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Communication as a Market Assessment Consultant in Consulting
Communication is critical to consulting because your clients are incredibly busy and need you to communicate key project points clearly and help them to focus on the most important pieces of information. Depending on the type of consulting, being able to comfortably switch between technical and business jargon is quite helpful in building credibility with scientific colleagues of your clients.
- Oral communication skills
- Speaking clearly and effectively
- Written communication skills
Teamwork as a Market Assessment Consultant in Consulting
Everything in the business world, and especially in consulting, is done as part of a team. Even though I consult on my own, for many of my projects I am working with a team of people on the client side. Right now I am coordinating a team with people from Research, Clinical Development, Commercial, Medical Affairs, Business Development, and other functional groups to plan for covering data presentations at medical congresses.
- Ability to work on a team
- Ability to work with people outside the organization
Strategic Thinking as a Market Assessment Consultant in Consulting
The difference between a solid consulting job and a superior one is the ability to think strategically and frame the project in the context of the client's programs and priorities. For example, when I cover data at a congress, a mediocre report just lists out a bunch of data - long and hard to read! An excellent report organizes the data along the lines of the company's priorities (i.e., start with the most important data, frame descriptions to answer commonly asked questions, etc) and also includes some context that explains the impact of that data to the client's programs. A strategic report is easier for the client read and, more importantly, will be *used* when they make decisions. A mediocre report gets "filed in the email files" and may never even be read.
Interpreting Information as a Market Assessment Consultant in Consulting
My specialty as a consultant is market assessment and, more specifically, competitive intelligence. My job is to gather information, piece it together into a story about the marketplace and the players in it, and then put it all into context for the client. It would be impossible to do any of this if I couldn't interpret information. The information I work with ranges from scientific and clinical data presented at conferences (where I need to be able to quickly review and identify the most important info), to investor updates. I need to be able to not just understand the information but also understand the bias of that particularly source of information, and give the resulting insights the correct level of confidence and importance.
- Ability to gather and interpret information
- Ability to learn quickly
- Critical evaluation of scientific literature
- Technical skills related to my specific research area
Empathy as a Design Strategist in Consulting
Being able to understand and prioritize the pain points a user experiences with a process or system is central to design. Healthcare and design are both highly empathetic fields because they are both in service of people.
Communication as a Design Strategist in Consulting
Simplifying user feedback into insights so we can then translate that into something we build. Helping folks who are the closest to the problem drawback and see overarching problem areas requires communication skills around insightful questioning and facilitation.
- Basic writing and editing
- Oral communication skills
- Speaking clearly and effectively
- Written communication skills
Teamwork as a Design Strategist in Consulting
We bring our individual 'work-in-progress' projects to a weekly design team so we can get impartial feedback from teammates to help improve what we are putting together. It helps to surface and correct problems before a client sees it or it goes to the engineering team for a build.
- Ability to work on a team
- Providing constructive feedback
Strategic Thinking as a Design Strategist in Consulting
First, we have to help clients clearly explain the outcome they seek and then work backward from there given the constraints of time, budget, and feasibility. Then we have to think strategically about the human element and how we will identify and influence key decision-makers to move the project forward.
- Ability to make decisions and solve problems
- Ability to set a vision and goals
- Creating vision and goals
- Creativity/innovative thinking