Question

Topic: Student Questions

Need Salespeople For Doctorate Research

Posted by Anonymous on 3/2/2010 at 2:53 PM ET 250 Points
I am working on a Doctorate degree in International Marketing. My study involves a questionnaire for B2B salespeople.

It is located here:
https://alliant.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_ekUmJtlTvIzgVlW&SVID=Prod

I am finding it difficult to get salespeople interested in completing the survey. Any advice on how I might get more participation?

Also, if you can please forward the survey link above to any salespeople in your network, that would be great.

Thank you,
Richard D. Killian
Marshall Goldsmith School of Management
Alliant International University
San Diego, California, USA
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Clare Mckee MA on 3/2/2010 at 6:59 PM Accepted
    A few points [coming from a sales background myself]
    • As there's no wifm [what's in it for me] you may struggle
    • It's quite a long questionnaire, off putting
    • The purpose isn't made clear in terms of who it may help
    • What are you hoping to find out?
    • A cynic may conclude that you're trying to prove that salespeople are lazy and just want to make a fast buck?
    • How can you ensure truthful answers as opposed to 'what looks good'
    • The ethos and outlook of the salespeople will vary from company to company often based on recruitment criteria
    • How can you ensure you gain a good cross section?




  • Posted on 3/3/2010 at 9:07 PM Moderator
    You clearly need professional guidance for this research if it's to be reliable and truly useful. You can get better response with an incentive, but what good is that if the survey instrument itself is not carefully designed to give the information you want.

    Suggest you get a market research professional involved before you go any farther.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 3/4/2010 at 9:02 AM Accepted
    Dear Richard,

    What's the relevance of your survey? I just skimmed through the questions (which I urge you to consider numbering), and the thing that struck me most was the survey's length and the fact that it needs an introduction of some sort.

    Here, I fall back onto three basic questions—questions I learned from John Carlton:

    1. This is what we've got.
    2. This is what it's for or what it will do.
    3. Here's what to do next (and why).

    Four years ago I wrote what I called a "branding survey". It was, of course, no such thing. It was an attempt to pull together certain frames of mind. The snag was that the survey had no reason, there was nothing that it was truly designed to achieve.

    There were 100 questions in my survey that, in truth, were not as well thought through as perhaps they ought to have been. So the survey went nowhere, achieved next to nothing, and, as a result was never acted on.

    Lesson learned? Tell people up front what you need the information for, what you'll do with it, and who your results
    will serve and why.

    As for incentives, what would compel YOU to complete this survey?
    Recognition? An entry in a sweepstakes? An award? Having one's name mentioned in dispatches? Search engine visibility and back links? And also consider what alignment you can create between what you want and the things your survey participants might find appealing.

    I hope this helps.

    Gary Bloomer
    Wilmington, DE, USA
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