Functional expertise: Musings of an ex-generalist

Editor's note: Laura Pinsky is founder and principal at Solarus Consulting, a Massachusetts-based marketing strategy and research firm.

Many clients look for partners who have a specific category and/or demographic experience. This can, in turn, be a catalyst for many marketing researchers to choose to specialize in an industry, content vertical or category of customer.

From the beginning of my career I chose a different path, deciding not to specialize in any one area. That led to me being labeled a “generalist,” which always left me feeling a bit unsettled and defensive. 

For years, I was stuck thinking researchers could have only two types of expertise: category or demographic. I was concerned that I was seen as not having the stamina and skills to be a serious researcher … as someone who didn’t have the willingness to dig deep in one place. At one time, I engaged in business development conversations with potential new clients from what I now see is a rather apologetic standpoint (“I realize I don’t have specific experience in X, but I know I can do the work.”).

But I was incorrect. Researchers like me simply have a different kind of expertise. We are functional experts. This functional expertise can be applied in any organization, industry or situation where marketing issues exist. 

Today, I stress the benefits of researchers having a wide range of experience as it allows us to get to unique and actionable insights. 

Functional expertise

I am a functional expert rather than a generalist. Introducing this term has continuously opened the door for conversation.

I am not (quite intentionally) a content expert. Clients have access to many content experts – both inside their organizations and as consultants – and do not come to me because they need to be educated about their industry or their own organization. Rather, they lack a functional skill set called marketing strategy, insights and marketing research. A very important part of the job is to quickly become fluent enough with the content to be able to do work with excellence. 

A fresh look at the insight journey 

Functional expertise is not simply reframing the situation to demonstrate that being a generalist is not negative. It actually allows us to highlight the positive aspects of the partnership experts can establish with the client. 

When I come to a project with fresh eyes and the belief that I need to get up-to-speed, I can ask some very fundamental questions that the client (or a content-specific consultant) may take for granted. I have permission to ask “dumb” questions without anyone thinking less of me. Very often, you can find a gold nugget in these questions.

In addition, when your clients span a wide variety of industries, sectors and life cycle maturity, you have the opportunity to borrow insights and analytical approaches from other areas. Sometimes these can be closely analogous. For example, I was working with a client with a women’s facial care product. I had previously done research on women and exercise equipment. I realized that there were similarities in the ways women thought about these two areas. For example, when women engaged in a regimen of caring for their faces, they felt a similar sense of pride and power as when they took care of their bodies with an exercise regimen. The client was able to capitalize on insights around pride and agency that they might not otherwise have seen.

Other times, the analogous situations can be much more obscure. Once, when working with a museum client who was considering changing their pricing structure, I recalled work I had done with an amusement park client who had wrestled with the same issues. It struck me that there were many interesting connections here. Individuals who bought a summer pass to the park had much in common with individuals who bought an annual museum membership. Those who bought a single admission ticket to either of those venues also had commonalities. At first, the museum folks were a bit taken aback that I wanted to compare Van Gogh to a roller coaster. But in the end, there were some rich insights that allowed us to build and execute a more nuanced and effective research study which ultimately fed into successful pricing strategy decisions.

I have happily embraced the role of functional expert for many years now. Clients who see the advantage of this kind of lens have welcomed me as a partner in their insight journeys.