Sebastian (00:02):

You are listening to the Insightful Connections podcast. Our guest today is Andy Monzon. Andy is a vice president at Zintro and Head of Project Management and Recruitment. Founded in 2007, Zintro is a market research focused expert network that helps researchers get access to decision makers, experts in other audiences for qualitative research. Unlike others in the expert network panel and research recruitment spaces, Zintro excels at custom recruitment and finding people that other vendors cannot allowing clients to get excellent inputs for their research. Prior to joining Zintro, Andy was associate director of project management at Egg Strategy, uh, field manager at Kantar and a project manager at the Sound Research. Andy is the guy to go to at Zintro for everything related to project management and recruitment and in the B2B space. I've worked with Zintro a number of times over the last few years and they are an incredible outfit at what they do. They punch way above their weight in terms of finding difficult to reach audiences and they're always my first go-to for B2B. So Andy, as the person who keeps that ship tight, I appreciate you taking time outta your day to be on the podcast today.

Andy (01:04):

Thanks for having me Sebastian. I, I really appreciate it.

Sebastian (01:29):

So the first question I wanted to ask you, I try to get this perspective from everybody 'cause I think it always sort of yields an interesting story, is how did you initially get into market research generally and how does that help explain you know, where you are today?

Andy (01:44):

Great question. So I started off in market research almost 20 years ago, which is crazy to me that I've been doing this for a while. I started off on this current side of the business that I'm on now, right? So on the supplier side through a website that most people will probably not even be super aware of nowadays and that's Craigslist. So back in the day, like going back 20 years ago, Craigslist was actually like a pretty decent tool to like find jobs and I was looking for something that I was like interning at JP Morgan like every summer. And then all of a sudden that fourth year that I was going to intern, you know like they were aware of sort of like where the economy was headed, they scrapped basically their intern program that summer and I was like, oh man, what am I gonna do this summer?

Andy (02:27):

And sure enough, you know, I went on Craigslist and oh uh, marketing research, uh, recruiter, Spanish speaking preferred and I was like, well perfect, this is me. It wasn't very far from where I lived. So I went and I was like, oh this is probably some kind of telemarketing thing but whatever. Like I'll go give it a whirl. And it wasn't, it was this world of market research and focus groups, you know, a world that I knew nothing about and like I was like interesting people that were like behind the one-way mirror just trying to learn and trying to understand from other people. Uh, and I was like wow, this is pretty cool. So I started off as a telephone recruiter and I was like, okay, well like this is kind of like cool but like not very challenging. And then I got a promotion to project manager and that was the first time I was a project manager.

Andy (03:10):

So that started to get a little more interesting sort of like looking at screeners and understanding termination points and all of that jazz and like how you report that to your clients. Long story short, I sort of like also delved into like operations and sort of like running a ffocus group facility. I started working out of their New York office, which was kind of like the flagship and it was like right on 44th Street it, it's now a space that was bought out by l and e so it's like their New York City facility. And then working there I sort of like learned a lot more about the industry, a lot more about clients, a lot more about research and then came my first opportunity to work on the agency side, which was with the sound research. So it made the jump, that was my first of four agency stints And you know, after being at Egg Strategy for five years, you know, unfortunately, like I think so many companies in market research felt the pressures of the economy and all of that over the last few years they had a a small round of layoffs.

Andy (04:06):

Unfortunately I was a part of that. But you know, over the years I had been able to build up my Rolodex, all of my connections, which I think is such an important part of project management is building connections and having friends in different places. So when I was finally ready to kind of like announce that I was looking for a new job, I was really, really fortunate that so many people reached out. Whether it was like, Hey listen man, like I'm not hiring but this company that I know of is like maybe you should throw your hat in the ring. So there had a lot of that just on day one alone and fortunately Zintro was one of the two or three conversations that ended up having like a lot of legs and ultimately I decided to come here.

