson:

Insights quality, but that's hard to define and it's not defined in terms

Nelson:

of any of these specific methods.

Nelson:

And it's interesting to see how we can discern whether people are actually

Nelson:

getting the quality that they say they want from the kinds of things.

Lenny:

Yeah.

Lenny:

So, And we always make a point in the introduction that

Lenny:

grit, it is an evolving tool.

Lenny:

And that's a great example, right?

Lenny:

We, I think every iteration we realized there's a better way to ask

Lenny:

this question, or there's a follow-up question we need to ask, or uh, sometimes

Lenny:

we don't need to ask that anymore.

Lenny:

So we can get to, to better a better data, but we're probably

Lenny:

putting the cart before the horse.

Lenny:

I think we'll get into some of that stuff.

Lenny:

One thing we don't have the opportunity to do is the authors often is to kind

Lenny:

of step back and think and share, what we personally found to be most

Lenny:

interesting from this massive dataset that, that we collect and the analysis.

Lenny:

And again, I want to reiterate that most of the heavy duty analysis uh, Nelson

Lenny:

as far closer to, even than I am and taking just a little bit of a step back

Lenny:

from from the grunt work of producing Greg, what did you find most interesting?

Lenny:

What popped out for you when you were doing the analysis?

Lenny:

I'm thinking, this is important.

Lenny:

This is something that really is a finding that is impactful

Lenny:

for the industry as a whole.

Nelson:

Well, First I was looking through the draft that we got back from the.

Nelson:

And what I noticed the most, what stood out the most to me was

Nelson:

the number of blank pages in it.

Nelson:

And first I thought, oh, those must be the ones that Lenny road, but

Nelson:

no, they're actually the ones where the commentaries are going to go.

Nelson:

And I just wanted to mention that so that people know where we are

Nelson:

in the process, but also because.

Nelson:

The quality of the commentaries has gotten a lot better over the years.

Nelson:

And so I'm looking forward to when we have those in this edition, and then

Nelson:

I'm sure we'll find even more impactful stuff because those are, and this is

Nelson:

not a plug because I don't do that.

Nelson:

But uh, I was really impressed with the ones that we've gotten

Nelson:

the last couple of issues, I think.

Nelson:

And it'll be really interesting to see what we get this time to.

Nelson:

Uh, I think overall what stood out for me is if we think about two of the sections

Nelson:

that we don't usually make very much.

Nelson:

Um, Maybe because we save them for the last, maybe because if we don't see much

Nelson:

change the day in the life of the insights professional and the evolving insights

Nelson:

professional, those kind of seem to be in some ways at the core of the findings,

Nelson:

because one of the things that we, one of the things that we always see is that

Nelson:

when we look at the day in the life, which is how much of your time are you

Nelson:

spending on these various activities?

Nelson:

We always find that it doesn't change year to year, and it literally.

Nelson:

Doesn't change, even though the sample might change a little bit, even though

Nelson:

there might be other, the percentages, literally don't change for what

Nelson:

they're spending on, implementing the research uh, designing the research,

Nelson:

managing the research, analyzing reporting, and consulting and so forth.

Nelson:

But if you pull it apart more, you start to see that there are lots of things

Nelson:

going on underneath that and that.

Nelson:

One of the things that we see when we pull it apart is that people that are using

Nelson:

more technology are we, I think always had the supposition that if you leverage

Nelson:

technology more and automate more things, then you can spend more time consulting.

Nelson:

But what we found on the buyer side is.

Nelson:

Some of the people that are investing more in technology are investing in it so they

Nelson:

can bring more of the research in house.

Nelson:

So it actually spending more time on the research and a lower

Nelson:

percentage of time on the consulting.

Nelson:

So that's interesting and it gets to this dynamic that we see under all

Nelson:

of the sections, which is good to think about is that some people are

Nelson:

leveraging actually using suppliers more so they can spend less time on

Nelson:

research and spend more time consulting.

Nelson:

And then other people are leveraging technology so that they can take more of

Nelson:

that work in-house and control more of it.

Nelson:

And that was a trend that I think is a little bit counterintuitive to what we

Nelson:

had expected, but we see that through all of the different sections on supplier

Nelson:

criteria, the methods they're using.

