As you may recall, International Marketing Research Day was celebrated at the beginning of May. In addition to this outstanding event, this week in Mexico we celebrated the people who work in the same field. This coincidence of dates invites us to review a topic that we can sometimes overlook and that is well worth sharing with friends and strangers. No wonder. Many professions and trades have minimum requirements that in some cases we know as the applicant profile.
When looking to study a profession or start a career, it is essential to have clarity between what we are and what will be demanded of us in the classroom or workplace. Every day, market analysts face numerous challenges and obstacles that they must know how to overcome. Achieving the objectives comes hand in hand with a set of skills and abilities that in part you have from the beginning and others that will be acquired through continuous training. It is for this reason that today we list four conditions that a person joining the ranks of our discipline must have.
Constant curiosity. Understanding brands and people demands an inquiring mind that needs to answer all the questions posed to it with great enthusiasm. This point becomes clear when we review the different professions and sciences that gather around Marketing Research. We find people with backgrounds in Economics, Geography, Programming, Territorial Planning, Sociology, Communication Sciences, Psychology, Anthropology, among many others. As can be seen up to this point, it is also necessary to have the ability to work proactively and positively with other specialties.
Attention to detail. In meteorology there is a lot of talk about the “butterfly effect”. This situation tells us that the flapping of a small insect can provoke a cyclone in the antipode. However, translated into processes where multiple statistical analyses are made means that running models with data with few decimal places can result in very generic projections. In contrast, adding data with multi-digit precision to the right of the decimal point can show scenarios with less uncertainty. Aiming for the latter case is desirable for an analyst. In addition, it is also expected that he/she will miss few errors and will be able to spontaneously notice those missed by other colleagues.
Tolerance to frustration. If you have experience in our industry, you must be aware that expectation is one thing and reality is quite another. Although we try to plan the operative stages of the projects considering all possible variables, reality always imposes itself with threats and unpredictable events. In part, the task of our segment is to make the impossible possible. Therefore, it is imperative that at the slightest sign of a crisis in our field work, the analyst is able to make strategic decisions in accordance with best practices. Only in this way can projects come to fruition.
Assertive communication. Ideas, findings and data must be communicated among the different parts that make up the marketing system. More than having people skills, which let’s face it not everyone possesses based on their personality and life history, it is a non-negotiable that those in the industry be able to exchange messages effectively and practically. Whether it’s in the form of telling a story based on the results of an investigation or being able to formulate the right questions to gather input for a study, people involved in the field are required to have this skill.
There are other competencies that people who want to work or are already working in our sector must have. However, for this occasion we will limit ourselves to these first ones. In other blog posts we will address others. In an ideal world, we would expect these points to be developed by the time you start your working life. In reality, these skills are latent in many people and are just waiting to accumulate experience to put them into practice. The sooner you start gaining experience, the better your chances of mobility and growth.
In Acertiva we trust in these points and for this reason we seek to have analysts and strategic suppliers that share these precepts. Thanks to our more than two decades of experience in the field, we can be your allies in LATAM. In case you have a market knowledge project in hand, please contact us. We invite you to ask for a free fifteen minute consultancy. Then together we will make your next success story possible.
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