You are working late on a Friday, you are facing another week on the road to conduct physician interviews and you have a choice:
- sacrifice the weekend to the marketing gods
- or tell the brand team that their report will have to wait a few more days – maybe a week.
Since neither option promises a happy ending, some wishful thinking winds its way to the top of your mind: what if someone else could dig into the data, come up with squeaky clean summaries – and, presto, provide you with a weekend unencumbered by crazy deadlines?
Let’s face it: we cannot always do something about the crazy deadlines, but we can find competent help – someone with experience, someone who understands what needs to get done, someone who can do the job just as well, or better, than we can.
If you are looking for a person to help with your marketing research work, you might start with deciding what this person should do.
- Maybe they can handle some, or all, of your secondary data reports – so you can focus on primary research
- Maybe they can compile data from various vendors – so you can get a more complete picture of the market place
- Maybe they can come up with custom metrics in a market that is difficult to measure
Only you know what help you and your organization need, whether you can afford the extra head count or whether a consultant would be a better choice. You may want to consider hiring a consultant if:
- the project requires expertise that is unavailable in-house
- you do not have enough on-going work to justify a full time employee
- you need help with a short-term project
Once you have decided to hire a consultant, you need to develop selection criteria – which is a topic large enough to deserve its own blog post: How To Find The Right Consultant.