Sebastian (04:50):

Nice. Yeah, I totally recognize how connections is such an important part of project management, right? Especially when it comes to capabilities that you're able to tap into in various corners of the industry that you know, are with this vendor or this sample provider, right? It's often a matter of knowing those people, knowing that that's available and and tapping those resources. So yeah, completely recognize how project management is a great role to build out connections in and glad it worked out for you.

Andy (05:17):

Thanks man.

Sebastian (05:18):

Yeah, so you had a really interesting idea for this episode and I think it's an interesting it sort of way into talking about what is a part of the research process that's really close to my heart, which is of course everything to do with project management recruitment. And I think you mentioned in your email, and I'm trying to remember right now you can correct me if I'm way off, but you were saying that project management is like the Silvioo Dante from the Sopranos. I did,

Andy (05:45):

I did <laugh>. Okay. I did

Sebastian (05:48):

<laugh> of of research and it's because it flies under the radar but it's more important than you think, right? Is that

Andy (05:53):

Right? A hundred percent. Okay.

Sebastian (05:55):

Okay. Okay. So context here is I've never actually watched this Panos, I was a kid when it was on, my parents watched the whole series when it originally aired like on cable and I was never allowed to watch it of course 'cause I was like seven or whatever. So I haven't seen the show, it's on my list to watch. I realize that it's like a classic right of like when TV started getting good basically. Yeah. And probably sometime in like 20, 27 when my kids are a little bit older, I'll find some time to watch it. So yeah,

Andy (06:24):

All

Sebastian (06:24):

Of that context in mind, I'm wondering if you can tell me a little bit about Silvio Dante and you can take your time with fleshing out that character that we can get into how project management is like him. Yeah,

Andy (06:35):

So Silvio Dante is the consti of the Soprano family. The structure of traditional organized families. So you have like the boss of the family at the top of the pyramid and then you have your Underboss and your Consti SIO is the Consti, which is like the counselor to the family. If, if you watched the Godfather movie, like Godfather one, Tom Hagan was Don cor Leon's Cons, right? And you would think under Boss is the second most important person. But you know, I, I really do think that the counselor is probably a little more important. So that's Silvio Dante's character. And the reason why I use this comparison that he's the SIO Dante to Tony Soprano is because over the course of the series, Sylvi does quite a few things that mirror what project managers do. So number one, they're a very trusted second or third in command, like however you wanna sort of like see a project manager, they're not the main person giving orders, right?

Andy (07:35):

But like they're having conversations with the top person and then sort of like delegating that stuff down, right? And SIO does a lot of that, a lot of these conversations that Tony as the boss of the family is having. He has sort of like in private, whether it's with the Underboss or with Silvio who's this consigliere. And the reason is because obviously like he's a really loyal guy so he knows that he's not going to ever snitch on him or anything. So a lot of like those really high level conversations are only happening with like two or three people. Silvio is usually part of those conversations. And in those conversations there could be a lot of like, well you know, like, you know, you need to whack this guy or you need to go see this other person, I don't know, like shake him down for whatever the case is or have him sign a contract for something and project managers, that's in essence what they do, right?

Andy (08:28):

Like they're the ones that are sort of like having conversations with strategists and it's like, okay, so got it. This is who we're gonna look for or this is the kind of technology partner that we need for this project. So you worry about all of your, your research things that you need to worry about, right? All of those like other bigger picture things, I'm gonna go ahead and take care of this and then you know, you can rely on me to get it done. And then whether that's setting up, discuss io hiring one or two recruiting partners to sort of like find you the experts or the consumers that you need, they will have that conversation and then it's the job of Silvio of the project manager to go execute that and get it done.

Sebastian (09:05):

In this metaphor, like when would you whack a vendor? <laugh> <laugh>? Good

Andy (09:10):

Question. I think whacking a vendor and I mean that, you know, so very lightheartedly, I, you know, you never have to whack a vendor. I think the extent of that might be severing ties with a vendor. More often than not it's like really about having a more strongly toned conversation about why they're not delivering what you're expecting them to deliver. Like what you agreed upon for them to deliver. And that happens, you know, more often than one would think, well, for us it's a little different, right? 'cause we're the vendor. But thinking about my agency time, any project manager might have 10 to 12 projects that they're running individually and we had like five or six project managers at one point. So numbers are up there as well. We're kind of like close to like 60 or 70 projects at a time that happens. You hire this recruiting company to find new people in a timely fashion.

