Have you ever found yourself in a kickoff meeting for a new market research study, and none of the attendees are prepared? Perhaps, alas, including yourself? The meeting is going poorly, and while attendees may be polite, you know it’s leaving a terrible impression.
Hopefully this hasn’t happened to you, but as somebody who has done over 600 market research projects, I can tell you it does sometimes happen. If you’re lucky, you learn early in your career how to mitigate this risk. But if you’ve ever suffered a kickoff calamity, there is an easy fix: sending out a precise agenda at least 2 business days prior to the meeting.
While that sounds obvious, sometimes sending out a meeting agenda is the first thing that gets cut when we have too much on our plate (like three reports all due the same week!
). As a time-saver consider making a template, so that every time you are planning a kickoff meeting, you’ve got all the standard stuff ready. Here’s my list of things that you absolutely want to have on that agenda template, so that everybody comes to the meeting prepared—and your clients (whether internal or external) know that you are running a tight ship.
- Introductions: Intros should be the first agenda item, even if the attendees already know each other. You want to make sure that everybody introduces themselves, knows each other’s first names (and pronunciations), and has clear project roles. About those roles, be precise (even if you think it should be obvious). Who is going to contributing hypotheses? Who is going to advise on or approve instrument designs? Are some of the attendees going to serve as subject matter experts? There can be a lot of different roles—so it’s important to make sure everyone is clear from the get-go about who is responsible for what.
- Objectives: By the time you get to a kickoff meeting, the research objectives should already be agreed upon. However, it’s always a good idea to review the objectives and get confirmation. Sometimes an event occurs in the preceding days that necessitates an update. I once had the experience of planning a brand equity study where the day before the kickoff meeting, the client’s key competitor announced drastic pricing changes. You can bet that led to a lively discussion about the project’s objectives!
- Methodology: Again, you’re probably coming to the kickoff meeting knowing the planned market research methodology. Still, it’s always a good idea to review this with everyone verbally—even if it’s just to say, “let’s confirm our methodology plan.”
- Sampling Plan: Who is the target population for the research? Are we studying consumers, or doing business research? What specific screening criteria are to be used?
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Are there quota requirements? What’s the sampling frame (source) going to be? These items should be confirmed at the kickoff meeting.
- Success Criteria: Save some agenda time to discuss success criteria. If you are facilitating the kickoff meeting, be sure to ask, “what are our criteria for success?” Alternatively, “When we get to the end of the project, how will we know if the research is a success?” Asking explicitly for success criteria is a great way to have a candid conversation.
- Brainstorming: For many research projects, the kickoff agenda needs to include time for brainstorming. There are many great exercises that can be used for market research brainstorming. For example, let’s say you’re kicking off a market segmentation study—you may want to do some brainstorming about the attributes of your most and least attractive customers. Those attributes ultimately represent variables that you may want to explore as potential ways of dividing the target market into logical subgroups (segments).
I know this sounds like a bit of work, but having a market research kickoff agenda template will mitigate the risk of this step falling through the cracks when you’re in a mad rush to meet other deadlines.
And delivering a solid agenda will truly help your meeting participants recognize that you are a Research Rockstar.
P.S. Last call! Our Writing Bootcamp with Instructor Dan Reynolds starts next week! Have team members who need a writing refresh? This is it! And no travel required.
