Marketing Sherpa in their case study How To Qualify Leads with Targeted Online Surveys highlight how online surveys can prove an extremely successful way to build qualified leads for your sales team.

While the marketer in me is instantly excited by this idea it is the researcher in me that says caution must be taken when choosing this method of driving sales.

The case study comes very close to Sugging which is a market research industry term, meaning “selling under the guise of research”. Sugging is banned by most market research associations including the Market Research Society of New Zealand – it just isn’t a good look.

I am not completely pouring cold water on the idea as I believe it is possible to manage multiple objectives with a well designed research project – including driving sales.

The secret is to get your survey respondents actively involved in the research project. Offer the respondent a copy of the final report for their participation. Not only will this act as an incentive to participate, you will see an increase in the quality of responses and it then opens up further opportunity to communicate with the respondent. As it is likely that those respondents who have opted in to receive a copy of the final report have a keen interest in the subject topic it is likely that they will be interested in talking further about the topic with your company who is now seen as a knowledge leader in your industry.