5 Tips On How to Screen B2B Respondents for Research Interviews

5 Tips On How to Screen B2B Respondents for Research Interviews

Rachel Ganon
Oct 28, 2021

Qualitative research is your greatest defense against bad product decisions. How? By identifying specialized solutions for your users and sparking innovation across your company’s various business verticals.

User research is particularly important when your products are geared towards business professionals, as their use cases are usually specific to their company and industry. This makes it much more difficult for product and marketing teams to create a relevant strategy in comparison to that of a widely used consumer good. Reaching quality B2B participants is key.

A quality B2B research participant is engaged, articulate, and of course fits all your target specifications around job duties, experience, etc. Identifying and recruiting quality participants for B2B market research can be challenging, but a specialized and dynamic tool like Respondent makes it easier.

Here are 5 tips on how to screen for niche business audiences for qualitative research methods on Respondent:

  1. Start your screener with an open-ended question about job function

Comment box questions are open-ended questions and do not qualify or disqualify research participants. Their responses offer valuable insights and should be reviewed thoroughly to ensure quality responses, and in turn quality participants.

Asking candidates to report on their job functions in comment box format gives a deeper understanding of who you’ll be talking to, as there is a lot of information that can’t be gleaned from a mere title.

This question format can also test how articulate or knowledgable potential participants are about the topic at hand. Asking a comment box question prior to them seeing specific qualification questions also minimizes the chances of tipping them off to who your target audience is and then providing biased responses.

2. Next, confirm job title/function in a multiple choice question to weed
out unqualified respondents

Unlike comment boxes, you can apply qualification and skip logic to multiple choice questions to help terminate candidates that definitely do not qualify. If their multiple choice response does not align with their comment box response, they’re most likely misrepresenting themselves!

3. Include inapplicable response options in checkbox questions to disqualify users who are selecting all options without thought

Checkbox questions are similar to multiple choice questions, but instead of only selecting one response, the respondent is directed to select all responses that apply to them.

One of the clearest indicators of a low-quality survey response is that every single checkbox response option is being selected at each checkbox question. Nefarious research candidates recognize that selecting every option increases their chances of being invited to a study.

But how can you be sure that every checkbox response option doesn’t actually apply to a specific respondent? Include a response option that doesn’t make sense or is completely made up:

 

In the example above, “Google Plex” is a made-up product, therefore we know anyone who selects that option is being dishonest — or ill-informed — about their response selections for this question and likely others. They should be disqualified and removed from consideration for the research process.

4. Include another open-ended question specific to your target audience

 

This question should be something that only your target audience would be able to answer effectively. It can be used to glean their engagement and enthusiasm prior to sending an invitation or conducting a rescreening call, and to further rule out candidates that don’t fit your target, in the unlikely event that they’ve made it this far in the recruitment screener.

5. Check responses against users’ Respondent Profile

One of the features that makes Respondent best-in-class for B2B market research recruitment is our employment verification. Respondents are required to verify their work before they’re ever able to fill out a B2B screening survey, and several data points on their participant profiles are pulled directly from their LinkedIn.

To view a Participant’s Profile:

  1. Click the project name
  2. Click the “Participants” tab
  3. Click on the person you want to view

Screenshot of example profile:

 

These data points in respondents’ profiles offset the risk of relying on self-reported information within the recruitment screener. Reviewing participant profiles prior to invitation is the final, and probably most important step you can take to ensure you’re recruiting ideal participants for your B2B research studies on Respondent.

Leveraging these tips together will help ensure you’re scheduling quality respondents — participants who are engaged, enthusiastic to participate and fit all of your screening specifications.

Publishing a recruitment brief on Respondent is free to start. Give it a try and see the level of quality responses you can generate!

Recommend Resources:

Read next