Andy (09:59):

You know, you give them all of the tools that they need to get the job done and then, you know, you're a week in it should be a fairly easy recruit and you have no one, right? So you have a heart to heart conversation like, hey listen, I really need you to get this done. What's going on? Blah, blah blah. Sometimes you use a little more forceful language, but at the end of the day, sometimes that little conversation is what makes the difference, right? Like they know that you're not kidding around, uh, you're not messing around like you hired them to do something and you're expecting them to do that. And at that point then they'll go ahead and get it done. 'cause they don't wanna have a conversation like that again. And severing ties with vendors. It doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes you, you have to, right?

Andy (10:38):

Whether it's because they're consistently not delivering what you need, maybe there's some kind of compliance issue. You're not supposed to divulge who the client sponsor is, right? Who's paying footing the bill for this project? And as a project manager, you know, sometimes you share all of this information with your partners because you want to be a good partner, but sometimes they end up using that and like maybe they accidentally or you know, on purpose will divulge who that client is. And now you have, uh, participants going into a conversation, Hey I know this is for Google, so you know, I I love Google. Oh my god, yes. When they told me this was for Google, I got so excited. 'cause I love your products and that is obviously like a, a big mess up that sometimes might require you to have to eliminate that relationship.

Sebastian (11:24):

Yeah, I've definitely had a lot of those moments where it's like somebody walks into a focus group room and it's like, this is the craft study, right? Or like <laugh> <laugh>, yeah. You know, oh my buddy told me about this study, right? Like yep, that's another one. That's another one. Right? I think it's one of the differences between qual and quant. I should watch that. I'm not speaking outta turn here because Qual is really, you know, my wheelhouse and, and what I'm familiar with. But I always say like we can afford minimal deviation from top quality sample because our sample inevitably is gonna go meet our client and we can't afford to really think of sample in these sort of amorphous terms. You know, it is always people that are gonna materialize at the end of the day and actually talk to the person who's paying you.

Sebastian (12:08):

And there's a lot of risk involved in that and there's a lot of room for that to do lasting damage to your relationship, right? And so you, you really have to be incredibly fastidious about the quality of of what you're delivering. You do. And I think this is one of the differences between qual and quant. I mean certainly on the quant side there's plenty of concern about sample quality and we see that mm-hmm <affirmative> right now in the industry. But I think the stakes for qualitative vendors have always been extremely high. Yeah. In terms of the people that we're turning out

Andy (12:38):

A hundred percent, especially with quant, depending on the project, if your total n is a thousand on a really good day, you can go ahead and and get 10% of that or or more. And if there's some kind of quality issue with some of those numbers, some of that like those data points, then you wanna say, you know what I think about 40 or 50 of these are, are probably not good. You can go ahead and very quickly replace such big swaths of numbers. Whereas with qualitative you can't do that, right? Like first of all, like your sample size is already small to begin with and if you have five people could be 30% of your sample, it took you a while to get them. Uh, it, it's very different. Like the impact is definitely felt a lot stronger because of that. Like it's not that easy to replace. Yeah.

Sebastian (13:24):

And often, you know, you're finding out after, you know, the control over the flow of information's completely been lost, the end client was present and the respondent said something that indicated the whole process was flawed. So cool. I mean this is, uh, <laugh> becoming a bit of a downer conversation. So is there sort of a, a syl Dante mindset that you apply in your work as a project leader within your organization and how you sort of use that cognitive blueprint in your work on a day-to-day basis?

