Not too long ago, the Project Management team at The Pert Group undertook an informal “How are we doing?” poll among some of our domestic and international field vendors. After all, there are a lot of companies out there conducting Market Research projects, and certainly there are Project Management teams who do things differently than us. But is different necessarily better? You do things a certain way for a time and get into a rut.
It’s nice, every once in a while, to get a new perspective. We advise our clients to do this, so why not us?
Consultant-field vendor relationships are seldom-thought-of cogs in a very big Market Research wheel. When it comes right down to it, choosing vendors to field our projects determines how good or bad our results will be. There are literally dozens of vendors to choose from for each methodology, so the question then becomes: How do we choose?
In order to best achieve our clients’ research objectives, we choose the best vendor for a project, often regardless of comparable price, and try and pinch pennies elsewhere to make it work. We are often dealing with a set budget on our client’s side, so if all things are equal, then great! Decision made. We can go with the cheapest option. In this age of Market Research, though, no project is ever that simple. More often, there are many factors to take into account that doesn’t make “just go with the cheapest option” possible. Factors such as feasibility, number of respondents needed per market, quotas, number of waves, sample saturation, AND price all matter equally.
The relationships we develop with our vendors are extremely important to us. Some are very old relationships (in our case, decades old), while some are brand new. All are important to us in one way or another because every vendor has different strengths.
Pick your cliché: “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” or “You catch more bees with honey”…they’re both true.
Being a good research partner is a two-way street. How can we expect the best from our vendors if we don’t treat them as equal partners in our success? Our most trusted partners are truly our partners: they help us win business by making suggestions to improve our proposed methodology, or offer us preferred pricing (or lunch, or Munchkins…). We provide the vendors with every bit of information we can in the bidding phase: project objectives, quotas, incidence, qualifiers, etc., then they in turn can provide us with an accurate picture of what we can expect from them. End result? We aren’t surprised, and our end client is happy.
And about that survey…how did we do? We were pleasantly surprised to discover that our vendors are not only happy to work with us, but also impressed with the level of care we put into maintaining successful relationships.
“Hands down, Pert is simply the best. Everyone that comes across your bid sheets and processes, are simply impressed.”
“First of all, this is a first. We have never had a request to provide feedback to one of our clients to make our partnership more efficient and valuable to you and your clients. I commend your team on doing this. It only helps you, your clients and partners, and it will show through in your commissioned projects. We appreciate this, and would value the same feedback in areas we can grow as well.”
– M.M., 20/20 Research
We take pride in our vendor relationships and work hard to build partnerships that allow us to consistently deliver strong strategic insights for our clients. If you are interested in learning more about The Pert Group or working with us in the future, please contact us.
