Audience research
Part of How do you run sales enablement audience research that buyers trust?
When to add sales enablement survey tools to your research mix
Decide when to add sales enablement survey tools to research, how to brief platforms such as Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey, and what panel sample costs.
What to take away
- The government's Industrial Strategy names priority sectors for investment, which helps you choose buyer groups to survey first.
- Sales enablement survey tools pay off when you hold a named list of buyers and need first-party answers.
- Match the tool to the jobbuilders for one-off named-list surveys, panel providers for hard-to-reach buyers.
- Settle consent wording before questions, because it decides whether replies can be used for follow-up.
Decide whether a survey is the right instrument
Survey tools are strongest when the population is known. If you can name accounts, roles or lapsed customers, a questionnaire returns comparable answers at a predictable cost. It also gives you a sample you can describe honestly when challenged.
Survey or desk research?
Can you name accounts, roles or lapsed customers?
survey returns comparable answers at predictable cost
desk research plus a few conversations usually covers it
Signals a survey will answer the question
Use a questionnaire to rank priorities across a group or compare segments on one scale. Surveys also suit pricing and packaging work, where every respondent sees identical options. One test: could a few interviews settle it? If yes, keep the licence money.
Signals that desk research will do
Market size, competitor positioning and multi-vendor pricing rarely need a questionnaire. Published material plus a few conversations usually covers them. For your own picture of who buys and why, start with the audience research guide for England.
Name the tool and brief it
Most teams need either a survey builder or a sample provider. The examples below show what each tool does.
Survey tools and sample providers
Tool
- Qualtrics
- Complex quotas, panels, dashboards
- SurveyMonkey
- Named lists, short questionnaires
- SmartSurvey
- UK data hosting
- Typeform
- Conversational forms and surveys
- Prolific
- Participant recruitment
- Cint
- Programmatic sample marketplace
Best for
- Qualtrics
- Quote-based
- SurveyMonkey
- £25 a month
- SmartSurvey
- £20 a month
- Typeform
- £25 a month
- Prolific
- £9 per hour
- Cint
- Quote-based
Entry price
- Qualtrics
- SurveyMonkey
- SmartSurvey
- Typeform
- Prolific
- Cint
Tools and sample providers
- Qualtricsenterprise platform for complex quotas, panels and dashboards. Pricing is quote-based, so it suits large recurring programmes.
- SurveyMonkeyself-serve builder for named lists and short questionnaires. Paid plans start at roughly £25 a month billed annually.
- SmartSurveyUK-based builder with UK data hosting. Paid plans start at around £20 a month.
- Typeformconversational forms and surveys. Basic plans start at about £25 a month, but higher response caps cost more.
- Prolificparticipant recruitment for online research. Researchers pay participants at least £9 per hour plus a platform fee.
- Cintprogrammatic sample marketplace. Pricing is quote-based, and hard-to-reach B2B segments usually carry a premium.
Design a survey your sales team can use
The common failure is a questionnaire built for statistical tidiness and useless for follow-up. Design backwards from the decision you need to make.
Consent and purpose come first
The ICO's direct marketing checklist explains what to record when you collect contact details and how to keep later use lawful. If sales may email a respondent, the invitation must say so. Consent cannot be added after fieldwork ends.
Questions that survive a buyer's inbox
Ask about behaviour before opinion. A question about how a buyer last compared two vendors tells you more than a satisfaction score. Any claim you publish sits under the CAP Code rules on advertising, so record the base, wording and date.
Build the checklist and budget before you buy
Teams get into trouble when they buy a platform before agreeing what the output looks like. A written output spec keeps the purchase honest.
Pre-purchase checklist
- A named list or a recruitable panel, with the source recorded.
- One decision the results will inform.
- Consent and privacy wording signed off by the owner of that risk.
- A question count that fits a phone screen.
- An analysis owner and a date for the readout.
- A close date and a named person accountable for the fieldwork.
What you are really paying for
Licences are the visible line, though analyst time, incentives and follow-up cost more. A £300 a month survey platform still needs someone to clean data and write the readout.
Panel sample costs £2 to £20 per complete, by audience. For benchmarking rivals, the competitor research in England method is a better start.
Common questions
How many responses do I need?
Work backwards from the smallest group you intend to quote. If you plan to report a figure for one segment alone, that segment needs its own base. State the base next to every number you publish.
Can I use responses for outbound sales?
Only where the invitation said so and your record supports it. If the wording was vague, treat the data as research only. Keep those contacts out of sequences until someone confirms the position.
Do we need a dedicated platform?
Not always. A form builder handles a single questionnaire with a known list. Dedicated sales enablement survey tools matter when you run recurring studies, need panels, or want routing and quotas without manual work.
How often should we repeat it?
Repeat when a decision changes, not because a quarter has passed. Most teams get more value from one well-briefed study than from a quarterly habit nobody reads.
