"Soft" is bloody "Hard"

Kick @## post from one of my favorite blogs, Stephen Denny's Note to CMO.  Money quote:

Many companies do tremendous jobs at the relatively easy analysis work and may even spend millions on 'customer insight' to validate preconceptions dearly held. But at the end of the day, the question that is never fully answered is, "so what are you actually going to do that will profitably grow the company?" I can tell you that 57.4% of respondents prefer our new packaging over Brand X with 6.5% sampling error at 99%, but I can't tell you how we're going to get them to actually buy more of it. That would require harnessed creativity, innovation, persuasion, influence... soft skills, in other words. [emphasis added]

Comments

[Stephen Denny]

Barbara: thanks for your kind words. Funny, isn't it? Soft skills are the ones so quickly dismissed as squishy when the facts often point to two very hard realities: soft skills are terribly complex and the quantitative presentation of 'hard' facts are often based on pure, subjective fluff.

I suppose if it were easy, we'd all do this...

Thanks!