Andy (13:53):

I think to sum it up in one line, it's Sylvia's undying loyalty to the family and to Tony and I use that because I think as project managers it's really important to have that kind of, you know, loyalty to the project and the company that you're working for. If you have that kind of mentality, you're going to go above and beyond to do whatever it is that needs to get done. You know, when you're on the agency side, you obviously you rely on recruiters to sort of like find you who you need, but when there's a problem or when they're not doing what they need to do and you're shy one or two or three or four people, you know, you're willing to roll up the sleeve and just do the job yourself. Before when I worked at X strategy, I had actually discovered Zintro and I was like, oh man, I was like these guys are good.

Andy (14:38):

And that's how how they sort of like came to mind like someone had suggested working with them. But before that I was like finding experts on my own. So I think there's a lot of that, like when you're loyal to the mission, the way that Silvio was to the family, you're gonna do whatever it takes, right? You're gonna be a better thinker, a better strategic thinker, right? That that was a big thing that Silvio did was doing a lot of that strategic thinking for the greater good. And project managers do that day in and day out. They take what they get from clients from the conversations that they're having with the strategists that are working on that project, to then in turn think through, all right, how am I going to take all of these complex criteria that a client has and turn it into a five or six page document that I'm going to give my partners to find me?

Andy (15:24):

These people that are ultimately going to give us all of those insights that we need. You know, you're gonna take that information to think through, okay, well I know the strengths and weaknesses of these different partners, I'm going to use that to find the best person that's suited for this. When you're doing global work, you need to think about all of those logistics time difference and you know who's gonna be a stronger moderator to be able to do this for us. So there's really a a lot that you think through and sometimes it's a lot of hard work and sometimes it means working later hours. But again, your goal and your focus is the overall success of that project because the success of the researcher, right, like the boss's success is also your success as the consigliere.

Sebastian (16:10):

Last question before I move on to a couple more personal things. I'm wondering what are one or two things that clients can do, whether they're agencies or brands right, to get better results from their project managers, their vendors, especially when it relates to B2B expert recruitment?

Andy (16:33):

Great question also, you know, so now I'm able to put on my, my intro hat for a second. There's two things. Number one is screeners. I'm always going to sort of like go back to a screener regardless of where I'm at because screeners are so important to a project. I think on the B2B side, clients often approach qualitative projects but the mentality that the qual screener that you can use for a consumer project is going to work for B2B and unfortunately that couldn't be further from the truth. Tyler, the CEO of our company did a little bit of research and I have some stats. So screener completion rates, they start to drop off pretty significantly when you get to the 10 question marks. So still at 10 questions you're looking at about a 73% completion rate. But with 11 it drops to 71 with 12 questions, it drops to 65 with 15 questions it drops to 56.

Andy (17:30):

So screeners really do matter and you know, we try to share this data with our clients just like so they can be more mindful of that. And you know, I think for some of them where we've been preaching this for a few months now it's starting to stick, which is great to see. Yeah, so definitely the size of a screener matters and the more concise that they can be with their questions, uh, you know, if it could be a little bit on the smaller side that tends to yield better results both in terms of finding the experts but also just like the quality of the insights that they give you. I think the other thing is just really being open to the suggestions that the pushbacks that they might get on screeners or design from these recruiting companies, like from the B2B recruiting companies. When I came to Zintro, one of the first things that I wanted to do was help shift the mindset of all of my project managers from being sort of like recruiting project managers to think like agency project managers.

Andy (18:27):

And obviously like we're not an agency, right? We don't do moderation or anything like that, but it's important to think that way. Like if they can put themselves in the mindset of our clients, they'll do better work, right? So if you start thinking like an agency project manager, one of the things that you're going to do is potentially like give some pushback like hey, like this question maybe doesn't make sense or maybe it we need to like play around with the wording. Maybe you have too few questions, like maybe you need a few more because at this rate we're not going to really be able to get exactly who we want. It might be a little bit more general and then you're not going to really find out that that's not the person you want until you actually do the interview. And at that point it's too late.

