By Brent Adamson, Co-Founder of Qoos
If you’ve ever explored the ideas behind The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer, you’ll know that one of the most powerful concepts at the heart of both books is something called commercial insight.
So, what exactly is commercial insight? It’s more than just sharing information. It’s the ability to approach a customer with a perspective that fundamentally changes the way they think—not about your business, but about their business. It shows them how to make money, save money, or reduce risk in ways they’d never considered before. And most importantly, that new way of thinking connects directly back to your company’s unique strengths.
Building commercial insight is simple to explain but far from easy to execute. At its core, it can be boiled down to four critical questions. Master these questions, and you’ll master the art of commercial insight.
Step 1: Identify Your Unique Strengths
The first question is: What are our unique strengths as a company?
It’s not enough to ask, “What makes us great?” Instead, you need to ask, “What makes us uniquely great?”
Think about all the ways your company stands out—not just in terms of products, features, or “speeds and feeds,” but across your entire set of capabilities. This could include your expertise, your processes, your service delivery, your customer support, or anything else that truly differentiates you from the competition.
This step is hard. Many companies can rattle off a list of things they’re good at, but identifying what sets them apart in a unique way often proves far more challenging. It’s worth the effort, though, because understanding what makes you uniquely great is essential for standing out in a competitive landscape.
Step 2: Pinpoint What Customers Undervalue
Once you’ve defined your unique strengths, ask yourself: Of those unique strengths, which ones do our customers currently underappreciate or undervalue?
This is where frustration often kicks in. Every company has capabilities they wish customers would value more. Maybe you excel in customer service, but clients see it as table stakes. Maybe you’ve built a groundbreaking process, but customers don’t see why it matters.
The question here is: What do we do exceptionally well that customers fail to recognize, appreciate, or pay for?
This step identifies where your unique strengths are being overlooked. These overlooked strengths hold the potential for creating commercial insight because they represent untapped value for the customer—and an opportunity for you.
Step 3: Understand the Customer’s Mental Model
The third step shifts the focus entirely to your customer. Ask: What is it that customers fail to understand about their business that leads them to undervalue those unique strengths?
This question digs into your customer’s mental model—their understanding of how their business works. How do they currently think about their challenges, opportunities, and priorities? And how does that thinking cause them to overlook or undervalue the capabilities that set you apart?
For example, if a customer believes cost-cutting is the only way to increase margins, they might undervalue your solutions for driving revenue growth. Or, if they think all vendors are interchangeable, they may fail to appreciate what makes your offering unique.
To develop commercial insight, you must uncover these gaps in your customer’s understanding. You need to know why they’re missing the value you bring.
Step 4: Teach the Customer Something New
Finally, ask yourself: What do we have to teach our customer about their business to get them to value our unique strengths more than they do now?
This is where the magic happens. Your goal is to create a story—a narrative—that helps the customer see their business in a new light.
You’re not just presenting a solution; you’re teaching the customer something they didn’t know about their own business. You’re reframing their understanding of their challenges, priorities, or opportunities in a way that directly connects back to your strengths.
For example:
• If the customer undervalues your expertise in reducing downtime, show them how much revenue they’re losing due to operational inefficiencies they hadn’t fully recognized.
• If they dismiss your innovative processes as unnecessary, teach them how those processes can unlock cost savings or growth opportunities they didn’t know existed.
The key is to give the customer an “aha” moment—a realization that changes the way they think about their business. That’s not just insight; that’s commercial insight.
The Power of Commercial Insight
At its core, commercial insight is about teaching customers something new about their business that connects directly to what makes you uniquely great. It’s not about sharing generic advice or proving you’re smart. It’s about reframing their understanding of their challenges and opportunities in a way that they hadn’t considered before.
To summarize, the four steps to building commercial insight are:
1. What are our unique strengths?
2. Which of those strengths do customers underappreciate or undervalue?
3. What is it that customers fail to understand about their business that leads them to undervalue those strengths?
4. What do we have to teach customers about their business to get them to value those strengths more?
This process isn’t easy. It requires deep introspection, customer understanding, and creativity. But when done well, commercial insight doesn’t just differentiate you in the marketplace—it positions you as a partner who understands your customers better than they understand themselves.
At Qoos, we’re committed to helping companies develop and deliver commercial insight effectively. Because when you teach your customers something new about their business, you’re not just selling a product—you’re driving meaningful change.
So, what’s your next commercial insight?