Nelson:

And I think it gets to one of the things that seems to be a major theme is that

Nelson:

in addition to the people that are taking investing in technology solutions

Nelson:

in DIY, so they can do more of the.

Nelson:

They also seem to be doing things that are not things that they

Nelson:

would want the supplier to do.

Nelson:

So it's not actually taking work away from the supplier.

Nelson:

So we see that the major investments or to do visualization that consistently

Nelson:

or wave after wave after wave suppliers, get low scores from the buyer.

Nelson:

Uh, Always low on data visualization.

Nelson:

They seem to be investing in it more and perhaps doing more of that themselves.

Nelson:

So what we see as a driver of satisfaction, but as a driver

Nelson:

of satisfaction for buyers is.

Nelson:

Reporting, they want good reporting from suppliers, but they don't necessarily

Nelson:

need good visualization because I think they've given up on that expectation

Nelson:

to electric stent and more of them are doing the visualization themselves.

Nelson:

So while they need the results to be clear and to be accurate and to be high

Nelson:

quality, they're not necessarily at this point in time expecting suppliers

Nelson:

to take it all the way into the organism.

Lenny:

that is an interesting point and it makes me think about, for

Lenny:

years, when we looked at adoption of emerging methods a few things

Lenny:

stood out social media analytics, text analytics, big data is having.

Lenny:

In use or being considered levels on the buyer side and on the supplier side.

Lenny:

And it's supposition that we repeated it every year is those

Lenny:

may be areas where that ship has sailed for the supplier community.

Lenny:

We miss the opportunity to rise to the occasion to deliver that buyer need.

Lenny:

But this year, this wave we finally saw pretty close to parody from an

Lenny:

adoption standpoint, that suppliers were now just as engaged and utilizing

Lenny:

those solutions as buyers, which begs the question, where are we wrong?

Lenny:

Because the supplier community decided there is a, there is an opportunity here

Lenny:

to capture some of that business from the buyers that they were obviously were doing

Lenny:

it, but they were doing it with some, in some other resource, either another

Lenny:

type of supplier in house, something.

Lenny:

but I would suspect that a supplier would not offer something unless

Lenny:

there were buyers for that.

Lenny:

So we see that that change But it's an interesting question for us to think about

Lenny:

as an industry, if that is true, that the supplier community stepped up and was

Lenny:

able to capture a seat at the table for lack of a better term in those solutions.

Lenny:

Is there an opportunity that if the around data visualization, for instance,

Lenny:

those functions that buyers are keeping in-house because they're not getting

Lenny:

what they need from this supplier.

Lenny:

For suppliers to step up and start earning that business.

Lenny:

And we'll see that reflected down the road.

Lenny:

Now I know you prefer to look at the data.

Lenny:

So this is an opinion.

Lenny:

Um, What do you think, is that an aspirational goal that, that we can on the

Lenny:

supplier side uh, shoot for that may be.

Nelson:

Well, you know, I think that what we see in the data to go back to the

Nelson:

data is that there hasn't been as much opportunity as there used to be over the

Nelson:

last two years to think about the future.

Nelson:

So I'm not sure that's the question that people are asking.

Nelson:

I know that's the question you're asking because you're very future

Nelson:

oriented, but remember, we've got the five big buckets of suppliers that

Nelson:

we look at and obviously they're.

Nelson:

They're hybrids and so forth, but there's the full service research.

Nelson:

There's the field services, there's technology providers, data and analytics

Nelson:

providers and strategic consultancies.

Nelson:

And what we've seen particularly over the last year is the percentage

Nelson:

that define themselves as strategic consultancies has dropped and their

Nelson:

service portfolio has changed a bit.

Nelson:

The ones that have that are full service have rebounded

Nelson:

and technology has rebounded.

Nelson:

So what we're seeing is more, I think, of a division of.

Nelson:

And I think what we saw last year is that the many of the buyers of,

Nelson:

of insight services had to take the business aspect of it in-house because

Nelson:

so much was happening real time in terms of understanding the needs.

Nelson:

In terms of, I was mentioning in here that they had to deal with a

Nelson:

situation where it was not safe.

Nelson:

To deal with consumers and research participants in the same way,

Nelson:

they had novel issues to address, which they didn't have before.

Nelson:

And they also needed to do a lot more uh, that had to be cost-effective.

