Workshop 1: How to become a business strategist and trusted adviser to clients (Friday 2 October)

One of the greatest challenges for researchers is making the transition from being a researcher to being a business strategist and becoming a trusted adviser to clients on business strategy, not just a provider of research.

One person who has very successfully made this transition is Andy Dexter, and Andy will be able to pass on his wisdom in a half day workshop on Friday 2 October. The workshop was originally advertised as being ‘The Transition from Qual Researcher to Business Strategist’ and it will focus more on the qualitative side of the business, but it will be useful for any researcher wanting to move up the food chain.

Andy Dexter is coming over from the UK to be a Keynote Speaker at the 2009 Conference, and we have persuaded him to stay to facilitate this workshop. So it is a unique opportunity for you to pick his brain. And what a brain to pick!

Andy has walked away from several UK and European market research conferences with awards for best paper, best presentation, and best new thinking. He has some firm views about how research should be undertaken and communicated to clients, and doesn’t pull his punches.

Andy is also a highly successful businessman. He is a former CEO of one of the UK’s leading agencies, he took Incepta Marketing Intelligence (now Illuminas) to Top Ten status in the UK, and won Marketing Magazine’s Research Agency of the Year in 2004. Then Andy took up the challenge of establishing his own agency, called Truth, and it has reached the dizzy heights of 4 million pounds turnover inside two years. As we would expect from Andy, Truth is different. It has a different approach to research and a different business model, with all staff having shares in the business. Truth has just won UK Best New Agency of the Year.

Andy will provide insights into how successful business advisers evolve. He will tell us about developing the mindset that allows us to interpret any form of evidence, qualitative or quantitative, in a succinct and actionable way that can be communicated to business leaders. As Andy points out:

'Business leaders famously take their decisions as much on instinct and
a compelling argument as they do on facts and figures. To make the transition to
trusted advisers, researchers have to embrace this, and are well placed but
often lack the confidence and business tool kit to do so.

The workshop seeks to discuss these opportunities and barriers in more detail, and will draw from your experiences as well as Andy’s to develop a framework for making the transition.

The workshops are staying at the bargain (early bird) price of $352 for AMSRS members / $440 for non-members. Click here to register now.