In-House Marketing Research Folks-Tom Schori
Saturday, July 26th, 2008
At conferences over the years, I’ve encountered lots of in-house marketing research folks who were disappointed that few of their recommendations were put into action. I told them that my experience was quite the opposite–that most recommendations that I had made were acted upon. When they asked why, I simply told them that “I was so convinced that what I was recommending was the right thing to do that I spent the necessary time selling them on the correctness of the conclusions and recommendations.”
In retrospect, I believe that there were two main reasons that most of the research that I conducted, as an in-house research, was acted upon:
- I saw myself as a team member, not simply a supplier to in-house clients–as some folks do. So it was always “us” not “we” versus them. In my opinion, the in-house supplier-client conception that many folks seem to promote is far off the mark; and
- I was proactive, not reactive. For the vast majority of the research that I conducted as an in-house research type, I saw the need and implemented the research with out being asked.
It probably boils down to the fact that there are 3 types of people (and organizations):
- those who make things happen;
- those who watch things happening; and
- those who wonder what happened.
As for me, I’m one who makes things happen!