Nelson:

And that came into, I think the portfolio of technology that people used as well

Nelson:

as a portfolio of suppliers, where there was much more, we talked about this, a

Nelson:

division of labor, where for example, you might hire a full service provider.

Nelson:

Full-service research provider to be your project coordinator and they

Nelson:

would hire the different aspects.

Nelson:

They would hire the technology provider.

Nelson:

They would hire the data and analytics and bring it together.

Nelson:

Or you would focus on finding out what people internally.

Nelson:

And how you would serve them and communicating with them

Nelson:

because there wasn't a lot of time to go through many channels.

Nelson:

It wasn't a lot of time to bring a new supply.

Nelson:

And this is the other, the other major point.

Nelson:

When we see in the selection criteria for suppliers, we see all around relationship

Nelson:

is much less important than it is.

Nelson:

So people aren't just going back to the same people.

Nelson:

They're having to find, to address the novel issues in novel ways,

Nelson:

having to find novel solutions.

Nelson:

So they have to go to new suppliers.

Nelson:

So they don't have time for all those people to learn about their

Nelson:

business while they try to survive.

Nelson:

COVID.

Nelson:

So I think that's a lot of what we're seeing.

Nelson:

uh, When we compared this year, the areas for which insights groups are responsible

Nelson:

versus last year to me seemed a lot.

Nelson:

They're focusing on areas to maintain the business.

Nelson:

Whereas a year before they were focused on areas to grow the business.

Nelson:

Now there seem to be a lot more of them being able to focus more on, on

Nelson:

growing the business and maintaining the long-term health of the business,

Nelson:

rather than trying to find stock gap solutions to, to keep afloat.

Nelson:

That's how it seems to me

Lenny:

though.

Lenny:

And I think that's right.

Lenny:

And for the audience get, this is the little bit the

Lenny:

dynamics three Nelson NY, right?

Lenny:

He keeps my feet somewhat on the ground, at least maybe a pinky

Lenny:

toe while my head is going in other directions, and I, you know, I'm

Lenny:

obsessed with the idea of, defining.

Lenny:

The market structure and the dynamics that drive that structure from an

Lenny:

evolutionary perspective, that's my default view in thinking about grit

Lenny:

overall and its usefulness is as some level of predictive tool, right.

Lenny:

To give, uh, at least some signals on where things may go and yeah, based on

Lenny:

that piece of the conversation I would say that the more things change, the

Lenny:

more they stay the same that, although we are, I think we've certainly seen an

Lenny:

adjustment of a size of pie by segment with technology, probably being the

Lenny:

best example of that from a growth perspective, but at the same time, to

Lenny:

your point, Fully rebounded while uh, groups that we thought were going to grow

Lenny:

well even a few years ago, like strategy consultancies, that was the big thing.

Lenny:

All the full service companies wanted to be strategy consultancies, but it

Lenny:

looks like now not so much they're back to being, we're comfortable being full

Lenny:

service suppliers which seems that.

Nelson:

Yeah, go ahead.

Nelson:

When we talk about whether.

Nelson:

Full service providers, for example, want to provide strategic consulting or not.

Nelson:

They still say that's one of their revenue sources.

Nelson:

It's just for fewer of them, their primary revenue source, because there

Nelson:

was a lot of focus in the last year of just being able to get things done.

Nelson:

And so what we see when we look at the methodology sections of this is we see

Nelson:

what probably a lot of people would have predicted that last year, there's

Nelson:

an increase in remote methods, online telephone and so forth to conduct

Nelson:

research rather than in-person then.

Nelson:

No surprise there.

Nelson:

And that's a year old.

Nelson:

Now what we see this year is that some of those have increased a little

Nelson:

bit, but mostly they've leveled off.

Nelson:

But what we've seen is the continued decline of in-person methods, as well as

Nelson:

a decline in some of the more traditional methods like telephone interviewing,

Nelson:

which isn't what you can do in.

Nelson:

you know, But obviously that there are challenges to doing telephone interview,

Nelson:

but some of these more traditional areas that are not in-person are also

Nelson:

declining and the hypothesis is that people were forced to use some of these

Nelson:

newer methods, some of these online methods and remote methods last year.

