A company might need to expand to new markets and geographies or simply be interested in new trends in the industry. No matter the reason, they will need to choose a survey provider to run their survey with and get the good quality respondents they require. So, we will investigate the 4 steps to follow when you choose a panel provider for your survey and explain how to choose the best survey provider.
- Ask for referrals
A corporate firm, private equity or asset management company will have a massive network to ask for recommendations about the best survey provider. Firstly, ask your colleagues if they have ever run any B2B surveys for due diligence before. If that is the case the second question could be with which provider, they did that. Secondly, you can ask the procurement or research teams in the firm if they have any panel provider already on their system. That could short down your research since you already know the quality of their work.
- Try to search online
Many panel providers are listed on the web as any other company would have done. This enables you to just google relevant phrases that will give you the required output. Once you find different links and sources, read through their reviews, and ask people around for recommendations about them.
- Ask about the methods the survey provider uses to obtain the data
Every different panel provider can use multiple methods to get the respondents. Be sure to check how they recruit them or where their database comes from. The databases are very important to be constantly updated. For e.g., you don’t need an answer from a former healthcare medical employee who is now a housewife and doesn’t know anything about the new devices the medical officers use to track some data. This example highlights how fast our world evolves and the information needs to be updated on a constant basis.
- Check how they produce the data and in which format
Any global survey for due diligence provider will produce data for your b2b market research. However, the format it is presented in might be different for every provider. Thus, a customer should always double check whether data will be presented in a report format, a spreadsheet, on a software app where you could potentially adjust the charts and see data projections. Additionally, you should have a look at the data quality in the final set that they offer. Some panel providers might give you all the answers together and count even the negative ones as a complete answer or the ones that were generated by bots. How do you actually check the legitimacy of answers? The answer lies in the question itself; you will need to ask for some kind of proof that the answers that you pay for are actually obtained from real people with expert knowledge and insights in the industry.
To choose the best survey provider is no easy task but we hope that these four steps will help you get the best quality data for your market research. Most importantly, the data will be trustworthy to use in your investment analysis and data driven decisions.
