In our series of three articles, Livingfacts asks you to think about the conceptualisation, sample and analysis of your research.
Do you know:
- Who or what is in your B2B research sample?
- Who or what is writing your report and providing recommendations?
- And as we said in our last article – who or what is designing your RFQs and RFPs?
B2B samples are smaller and more focused making every interview important. Poor quality samples significantly impact the reliability and value of the insights.
Yet too few questions are being asked by clients and research suppliers around this critical issue.
Here are five questions to be asking about your samples:
- Is your sample representative of your B2B, niche or high level audiences? We know that senior decision makers are busy and difficult to reach, so they will sometimes ask an assistant or junior, who is not your target audience, to complete surveys on their behalf, or they won’t answer your survey which means a portion of your sample is missing.
- Does your sample have fraudulent respondents in it? Whether these are real people or digital proxies, these are a significant threat to a quality sample. There are respondents on multiple panels claiming to be different people or you can have AI bots or click farms giving automated responses, which is particularly problematic for online surveys and those with incentives.
- How rigorous is your sample screening and profiling? There are respondents (and bots) who misrepresent their qualifications, level of seniority, or type of work resulting in your sample including respondents you do not want.
- Is the panel you are using really a B2B panel? There are panels saying they have B2B audiences, as well as databases representing themselves as panels, but these respondents are often not the right size of company, the right type or the right level of respondent.
- Is the respondent paying attention when completing the survey? If surveys are too long this can lead to rushed or disengaged respondents which leads to poor samples and data.
To overcome poor sample quality, it is essential to have a multi-layered approach to managing your sample. This could include:
- Rigorous screening and verification – checking respondents are who they say they are and are real people
- Fraud detection – using tools to identify multiple uses of same IP addresses, suspicious activity and duplicate responses
- Checking consistency in answers – have questions which verify both relevance of the responses and level of concentration in answering questions
- Customise surveys to your industry using industry specific terminology – then checking answers and use only those respondents who demonstrate they really know the industry
- Using a trusted supplier who understands these issues and has several different checks in place to ensure a quality sample.
As research partners, we need to be spending time evaluating who or what is in our samples to deliver a quality outcome.
At Livingfacts we have 24 years of experience in B2B and HNWI research, understanding the why, what and where, about clients, competitors and markets. We collaborate with you in providing insights to understand your business challenges better and identify opportunities.
Book a consultation to gain actionable insights.