Nelson:

Just to be able to get their work done and decided now, when things are returning

Nelson:

more towards a more normal perspective, at least in time that we've been

Nelson:

doing the analysis they find the deal.

Nelson:

They like them, and they don't necessarily want to go back to the old ones.

Nelson:

Or you could take a dimmer view and say that more of the people

Nelson:

that provided those kinds of services aren't around anymore.

Nelson:

So it's just not available to go back to that.

Lenny:

Well, So the idea of the sea change, right?

Lenny:

If I had to sum up and overall view I would say that the, many

Lenny:

trends that we have already seen in place for years accelerated.

Lenny:

The migration of technology, et cetera, et cetera, right?

Lenny:

Those are the obvious ones.

Lenny:

And the proportion of how technology is redefining even the service-based sector

Lenny:

of our industry while the sea change.

Lenny:

And as you just pointed out, Really was that shift towards, in particularly

Lenny:

qualitative and things where it stands out the most and from an in-person perspective

Lenny:

that ship has sailed, that he did change the there was the necessity to shift

Lenny:

to online qualitative, for instance.

Lenny:

And now those folks, yeah, I like it.

Lenny:

Why would we go back when we've proven that we can

Lenny:

achieve most of our objectives?

Lenny:

And a more scalable, easy, safer way.

Lenny:

And I would not expect to see in person bounce back it at the level that it

Lenny:

was the, I think we'll find new use cases for in-person anything sensory,

Lenny:

for instance, we're not there yet.

Lenny:

Maybe when the metaverse launches and they'll have some type of of a device

Lenny:

that duplicates our census, but we're not.

Lenny:

So those will continue on while the scalability of online qual

Lenny:

seems to Trump, the benefits of the immediacy of being face-to-face.

Lenny:

So that's a sea change, but I don't see a lot more.

Lenny:

Massive sea changes into your, go back to your original

Lenny:

thought on the day in the life.

Lenny:

That was a great example, right?

Lenny:

We kept expecting to see something change and people allocating their time.

Lenny:

And that's not really what we've seen.

Lenny:

The we've seen people still do things they've always done.

Lenny:

Although the proportions are not necessarily changing radically.

Lenny:

If anything, maybe the volume.

Lenny:

Of the activities are changing to an extent but not as it fits

Lenny:

in with the overall change.

Lenny:

The industry is in an interesting state of flux and change,

Lenny:

but it seems as if it is a.

Lenny:

Natural progression of evolution versus a disruptive, oh crap.

Lenny:

Everything is changed kind of moment.

Lenny:

I don't see much evidence of disruption.

Nelson:

Yeah.

Nelson:

I want to go back to what you first said, which was about how you brought me into

Nelson:

this to change how we're doing everything.

Nelson:

And so one of these.

Nelson:

Yeah.

Nelson:

What I said about the day in the life is that the percentages

Nelson:

on average do not change.

Nelson:

There's absolutely.

Nelson:

There's not even in some cases, there might be a 1%

Nelson:

change, but there is no change.

Nelson:

But if you look below the surface and this is the thing, is that things on

Nelson:

average, they're canceling each other out.

Nelson:

There's just as many people, it seems to be just as much work being brought

Nelson:

in-house as being outsourced more.

Nelson:

Time added a question.

Nelson:

Are you outsourcing more or bringing more work in house?

Nelson:

And we saw that there's about a quarter that are outsourcing more and is

Nelson:

about a quarter that are doing more in-house more than they were before.

Nelson:

So it's not that nothing is disrupted.

Nelson:

It's just, it's not universally disruptive in the same way.

Lenny:

Ah, so like the William Gibson quote the future is already here.

Lenny:

It's just not evenly distributed I'm.

Nelson:

Sure.

Nelson:

Yeah.

Nelson:

But then back to the, how we got off on this, I pushed us off on tangent,

Nelson:

which is actually, one of our, one of our main conversation screens, I think.

Nelson:

But you had been talking about whether.

Nelson:

People I've given up on strategic consulting, whether they should be

Nelson:

giving up on data visualization.

Nelson:

I just wanted to return to that for a minute because that's where we

Nelson:

jumped off onto this, but people are offering strategic consultants

Nelson:

consulting and strategic services.

Nelson:

It's it just seems like the mix has changed more to where people

Nelson:

have had to get more of the revenue from research then from consulting.

