Training Classes and Workshops

Tasked with setting up an intelligence program, or revamping an existing one, and wondering where to start? This masterclass gives you the road map.

What you can expect

• What world-class market intelligence is, and the key success factors of a program.
• Where your company stands today and what its ambition level is: an introduction to intelligence audits.
• How to plan and design the intelligence process: needs analysis, scope, deliverables, tools and techniques.
• How to get the first big win and market the program to internal user groups.
• A concrete action plan and development road map for your own program.

Format: One-day workshop, up to 20 participants.

If you want to grow faster than the market, you have to know how big the market is and whether it will grow, stay flat or decline. This workshop takes a deep dive into market sizing and forecasting.

What you can expect

• Frameworks for market segmentation, market sizing and market share analysis.
• Top-down and bottom-up sizing methods, in theory and in practice.
• Sources of market size information, and how to forecast growth or decline.
• Real-life cases: how market sizing was built in different situations.
• How to make market sizing actionable for existing and new business lines, products or geographies.

Format: One-day workshop, up to 20 participants.

Surviving in a saturated market takes more than the right products: you want to anticipate the strategic moves of your competitors and make that a core competence.

What you can expect

• The different types and levels of competition, including the models of Porter and Treacy and Wiersema.
• How to collect competitor information: internal and external sources, primary and secondary research, social media, elicitation techniques.
• Competitive blind spots, disruptive competitors, and the legal and ethical framework.
• Analysis frameworks: four corners, ACH, portfolio matrix, activity systems, channel mapping, win-loss analysis and more.
• How to disseminate competitor analysis: briefings, company profiles, battle cards, micro publications.
• The principles of competitor simulation, with an optional replica war game.

Format: Four modules of three hours (two days), up to 20 participants.

What are the likely strategic moves of your competitors? A competitor simulation gets you as close as possible to the answer. Marix developed a three-phase methodology to run and facilitate these workshops.

What you can expect

• An integrated, forward-looking view of your competitors and the landscape, challenging blind spots and conventional wisdom.
• Answers to questions such as: how will competitors react to our new product, what will their next move be, why do customers buy from them?
• Four levels of simulation, from one competitor in a static market to multiple competitors in a dynamic, interacting market.
• Three phases: preparation (two to six weeks), the workshop itself (half a day to two days) and the post-simulation analysis.

Format: Half a day to two days of workshop, after two to six weeks of preparation.

The better a company anticipates the future, the more successful it will be. Master forward-looking techniques to create a vision of the future and advise top executives on what to do next.

What you can expect

• How to identify and use weak signals, and develop an early warning system.
• Megatrends: how to spot and analyze them, including chain and impact analysis.
• Consumer trends and personas to develop new products and services.
• Associative thinking to design new products, services and business models.
• Scenario planning techniques and blue ocean principles.

Format: One to one-and-a-half-day workshop, up to 20 participants.

A company that wants to grow has to look into the future, even when that future is unpredictable. The trick is to be prepared for different possibilities: scenarios.

What you can expect

• What scenarios are, how to develop them and how to use them for the future success of your company.
• Market dynamics and business drivers, trends, early warnings and weak signals, PESTEL dimensions.
• Forecasts versus scenarios, and the four P's of scenario planning.
• One-dimensional, two-dimensional and multidimensional scenarios: factor identification, grouping and influence analysis.
• From scenarios to strategy, with SWOT and TOWS.

Format: Half-day to one-day workshop, up to 20 participants.

Increase the impact of your insights program by enhancing the cooperation between stakeholders and the insights practitioner. The ultimate challenge is to truly understand the drivers behind management's requests, bring your reports to life and lead an educated discussion with decision-makers about needs and strategic implications.

What you can expect

• Understand the typical challenges and dilemmas of management, and their implications for intelligence deliverables.
• Ask the right questions and focus on the right research and analysis: needs analysis.
• Move from stating facts to giving recommendations and discussing them with executives.
• Develop a feedback loop involving all stakeholders of intelligence assignments.
• Build a relationship of trust and deep cooperation between intelligence professionals and executives, so decisions become faster and better.
• Insights into behavioral economics and human dynamics.

Topics

• Consultancy: roles, styles and skills in the company; creative thinking.
• Stakeholders: who they are and how to prioritize them; social styles.
• Understanding behavior: values and principles, heuristics, cognitive biases, how different profiles communicate.
• The engagement model: understanding management's goals, needs analysis, the dialogue, coping with resistance, nudging, when to say yes and no, negotiation principles.
• Communication techniques: the Rose of Leary, the drama triangle, transactional analysis, the eldest daughter syndrome.
• Developing charisma, informal meetings, executing a consultancy project.

The world of deliverables is bigger than PowerPoint and PDF reports. The right format depends on audience, message and abstraction level. We look at how to make any deliverable compelling and crisp, and how to visualize data so that it reveals the information.

What you can expect

• A deep dive into best-in-class insights deliverables: easily digested at the highest level and action-oriented.
• The whys and hows of deliverables, and the characteristics of the different formats and techniques.
• Chart models, data visualization models and tools, and the rules to keep in mind.
• Better use of your findings by your stakeholders: fewer questions, more dialogue.

Topics

• Business priorities, the audience and its cognitive style and preference, the rights of the stakeholder.
• Building the message: journalism, reporting, academic, promotional and provocative styles; pyramid principle, SCR method, meta and Milton styles.
• Information needs, attention spans and recommendation levels per profile; writing skills.
• Visualization: Anscombe's quartet, rules and examples, the periodic table of visualization, 3D, the Brewer palette, Gestalt laws.
• Storytelling, using PowerPoint properly, alternatives such as Prezi and Pecha Kucha.
• Other delivery forms: dashboards, portals, webinars, blogs and vlogs, infographics, apps, micro publications, white papers, podcasts, one-minute meetings.
• Key attributes of actionable insights.

Insights sit all over the company: every stakeholder holds a piece of the intelligence puzzle. How do you capture insights at the right place and share them, so the company benefits from its collective knowledge? Learn to build a community that creates intelligence together.

What you can expect

• Define the purpose and goal of the community, and create its framework.
• Identify and select the right people to become members, and manage the community for success.
• Use valuable resources across the company and the collective knowledge for co-creation.
• Establish one generally accepted intelligence identity and platform.
• Raise the culture and visibility of intelligence company-wide, and beyond.

Public speaking ranks among the scariest things to do, especially when the topic is analytical findings, data, facts and figures. Being a good speaker is one of the most powerful competences: it lets you transfer your knowledge in a professional, natural way.

What you can expect

• Become a motivated and convincing speaker who presents intelligence deliverables in a compelling, passionate yet natural way.
• Keep the attention of the audience and interact with it.
• Turn dry analytical facts and figures into dynamic, lively presentations that stick.
• Feel comfortable speaking for any audience, on any topic, at any moment.
• Be seen as the professional who knows both how to do intelligence and how to share the message.