A global B2B survey is a very informative type of research. It gives you a broad perspective on the topic and enables to extract the required information for analysis. Thus, we can understand why private equity firms love this type of B2B market research. They usually use it for a due diligence process or even pre due diligence. Moreover, the global B2B survey gives them another way to confirm the research data obtained form other sources like expert calls.
Here, we would like to discuss the reasons why Private equity firms choose a global B2B survey in their commercial due diligence process. We list the main 4 reasons:
1. Research Data is verified
When a private equity firm wants to enter a new market or enter a new segment of the market, they would conduct market research in advance. At situations where millions of pounds are at stake, they cannot just assume things and need real data that a PE firm could actually trust. Therefore, when they do expert calls to get valuable information from C-level executives, it is vital to run a global B2B survey along with it. This would enable the PE firm to confirm the claims of C-Level executives or find some differences. It is not uncommon when the findings from a survey could be different from the results of expert calls. Thus, ideally you would need to get the information from both sources to make your investment decisions more data driven.
2. Global B2B surveys eliminate bias
One of the most important strengths of this type of research is that global B2B surveys eliminate the bias. Since you run the survey with around 50-100 people usually who are decision makers, it gives you more data to confirm trends and patterns. This eliminates the bias that you would otherwise get from an expert call. Therefore, when you get more data, you can eliminate all the outliers, check the general trends, and analyse the data. To conclude, you eliminate the bias from the data by getting much more data to analyse.
3. Fast results
A global B2B survey can be executed as quickly as 3 days and as long as 2 weeks. It obviously depends on the complexity of the survey and its length. Additionally, if the target population is hard to find and reach it might take a bit extra time to finish the survey. However, a simple not very complex survey can be done in as little as 3 working days. That is a fast way to obtain data for investment decisions for a private equity firm.
4. Get another perspective on the matter
When you run a global B2B survey you can choose to leave some questions open ended. This might make the survey much harder to analyse. However, think about all the extra data you will get from around 100 B2B survey respondents. Some branches of the survey might split the respondents into groups and you could get all the different angles possible. This might not be possible to execute when you conduct 5 expert calls with C-level executives from the industry. Thus, a survey might give you new angles to look at, that you never would have considered before.