Nelson:

Partly I think because stuff needed to get done.

Nelson:

And that's where buyers had to put their money, but also because buyers had to

Nelson:

spend more time doing the consulting and doing the business aspect of it.

Nelson:

And couldn't bring buyers, couldn't bring suppliers up to speed.

Nelson:

I don't know if that will come back or not, but they're still

Nelson:

saying that's among their services.

Nelson:

So it might, but that will be one of the things to watch is if this

Nelson:

relationship where people are really as comfortable with somebody, external

Nelson:

being somebody who's positioned as.

Nelson:

You know, As someone who is a true partner and, they're like an employee and whatnot,

Nelson:

I don't know how feasible that is.

Nelson:

And how versus how much more comfortable buyers are taking that

Nelson:

role in their own organizations on the data visualization point.

Nelson:

Let's remember when we look at the big buckets technology providers and

Nelson:

data and analytics providers are very focused on data visualization, but.

Nelson:

They're providing it, but providing those capabilities to buyers.

Nelson:

So it's not as though suppliers should give up on that.

Nelson:

It's just, who is doing it.

Nelson:

Might change from business to business.

Nelson:

I don't know that buyers are waiting for suppliers to come in and take

Nelson:

a strong role consulting like that and doing the data visualization.

Nelson:

I think they see a distinction between reporting and data visualization.

Lenny:

Well, Yeah.

Lenny:

As is, and maybe that's been that always been the disconnect

Lenny:

from a research world, right?

Lenny:

We're really good at reporting results.

Lenny:

Um, We're just not very creative and we report the results.

Lenny:

I'm not sure how the audience thinks about grip, but give you a little

Lenny:

peak in how the sausage is made.

Lenny:

The, those nice, cool, pretty charts that we use.

Lenny:

Those aren't things that Nelson and I developed.

Lenny:

We have designers who do that.

Lenny:

So we deliver table.

Lenny:

That designers, based the day you go into the data tables

Lenny:

and create a chart off of that.

Lenny:

So we're not very imaginative, but that does bring up a and to something

Lenny:

that is new or different in this wave.

Lenny:

And let's talk about it because we touched on.

Lenny:

The idea on a, on mapping, the industry visualizing the industry and those who

Lenny:

were followed grit, for a few years, we used our grit scape, the LUMAscape that

Lenny:

was this, fund map model that we used kind of game of Thrones fantasy world.

Lenny:

And that's my geekiness that was manifesting.

Lenny:

We pulled back from that this year, not just because we thought

Lenny:

it was just time to do something.

Lenny:

But it wasn't reflective of the industry.

Lenny:

So that those questions that you forced us to add on looking at a

Lenny:

proportion of revenue by different different offerings, products and

Lenny:

services across the board in driving this idea of trying to understand what.

Lenny:

Isn't really such thing as a pure technology company, for instance, was

Lenny:

one of the obvious examples of that.

Lenny:

No, there's not right.

Lenny:

As we look at that, we see that every company is still doing lots of different

Lenny:

things and is generating revenue that their proportion of revenue may be higher

Lenny:

for technology licensing, but there is significant service oriented revenue

Lenny:

involved in their businesses as well.

Lenny:

So to map that out and this is one of the things, again, that would give you

Lenny:

credit Nelson uh, we're really trying to struggle, but how do we show this?

Lenny:

Cause it's just like a big, messy, nasty Venn diagram, you know, when you think

Lenny:

about from an overlap perspective, but.

Lenny:

We started thinking, is there a way to, to almost show this as a, in a

Lenny:

spatial way of some type of almost quadrant type of analysis and you

Lenny:

crack that code on how to do that.

Lenny:

And there's lots of complications in doing it.

Lenny:

The, what do you want to describe what we've come up with at a high level in.

Lenny:

In showing the relationship between big bucket and sub-segments

Lenny:

visually that we'll be debuting.

Lenny:

And in this group report

Nelson:

Yeah.

Nelson:

I mean, It really gets back to something that I think is important.

Nelson:

For people to conduct surveys, for example, is we have this, we ask people

Nelson:

about now I think it's 25 services.

Nelson:

Do you offer it or not or not?

Nelson:

And we ask them which one is primary.

