strategic insights start with identifying the right respondents

Within this protocol clearly explain the background and need for the research, define the research question(s) to be answered (or hypothesis to be proven or disproven), and define Qualitative/quantitative methodologies, with emphasis on qualitative.

Then, the research company needs to develop objective Inclusion and Exclusion criteria. This is essential to do, because SIR results depend critically on which customers are interviewed. Moreover, although there are key customers and stakeholders in every field, those who are qualified respondents for SIR can be hard to identify and qualify. At Innovara, we have found that it is well worth the investment to do the deep research to qualify the proper respondents. Through secondary research, we begin the process of identifying potential respondents (and in collaboration with our client’s desired customer profiles). We then do “snowballing” (for example, asking one medical thought leader who else should be included in the study) and for those who seem the most promising, we do preliminary qualifying interviews to confirm they meet inclusion criteria. At that point, we should be able to select respondents who should be able to provide deep expertise and insights desired by our client. It is an arduous qualifying task – you can’t just take the first X number of customers off a list. Then, successful SIR depends critically upon high-level interviewing skills.

Finally, interview transcripts have to be broken down in to discrete variables that can be clustered and re-clustered, which also requires a very high level of qual/quant analytical skill. The combined process is one that we consider critical to identifying deep insights and directing (or redirecting) customer-driven success strategies.