What qualities are execs looking for in analysts?
23 Jun
Estimated read time: 4min
What you’ll get out of this: how to become a more marketable analyst and how to use the S.T.A.R!
Brooks Bell Interactive recently hosted an awesome Summit in Raleigh–Click Summit 2010.
Unlike traditional summits or conferences where guest speakers talk about certain topics to a group of listeners, the Click 2010 format was based on small, round table discussions of director+ level in the online marketing field.
One discussion was particularly interesting among executives present: ”Building a Data-driven Organization”
The obvious: You must be analytically savvy. Know your stats. If you’re a web analyst, be sure to know your metrics and how to properly track data.
The not-so-obvious: You don’t need to have a masters or PhD in stats. You need to be business smart.
I got two interesting take-aways.
1) Curiosity.
This is something I never really thought of and was brought up by ShareFile’s CEO Jesse Lipson. I have personally met him and he is wicked smart. He brought this up and looking around the room, all other execs seemed to think for a second and nod their heads. It’s true. To be a good analyst, you have to be curious about what the data is showing. Is the data set reliable? Why did it spike? Was it something we did? Is it something we can take action on?
Curiosity in learning is key to long-term development.
2) Over and over again, execs expressed the need for people who are good with numbers AND able to solve business problems. Ability to create massive, complex spreadsheets & generate tons of web metric charts will not amount to much if the right message cannot be understood by decision makers. Talk in a language where the person you are talking to understands what in the world you have analyzed. What the hell does this mean? What ACTION can we take from this spreadsheet or charts?
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Here’s a take-away for everyone: use the S.T.A.R: 
“S” – Situation. What’s the current situation? What’s the problem?
“T” – Task. What are the tasks involved to resolve the situation? What are you trying to achieve?
“A” – Action. What are you going do about it?
“R” – Result. What’s the result? How did your actions result in resolving the situation?
The S.T.A.R can be applied to either a pitch or analysis after a project has finished. But how can it be used as a proposal if results aren’t yet known?
It actually works well for pitches because it tells a story to your client or customer:
” I understand your current situation and your issues. Here’s how I would approach the problem and the actions I will take. By doing X, I believe the results will be Y. Bam!
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If you have a job, you’re there for a reason. You’re job is to drive value and solve a problem. If you’re an analyst, you exist to gather data and find solutions. If you can’t solve the problem…you’re kind of useless.
Let me give an example: I played soccer in college. We had a fitness test at the beginning of every season. 2 miles in 12 min. Painful. At the beginning of my junior year, our team brought in a number of new players. There was one new kid who was faster than me. I thought surely this kid is going to make a huge impact on this team from game 1!.. Nope. He hardly ever played. He sucked. Soccer is about quick bursts of speed, change in directions, ball skills, team play, etc. This guy had none of these skills. All he could do was run fast on the track., so he did not add true value to our team.
The Point: Someone can look great on paper but if he or she can’t add to the bottom line, the person is useless or just another the kid on the bench.
Just like coaches are looking for players to help their team win games, execs are doing the same.
They want an analyst that fits in to the system, becomes part of the journey, and adds to the bottom line.
Absolutely, the insights have to be actionable — otherwise, it’s just irrelevant number-crunching. That was one of the most memorable concepts from my I.T. classes in college.
We can have a lot of data, but that doesn’t mean anything. Analysis turns data into information, because only information can be actionable. And information can drive actions, if we’ve asked the right questions.
I recently ran a customer survey that segmented respondents into those who had used the client’s service in the past year and those who hadn’t. For users, I asked why they used it. For non-users, I asked why they didn’t. For both, I asked what would make them more likely to use the service in the next year.
My focus was learning what happened in the past (historical, interesting), but also getting insights into what the client could do next to increase conversions (future, business-oriented).
Thanks Karl for the comment! I like your approach to that survey. Too many perform surveys to do it and don’t have an end goal of what kind of data they need to capture to take the next steps.