Nelson:

And I know from the comments that people leave, some of them are frustrated because

Nelson:

they say they're all equally important.

Nelson:

Yeah, okay, fine.

Nelson:

You can think that.

Nelson:

But when we ask people to say, which one is most important, or just to

Nelson:

pick one, regardless, they might think that they're making an arbitrary

Nelson:

choice of which one is most important, but it does help to focus things.

Nelson:

There is some meaning to the top of mind.

Nelson:

How do I identify myself?

Nelson:

Even if many things apply.

Nelson:

And so we use that in the visualization we used all of the services.

Nelson:

Do you offer them or not?

Nelson:

And then what's your, what do you, where do you get most of your revenue

Nelson:

from full service, strategic strategy, finance analytics, and I guess one of

Nelson:

the things that Lenny that the result of putting all those together is that we

Nelson:

came up, something came up with something that we probably would have drawn by.

Nelson:

Because it's intuitive.

Nelson:

So we've got, if we think in terms of quadrants, we have on the one side, the

Nelson:

generalists, the strategic consultants and the full service providers on

Nelson:

the other side, the specialist, the data and analytics, technology,

Nelson:

and field services providers at the top we have more of the consultant.

Nelson:

Type areas at the bottom, we have more of the getting the research done type areas.

Nelson:

So we have those four quadrants.

Nelson:

And then if we look at the real, so we have strategy generalist versus

Nelson:

specialist in strategy versus tactical strategic versus tactical research.

Nelson:

And then within those, if we look at the detail, we can also see

Nelson:

that there are areas where online services have grouped together.

Nelson:

In person or, other not specifically online services or grouped together

Nelson:

and you know, get a, you get a clearer picture of what are the

Nelson:

combinations of things that people are offering that, that are most common.

Nelson:

Does that answer your question?

Lenny:

Well, It does.

Lenny:

And we're also, we're trying to explain something that's inherently visual just

Lenny:

using words but I think the the point.

Lenny:

the high level view.

Lenny:

And I think the audience will see this when you see the report, is that

Lenny:

there's a one we've made, we tried to do something really cool and interactive

Lenny:

and we'll see whether we succeed or not.

Lenny:

I think it will be, I think it's pretty cool.

Lenny:

But the overall view is to show the complexity of relationships between

Lenny:

the supplier community, based upon the revenue contribution of services and

Lenny:

solutions and the message there is that.

Lenny:

It is a very intertwined industry.

Lenny:

Right.

Lenny:

You know, Sometimes.

Lenny:

people will say you use the word ecosystem too much.

Lenny:

We work in a synergistic ecosystem.

Lenny:

That's just the way that it is.

Lenny:

It's a very complex industry.

Lenny:

There's lots of interrelationships.

Lenny:

No man is an island, so to speak, right?

Lenny:

There's very few kind of really, truly standalone companies that

Lenny:

are not interconnected with others.

Lenny:

Uh, And I think that's only going to grow in complexity as more and more

Lenny:

companies enter the space from outside.

Lenny:

We'll see this things progress, but it's also one of those evolutionary

Lenny:

components of the report that I think keep it really interesting for you.

Lenny:

And I hopefully interesting for the audience as well.

Lenny:

You know, you've always been kind behind the scenes when it comes

Lenny:

to grit, obviously, which is one reason why I wanted to do this.

Lenny:

if there's something you've always wanted to say to the industry, now be careful.

Lenny:

Nelson, because I can imagine this few things you might want to say.

Lenny:

And

Nelson:

so we added it right

Lenny:

uh,

Lenny:

about grit.

Lenny:

What would that be?

Lenny:

What's something you've always wanted it to communicate to everybody about grit.

Nelson:

Well, To be perfectly honest, All of the comments that people leave.

Nelson:

We read the emails that they send about it.

Nelson:

And, you know, just to start on one end, I understand a lot of the

Nelson:

frustrations that some people have and a lot of limitations and a lot of

Nelson:

the criticisms that they have, but we know that too, and we deal with it.

Nelson:

So it's constantly evolving.

Nelson:

We're constantly doing additional analysis to test whether any of

Nelson:

these criticisms Under undermine what we're trying to report And, you know,

Nelson:

like I said, one of them might be, you know, people don't want to pick

Nelson:

what their primary service area is.

Nelson:

And I understand that because that's true with any survey that people answer.

