Is nothing straightforward in b2b research?

Organisational changes are making it increasingly difficult to complete business research. It is, for example, harder to contact business executives. Routes to them are less likely to be through a secretary or even a switchboard. Phone numbers are more likely to be direct, unlisted or routed through a central department or an automatic exchange that is immune to the persuasive interviewer. On a wider level, researchers have also had to contend with both the seemingly inexorable conglomeration of the business world and policy changes on compliance. Increasingly, corporate policy forbids interviews – even in corporations that need, and commission, research themselves. In areas where there is a restricted pool of potential participants, one cannot afford low strike rates. It does not just take longer to complete the quotas, one just runs out of contacts.

Engineering the group discussion – the GlobalCash solution

Trying to bring together finance directors and cash managers from the largest companies in Europe to participate in focus groups could be viewed as an impossible task. The logistics of bringing together such senior managers, the rewards they may demand for attending such an event and the question of how much they would reveal to other managers and researchers in such a forum make the whole technique questionable. The solution demanded many months of planning, great expense to create an event that would draw managers together and the careful setting of a context that made managers relaxed enough to be open with their responses. Part of the incentive to complete a GlobalCash survey was an invitation to take part in a ‘closed forum for participants’. This meant that a date was set to present findings from the survey exclusively to participants. The date and meeting place of The Management Centre in Brussels (a forum for ‘serious’ discussion of high quality) were established well in advance to allow managers the chance to put the date in their diaries. The day started with an initial session of presenting statistical findings to the whole group of managers who had participated in a previous survey. As questions were fielded in this forum, particular topics of interest were identified and focus groups (never named as focus groups but as ‘workshops’) were built around these topics. By mid-morning, groups of around 10 to 12 managers were together tackling a theme of importance to them. With a loose set of topics to develop into questions and probes, the format for a focus group was achieved.