Andy (19:07):

So I think that would be the second piece of advice is to really take a step back. Those on the agency side, they're experts in a lot of things. You know, clients and people like they're experts in their craft. But really when it comes to recruitment, especially on the B2B side, it's the people that you reach out to like the project managers at Zintro that are truly the experts in what's best to get us who we need here and really giving us an opportunity to give you some feedback and taking that to heart. It goes a long way. Yeah,

Sebastian (19:37):

I, I think it's so interesting the survey completion, the stats that you just rattled off there, working in consumer primarily, that's totally foreign to me. We generally don't see that sort of thing to the same extent, but I almost think framing in a different way, it's like cutting five questions out of your screener effectively doubles feasibility or gets you close to doubling feasibility because the available sample at the top of the funnel is so much larger. I think that's a really interesting insight to take home and I think pretty unique to B2B as far as I'm aware. I certainly have administered a lot of qual screeners to consumers and generally we don't see that to the same degree, but I think that's really interesting. Last question for you Andy. What keeps you motivated?

Andy (20:18):

That's a pretty loaded question. 'cause there's a lot of motivation in my life, especially when it comes to my career. You know, I think my family is certainly a motivation for me. My kids, they see their mom who's an educator, they see me and like, while they still don't fully grasp the concept of what I do, they know that it's cool work and they know that it keeps dad busy. So certainly that's one. I also think that just like myself and my own personal ambition sort of, they keep me going. I really love the challenge that my work presents, you know, throughout my career, even before sort of like being in, in like a more managerial role where I have people that I can sort of like delegate things to, presents different challenges but still challenges nonetheless. And I really enjoy that, right? I, I really enjoy having to think through problems and sort of like how to solve them, how to further improve like what we're doing.

Andy (21:12):

Even when you get to a point where you feel like things are going well, you know, you want to challenge yourself to sort of like try to make it that much better. And I think the other is that now that I have a lot of people that work under me, which you know, has been a truly a, a blessing and you know, a roller coaster that I was not expecting in my career, at least not at this juncture yet, you know, it's like 50 ish people between project management and recruitment that look to me for some advice and some direction and that keeps me motivated, right? Because I feel like market research has been really good to me over the last 20 years. I've been able to do so much and see so much and experience so much that I wanna be able to pay that forward.

Andy (21:54):

And the best way that I can think of doing that is by helping the teams that I manage to become better every day, right? I want my project managers to be better every single day. So from training sessions to one-on-ones to even having like outside presenters come to talk to them about things and sort of like motivate them in different ways. I want them to aspire to have all these things. And on the recruitment side as well, I remember when I used to work on the facility side and, and the recruiting side, the consumer side recruiters were just like, oh whatever. Like it was just a job for them, you know, it was part-time, you know, they only worked a few hours, wanted to go on their breaks and like not really care too much about the work, but now 20 years later I'm like, man, I was like, these people really didn't understand the gravity of the work that they were doing.

Andy (22:41):

So I take that perspective and sort of like that insight into the conversations that I have with my recruiters now. Yeah, you may be a recruiter sure, but I want you and I challenge them to sort of imagine that they were on the agency side and have that perspective. I want them to find the word challenging. I want them to question things. I want them to push buttons. Sometimes it's like for the sake of curiosity, but also because by doing so it creates dialogue and I think in market research and in what we do and dialogue is so important, right? Dialogue that they have with clients or dialogue that they're having with any like amongst each other, right? Like on different teams, that's how I, I see myself paying it forward and, and again all of that kind of stuff, knowing that there's more that lies ahead for them is certainly motivation for me as a leader.

Sebastian (23:29):

Awesome. Thanks Andy. If people wanna get in touch with intro, what's the best way for them to reach out to you guys? Oh,

Andy (23:35):

They can, feel free to email me amonzon@zintro.com. You know, happy to connect them for pricing, you know, if they just wanna talk about project management. I'm, you know, always happy to sort of like hop on for a quick 15 minute chat. In general, if they have some questions around design or markets or any kind of advice that I can give them, they can certainly feel free to reach out. Awesome.

Sebastian (23:56):

Andy, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Andy (23:58):

Thanks for having me, Sebastian. I really appreciate it.

‍