Checklist before formulating B2B survey questions

A global B2B survey has many dimensions to it. Its main purpose is to gather data as part of B2B market research. A B2B survey can include products, services, pricing and market trends. B2B survey questions can also be asked to gauge customer perception about your brand. Today’s digital world has made it possible to conduct online B2B surveys with relative ease. However, there’s still a lot of confusion regarding which questions to ask B2B survey respondents. In this post, we’ll break down exactly which B2B survey questions to ask. We’ll do this with the help of an example survey.  But before we talk about the kind of B2B survey questions, let’s have a look at some goals to set before formulating a survey. 

First, make sure that you have a target number of respondents in mind. Respondent size varies from project to project and even in the target pool, there are sub-categories. Survey respondents can be decision makers, C-level executives, employees or even other businesses. It’s a good idea to have a list of target roles and target organisations. For instance, consider a health and safety training survey for employees in construction companies. The target roles could be line workers, on-site/factory employees, foremen and supervisors etc. For your information, workplace health and safety is regulated by The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 in the UK. Second, it’s also a good idea to include a descriptive survey text in the beginning of the survey. Before asking B2B survey questions, you want to let the respondents know what the survey is about. You can also let them know what the survey length is. Thus, they can plan their time. 

After both these things are considered, you can formulate the B2B survey questions. Below, we describe how to do this process:

1. Start with screening questions

It’s important to start with screening questions in the beginning to save time and money. Screening questions are used in surveys to separate respondents from one another. The purpose is to hone in only a few individuals that fit a certain profile. In this way, answers can be brought in from these respondents. Usually, there are three kinds of screening questions used. These types of questions can cover a wide range of topics. Some of these topics include age, gender, occupation, location, income, and many more. The second type of B2B survey questions for screening are industry-specific questions. As the name suggests, these are for people who are in particular industries such as IT, Healthcare, Real Estate and so on. Third, you can screen respondents based on product specific questions. For instance, questions about AC options on the market will not be asked to those who do not have an AC. 

If you do not screen B2B survey respondents at the start, you will have to do it at a later point. As a result, you will get low quality data and may even defeat the purpose of your survey. Check out our guide to learn more about 6 reasons to screen respondents using B2B survey questions.

Let’s look at how to apply this in an example. Going back to our health and safety training survey, some screening questions to ask would be:

1. Which of the following describes your employer’s organisation? (It could be residential construction site, or a hotel or an office site) 
2. Which of the following describes your job position? (If for instance, you only need line managers for factories, all other responses will be rejected) 
3. Does your workplace require health and safety training regulations by law? (If it doesn't, the irrelevant respondents will be disqualified) 

With the help of B2B survey screening questions, you can eliminate people as they move throughout the survey. You can use survey programming and coding to disqualify people from your B2B survey. Check out this guide on 3 types of questions to ask vetted respondents in a B2B survey for commercial due diligence. 

2. Main Questions for the B2B survey

Now, let’s move on to the main text questions for the B2B survey for health and safety regulations. Here, depending on what you want to know from the survey, you can ask those questions. However, we would advise you to keep the survey simple and as short as possible. By asking short B2B survey questions, you can likely get good quality results. Let’s look at how to implement main body questions for our health and safety training survey:

1. Which types of health and training certifications are offered from your employer?
2. Are they conducted in person or remotely?
3. How did you see the health and safety training process evolve in the next few years?
4. What are the benefits/drawbacks of health and safety certifications?  (You can program this as a multiple choice question with relevant options) 

In this manner, you can ask other relevant B2B survey questions. In addition to this, you can ask the number of training each employee takes per year. Or you can ask why employees choose to take particular courses over the other options. 

3.  Conclusion B2B survey questions

Now that you have asked the main B2B survey questions, you can conclude the survey. You can now conclude the B2B survey with some ending questions. For instance, in the health and safety training survey you can ask employees if they are a member of a union. Additionally, here’s a list of other helpful B2B survey questions to ask:

1. Please enter your email address (Let them know that this will be used to pay the reward)
2. Ask them if they would be interested in participating in a brief follow-up conversation to discuss a few of their answer choices

If you’re a client and you need to ask B2B survey questions, check out GrapeData. We are a tech-enabled survey solution that focuses on both niche B2C and B2B panels for due diligence with an emphasis on hard to reach populations, such as decision-makers in B2B and niche B2C.

To date, we have over 300,000 quality survey respondents in North America and EMEA, and a sizeable portion in APAC. We are an industry agnostic data collection panel but recently, we have focused on IT & Software, Healthcare, Industrials, and Education.