The nuances of B2B research

I was recently having a chat with an old pal who'd just landed a vice-president of marketing job in the US working in the B2B sector. He'd got in touch, amongst other things, to ask me about how to approach B2B research. He knew I had worked for the global distribution company DHL as their European Market Research Manager working on both consumer and business research projects and so thought I might be able to give him some pointers. He was right because while working for DHL I found that many agencies failed to understand the nuances of B2B research.

I thought I'd share with you some of the points we discussed. Here are some of the factors you should consider when conducting B2B research.

1) The challenge of talking to the right person
The initial step is to determine to whom you want to speak to: it may be the decision-maker, influencer, or the person who does the day-to-day interaction with the organization. One should also consider whether the decision maker is in fact a group and, if so, who are the key stakeholders. Such complex decision making structures often means increased time and cost in conducting the study.
Interview briefing is also critical. Interviewers need to be aware of the barriers and difficulties they may face in reaching the target respondent and apply appropriate techniques to draw out accurate and relevant information from the interviewee.
Once you know who you want to speak to the next step is to think about the most effective method of reaching them, in terms of time and cost whilst maintaining a high probability of quality responses.

2) Increasingly sophisticated segmentation
Segmentation is a central pillar of marketing and a term used to describe a variety of different ways in which distinctive, differentiated groups can be identified and profiled within the marketplace. Methods vary and include demographic profiling, behaviour, attitudinal, psychographics, and needs (and/or a combination of these).
Historically, segmentation has been used more in the B2C sphere than in B2B. However, over recent years a sea change has begun. Increasingly, businesses competing in B2B markets are adopting a more sophisticated approach to segmenting their targets, realising that the single ‘one size fits all’ offering to customers - perhaps supplemented by special arrangements for key accounts - or segmentation based on estimated revenue potential, is just not adequate.

B2B organizations are looking to gain a more detailed understanding of customer needs with a view to introducing a range of services to match these needs with the goal of drive increased sales and profitability. In simple terms, this customer needs-based segmentation (categorising customers by the kinds of service they would like in future and price sensitivity) supports a customer-focussed culture, a culture which is increasingly seen as the best path to success.

At DHL, after receiving sign-off from senior management to proceed with the project, I opted for face-to face interviews and a trade off methodology for our customer-needs based research. We gathered detailed customer requirements on pre-defined service features with many different potential levels for each feature. A variety of statistical techniques such as factor and cluster analysis were then used to group customers into segments, each one of which required a distinct service offering. The data were then cross-matched against existing market size data to make sure that each of the segments was large enough to be worth targeting. Follow-up in-depth interviews gave additional information on each segment’s attitudes.
The final step in the process was to implement the needs based segmentation in the field. The data were further analysed and a short subset of questions to be asked of customers were developed to enable the salesforce to allocate customers to the correct segments.
The result of this extensive exercise was increased sales and more satisfied customers.

3) Ascertain who owns the customer data
Clearly, a key difference between consumer and business research is that businesses can supply the customer contacts for the survey. Its easy to get drawn into thinking that this will simplify the study. This tendency should be avoided as the process for the the client to access the data may be lengthy and complex as the clientside Market Research Manager speaks to and organises provision of the data to various departments and stakeholders. The researcher needs to be careful to assess the impact this may have on timelines and ask appropriate questions of the client upfront.
In addition, external data may be needed to make a comparison of the organizations performance against the competition. This possibility should also be taken into consideration when planning the project.

4) B2B is notoriously dry
A key difficulty of B2B research is that respondents invariably find it dull. The smart researcher should spend some time to enliven and add sparkle to the questionnaire to maximise engagement. Researchers need to think of ways to excite and ignite respondents.

5) The client’s customer
When you want to understand consumers’ beliefs, attitudes, perceptions etc you ask consumers. But B2B research differs in that it entails getting into the mindset of the client’s customer, seeing things from their perspective and not your clients. Again this adds complexity and difficulty and should be taken into consideration when planning B2B research.

6) Level of organization
Its important to ascertain the level of organization the study is to cover. It may be that a particular company site, the head office, regional or global is the required target. In each case, the design needs to be modified accordingly.

7) Don’t forget B2B respondents are people as well
There is a tendency to view B2B respondents as a different breed. People are people and B2B respondents do not turn into rational machines for a B2B survey. They are often motivated by the same needs, desires and interests as respondents in a B2C survey. For example, B2B respondents will often select suppliers on the basis of how it will make them look within the organization. I’ve had the experience of working on a project where B2B respondents said that they aim for the best in everything they do at work so they simply chose the best. Another finding was that some people chose to use a brand simply because they were widely regarded as the best in the business and that they would be open to criticism if they chose another supplier.