3 Reasons Why Neutral Third-Party Research Works

B2B technology research can be a powerful tool.  When wielded properly it informs and excites, and ideally sparks curiosity and reflection.  Perhaps more than anything though, it influences.  With more business problems to tackle and more tools specific to those problems, we live in an age where we need that influence, or said differently, guidance.  Sometimes the solution is obvious. Need to grind a stump in your backyard?  Rent a stump grinder.  Want to make zucchini noodles?  Get a spiralizer.  In the business world by contrast, arriving at a perfect solution can be much more complicated, even if we’re pretty sure that a solution to our problem exists.  This is where research can play an important role for business decision makers (BDMs) and IT decision makers (ITDMs).

Technology research can influence people to take action – such as implementing a new security training protocol, hiring more analytically inclined employees, or investing in tools for digital transformation. While certain types of influence can lead someone down a path toward a perfect solution, it can also lead them astray.   For instance, many of us are easily romanced by cutting edge technologies even when we’re not really in the market for them.  Would you invest in a sophisticated predictive analytics toolkit if your finance director was looking to graduate from spreadsheets to a financial planning and reporting platform? Probably not.  At some point BDMs and ITDMs need to make a decision on a specific product from a specific technology provider to help solve financial planning needs, but a lot needs to happen first.  

Here are three reasons why neutral third-party research can help influence and guide others toward that decision point.

Reason #1 – People need information and motivation 

No one buys a 1,000-seat deployment of enterprise software on impulse while standing in line at the grocery store.  Companies get to the point of buying after uncovering a complex business challenge to solve and evaluating specific solutions that could help.  However, they don’t get to the point of evaluation without considering different strategies, configurations, and deployment styles that will actually solve the problem.  The fact is they need guidance to make informed decisions, and there is often uncertainty that can delay the first few stages of the buyer’s journey.  More importantly, potential buyers are often reluctant to reach out to a provider for a product pitch until very late in their purchase journey.

What people need is education, perspective, and perhaps a bit of inspiration.  These buyers and future prospective customers are typically asking themselves a handful of questions including:  Are others facing the same challenges I am?  How are others addressing those challenges and what types of technologies are having an impact?  If I invest my time, energy, and scarce budget in this technology/service, what kinds of outcomes are legitimately attainable for my company?  All those questions necessitate answers that are rooted in evidence and fact rather than purely opinion.  None of them are dependent upon a specific product or brand.

Reason #2 – Bias Is a two-headed frienemy

As organizations move along the buyer’s journey, they thirst for information that can help steer them in the right direction.  They look for general information about what tools are out there that could be helpful. They look for successful examples that can be made analogous to their environment.  Sometimes they look for guidance and advice from those seen as experts.  However, the minute one connects an opinion or judgment, favorable or unfavorable, with a specific product or brand, an elevated level of bias is introduced that can be difficult to navigate.  Furthermore, as a buyer, the closer you get to a decision, the more bias you must navigate.  Perhaps the CFO is biased toward the most cost-effective and the CIO partial to the most easily deployed, but the bias will intensify.  

Now… as thinking about the inextricable link between bias and opinions, we should concede that opinions often get a bad rap.  Opinions can be a useful mechanism for decision support.  We rely on them from doctors, lawyers, and other experts that help guide some of our critical decisions.  Opinions can be helpful in a research context as well, but it matters what informs them and how they’re applied.  Most of us rely on experience to drive our opinions, but that experience could be outdated, anecdotal, or generally unrepresentative of reality.  

Neutrality on the other hand can be an ideal canvas for painting an aspirational, yet attainable, picture of the future for prospective customers. While neutral third-party research is arguably most impactful during the early and middle stages of the buyer’s journey as companies start to formulate their strategy and take stock of their own environment, it has (or should have) a prominent share of the buyer’s mind from the moment the light bulb goes off to the point when the funds are electronically transferred.

Reason #3 – Business outcomes are best served up with a side of evidence

Perhaps the most common question asked when contemplating a technology decision is – what’s in it for me?  In other words, what kinds of business outcomes are attainable if a buyer commits to this technology?  Can they expect productivity improvement, cost reduction, customer growth, or some other factor of ROI?  Research is an important vehicle to showcase the potential outcomes of effective technology usage, but the context and structure of that message is important.

If a product or solution is presented favorably alongside a discussion of outcomes, a logical first question might be – how much should be attributed to the technology vs. the team, the environment, or other intangibles? Similarly, outcomes that are served up anecdotally as part of a case study can be fascinating and truly inspirational at times but can also be viewed with skepticism.  When searching for a contractor on Angie’s List, you may read the A+ review shown at the top but also seek out the Bs and Cs for a more well-rounded picture.  If every one of the reviews are A+ ratings, that could strain credibility and make us wonder what was being hidden.

Neutral research based on aggregated evidence has the advantage of portraying attainable outcomes side-by-side with the pitfalls of mediocrity.  This approach not only lends more credence to the good but exposes the bad with an authenticity that is often just as likely to ignite action on the part of the reader.

Bottom line…

As with most research, if the objective is influence, technology buyers tend to respond to pragmatism, evidence, and candor – they like straight shooting.  This is what good looks like; here are some things that the best companies do differently; and here are a few types of tools that can help.   When that story is told with vendor agnostic, data-driven evidence, we see inertia transform to illumination, inspiration, and ultimately, ignition.

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