Nelson:

But when we look at the results, there is some meaning to it.

Nelson:

When.

Nelson:

The population, there's some meaning to it.

Nelson:

It helps us organize it.

Nelson:

And we understand that there is a lot of complexity.

Nelson:

We understand that some of the questions are simplifications.

Nelson:

We understand some of the conclusions are simplifications, but I would

Nelson:

think, something I would like to, I guess, tell people would be to spend

Nelson:

as much time as you can looking through the whole report and you'll see.

Nelson:

We are making generalizations about things were pulling things back layer

Nelson:

upon layer, as much as we can to show all the individuality and diversity in

Nelson:

the industry, because it isn't one thing.

Nelson:

Something else that supports this and you read in the first part

Nelson:

of the grit report, we talk about the sampling method and so forth.

Nelson:

It's a very, we don't say who's in and who's.

Nelson:

We contact people and let them say if they're in the

Nelson:

industry or out of the industry.

Nelson:

So in this way, the grit survey has the potential to grow.

Nelson:

As the industry goes to identify new niches.

Nelson:

Now it may take us a wave or two for the questions to catch up with

Nelson:

the new people who've come in, but we catch up and we, you know, it's

Nelson:

a constantly evolving process and it's a very thoughtful process.

Lenny:

Thank you.

Lenny:

Now, one of the cool things too, the tapping in the past year or

Lenny:

so is that we obviously grit's a beast from a size standpoint, right?

Lenny:

It just is there's a lot to cover and we've played different

Lenny:

ways to try and cut it down.

Lenny:

And you know what it could easily be two to three times as long.

Lenny:

Um, But we've started exploring spinoff reports with new things.

Lenny:

Can you describe the spinoff reports and the surprises that have

Lenny:

come for you as a result of that?

Nelson:

I've always felt that, that even as we use more of this in

Nelson:

each sprint report, that there's still some that's underutilized.

Nelson:

And we know that we want to, to some extent have portion control because

Nelson:

there's a lot to digest in any one issue.

Nelson:

A part of that is reflected in moving this to a digital HTML version where

Nelson:

people can skip around to what they want to see and pick and choose.

Nelson:

Although the whole report, I'm always surprised by the time we

Nelson:

get to the end of it, that every section seems to be pretty valuable.

Nelson:

But there's other areas that we take a deep dive in at the

Nelson:

beginning of last year, we put out.

Nelson:

Field guides, what we called field guides to help with targeting

Nelson:

customers so that suppliers could use that to target their customers.

Nelson:

And the original idea was, yeah, let's do a field guide.

Nelson:

And what it became was seven field guides, because it can't come up with

Nelson:

one set of recommendations or one set of.

Nelson:

Things to think about for strategic consultants, consultancies that also

Nelson:

applies to field services providers.

Nelson:

It's just not responsible.

Nelson:

So we put the time into doing seven of those and put those out.

Nelson:

We are about to release the industry benchmarking report, which looks at

Nelson:

different behaviors and different ways of doing business within different

Nelson:

segments so that we can compare.

Nelson:

Uh, So that people can look at it and say, oh, my business is the same as others.

Nelson:

We need to differentiate.

Nelson:

Or my businesses, the same as others, we can leave that alone

Nelson:

because that's not an issue.

Nelson:

You can look at it through whatever lens you want, whether being the same as is

Nelson:

good for you, or whether being different would be a better strategy for you.

Nelson:

But what we try to do in all of these, I think when you've written this in one of

Nelson:

the, maybe in the forward or something is we want people to see themselves in the.

Nelson:

If we just report the top line findings across suppliers, for example, a

Nelson:

technology provider is not going to see themselves in that and at a full

Nelson:

service provider might because they might be a bigger part of the sample.

Nelson:

You where you want to do is you want to be able to use the report

Nelson:

to see what matters to you.

Nelson:

If you're a small company, you want to know, what does

Nelson:

this mean for small companies?

Nelson:

If you're a big company, what does this mean for a big company.

Nelson:

you know, I always felt coming from smaller companies, I read the old

Nelson:

grit reports and I think this is interesting, but this doesn't really have

Nelson:

anything to do with my small company.

Nelson:

And so we trying to bring that out more so that any so that people don't just see.

