How To Hire & Manage Market Research Agencies

How to Hire & Manage Market Research Agencies
Overview & Excerpts from the book
Kathryn Korostoff

About Research Rockstar
Research Rockstar delivers on-demand training and tips to busy professionals seeking Market Research excellence. Our clients are the actual users and buyers of market research services—people who need to find, buy and manage market research resources. In some cases, this is a full-time researcher. In others, a person who is doing or using research as part of another job.
Our Mission
To be the leading supplier of practical, online market research training and tools for real-world market research users and buyers:
Based in experience—not theory
 In uniquely concise, modular packages
 Available as needed (online or in-person)
 Without the bias of trying to also sell market research services
Want more information on market research best practices?
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Kathryn Korostoff
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How Is This Book Useful?
This book is for people who are actual buyers and users of custom Market Research; those who hire and manage Market Research agencies and are seeking to optimize the process, minimize the risk, and improve the action ability of end results.
If you are in any of the following situations, this book will be a great resource:
 You have never done custom Market Research before, and you’ve been tasked with hiring and managing a research agency for the first time.
 You have previously hired Market Research agencies and been dissatisfied with the results.
 You have managed one or two projects with Market Research agency partners, but the results were not embraced by your internal clients/stakeholders.
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What Will I Learn
From This Book?

Setting Appropriate Goals
Defining Your Project’s Scope
How to Consider the Internal Audience
Leveraging Existing Research
Planning Your Agency Relationship
RFIsand RFPs
Market Research Agency Selection
Managing the Agency
Implementing Successful Strategies

Click here to learn more about this book
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Kathryn Korostoff

Chapter 1: Setting Appropriate Goals
Chapter 1 provides guidance on how to set market research project goals, and includes many sample objectives, such as:
 How can we improve sales of a product that hasn’t met expectations?
 How can we improve our penetration within a specific customer group?
 Why have we experienced a sharp increase in customer defections?
Chapter 2: Defining Your Project’s Scope
Chapter 2 discusses, in detail, common project types, including:
 Product concept testing
 Market segmentation
 Message testing
 Customer loyalty/customer satisfaction
 Win-loss research
 Brand awareness tracking
 Needs discovery
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Chapter 3: Considering The Internal Audience
A careful assessment of your internal audience’s needs provides critical inputs for designing your market research project and selecting the best agency for your needs.
Chapter 4: Leveraging Existing Research
Chapter 4 explains why it is always wise to understand what relevant research already exists. The book describes several reasons why, including: “The answers
to your current questions might already exist,” “Important contextual data
might be available,” and “To identify potential risks.”
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Kathryn Korostoff

Chapter 5: Planning Your Agency Relationship
How to Choose a Relationship Type:
Market Research agencies vary greatly in the degree to which they truly act as a consulting agency vs. the degree to which they act as more of an extension of your staff. Which would best meet your needs?
A true full-service Market Research consultancy will be the best fit if you are seeking these types of conditions:
 You’ll come to it with objectives, and it will design the research project, getting your approval at key milestone points.
 It will run the show in terms of the details of how to execute the research. It will recommend exactly what
methodology to employ.
 It will report the research results and deliver recommendations based on those results.
In this chapter, the author describes different types of market research agencies, and how to choose the best one for your needs.
Chapter 6: RFIs & RFPs
“If you want your MR project to precisely meet your needs, you will need a precise RFP. The RFP is necessary to document your research needs and expectations. It also gives you an opportunity to ask for free advice.”
-Excerpt from Chapter 6: RFIs & RFPs
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Chapter 7: Market Research Agency Selection
One example of how you can narrow down the number of agencies under consideration
is to create a Weighted Scorecard, which is explained in Chapter 7.
Chapter 8: Managing The Agency
In Chapter 8, you will learn the defining roles and responsibilities
for managing the agency you have selected. You will learn how to
define your internal team, by assigning roles such as: Daily Contact,
Senior Project Manager, and Content Expert. Want more? Purchase the
book here to get full details.
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Kathryn Korostoff

Chapter 9: Successful Deliverables
Market Research projects are judged by their deliverables, whether reports, presentations or alternatives.
In Chapter 9, the author provides specific recommendations for successful deliverables. Here is one excerpt:
Engaging the Audience:
As with any presentation, the last thing you want to do is have someone read the slides out loud. Boring. Instead, use these tips to avoid the standard reading of slides.
1. Be sure that there are opportunities for people to participate, especially if the presentation is going to be more than 40 minutes long. No matter how fascinated you think the audience members should be, most people lose interest after 40 minutes. Give them an opportunity to participate by having a Q&A break or actually be involved in interactive exercises.
2. Stop and ask for feedback. A good way to keep people alert is to stop from time to time and ask questions. “Is this result surprising to you? How do you think you could use it?” Also, if appropriate, you can ask: “Is this result something we could share with our customers? Might they find it interesting? Is it something we could share with our channel partners? Could it help them understand our market better?”
Questions from Chapter 9, that are answered in the book.

“Should you send the presentation out ahead of time? Or should thebig reveal be at the presentation?”
“Should you give out hard copies at the presentation?”
“Should questions be saved until the end of the meeting?”

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Testimonials
“This book is a "must have" resource for any market research practitioner who manages research projects (large or small). The book's title belies the fact that in addition to guidance about hiring and managing agencies, the book also has some excellent nuggets of insight and facts to consider for any market research project.”
K. Clark “InsightsGal”
May 27, 2009
Portland, ME
“This book is an excellent piece of work and a powerful resource - for everyone who is somehow concerned with market researcher - agency or client side. Many well-recommended market research books go into detail describing different types of methodology for gathering and analyzing market research data. Unlike this schoolbook-like kind of market research literature Kathryn Korostoff stresses the most important point of every market research project: how to make the results live in the world of the client's organization.”
Christian “@Research2
@OlympiaMilano”
May 26, 2009
Hamburg, Germany
Click here to see more book reviews
and order your copy today!
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Questions or comments? Visit us at ResearchRockstar.com
Or by phone: 508-691-6004
Kathryn Korostoff