Nelson:

Spaghetti thrown against the wall or whatever.

Nelson:

They see a particular pattern that applies to what they're trying to do, and

Nelson:

they can see themselves in the reports.

Lenny:

Yeah.

Lenny:

Now, and there's more to come we'll continue to experiment with that.

Lenny:

So for the audience Nelson, I made copious use uh, use of slack often

Lenny:

when writing in sharing quotes from.

Lenny:

Songs or movies or books.

Lenny:

And he wins every time.

Lenny:

This man has an encyclopedic.

Lenny:

He's almost an autodidact in terms of his memory, to be able to memorize the

Lenny:

most obscure reference you can possibly think of from any type of media.

Lenny:

And it impresses the hell out of me all of the time.

Lenny:

If you get a chance to just sit down and chat with Nelson about popular

Lenny:

culture and particularly music of movies that it is time well spent.

Lenny:

Yeah.

Nelson:

So Lenny and that point, we could have a contest and this might encourage

Nelson:

people to read more of the group.

Nelson:

To whoever's the first to identify all the Beatles first,

Nelson:

identify the doors reference,

Lenny:

There.

Lenny:

So guys there are Easter eggs and grit it tell Nelson I entertain each other.

Lenny:

Most of them are his but they're already strikes.

Lenny:

But Nelson for wrap up just to humanize this whole thing.

Lenny:

What are you currently watching.

Lenny:

Reading and listening to that you're just really enjoying right now.

Nelson:

Yeah.

Nelson:

Well, This is a leading question because you know, for Christmas,

Nelson:

I know for Christmas, I got the, a complete dark shell.

Nelson:

She's a 1966 to 1971 TV series daily soap.

Nelson:

So over those five years, there's 1,273 episodes.

Nelson:

So I'm making my way through those.

Nelson:

I'm in uh, around number four 30.

Lenny:

Very cool.

Lenny:

What about reading?

Nelson:

Uh, The original gold key series, dark shadows.

Nelson:

No, I'm actually reading.

Nelson:

I'm actually reading a novels.

Nelson:

I've been reading a master and commander, which everybody has told

Nelson:

me, when our MPB people rave about it, they say how, how wonderful it is.

Nelson:

And so I've always been intimidated to try to read it because it's a.

Nelson:

When people read that much about something, I think it

Nelson:

might be too hard for me.

Nelson:

So it has been taking me a long time to make it through it because it's about

Nelson:

the Napoleonic wars and in particular Naval activities in the Napoleonic wars.

Nelson:

So every third word is a word I have to look up either because it's an

Nelson:

archaic reference or because it's a nautical term so it's taking me

Nelson:

a long time to go through that.

Nelson:

And I had just finished reading a crime novel from takes place in 1933

Nelson:

in Germany after the Weymar Republic has collapsed and Hitler taken over.

Nelson:

And that I also had to, I also had to.

Nelson:

A lot of stuff in that, because it's really interesting how they bring you into

Nelson:

the everyday reality of it by referring to these things that, for me, unless

Nelson:

I look it up, I don't know what that meant to somebody in Germany in 1933.

Nelson:

So learning more is a way of learning more about the film industry or learning more

Nelson:

about the history and more of learning about the cultural sites and so forth.

Nelson:

So that's an example of what I've been.

Lenny:

Thank you.

Lenny:

Oh, and yes, I did know those, but I trust your tastes and think

Lenny:

our audience may enjoy it as well.

Lenny:

So Nelson, thank you for making the time.

Lenny:

This was long overdue.

Lenny:

I'm sure that we will do this again with other iterations of grit and

Lenny:

really appreciate you sharing your time with the, with me and with

Lenny:

Greenberg podcast and our audience.

Nelson:

Thank you for the.

Lenny:

All right, everybody be well.

Lenny:

And we'll have another one of these coming out real soon.

Lenny:

Thanks a lot.

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About the Podcast

Greenbook Podcast
Exploring the future of market research and consumer insights
Immerse yourself in the evolving world of market research, insights and analytics, as hosts Lenny Murphy and Karen Lynch explore factors impacting our industry with some of its most innovative, influential practitioners. Spend less than an hour weekly exploring the latest technologies, methodologies, strategies, and emerging ideas with Greenbook, your guide to the future of insights.

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