An intro to expert network calls and follow-up calls

There are many differences between expert network calls and professional follow-up calls. You may need both of them depending on the goals of your survey. Expert network calls focus on current developments in the market. Whereas, professional follow-up calls can take a deeper dive into the respondents' jobs, companies, and portfolios. Expert network calls are short ~30-minute qualitative discussions with industry experts. However, they can also be longer and last about an hour. Additionally, expert calls today do not just extend to financial services but are used in every industry.

When planning a professional follow-up call, you should reach out to all participants of your survey regardless of their responses. Professional follow-up calls can convert respondents into future customers or clients! For a guide on lead generation for businesses, check out HubSpot’s latest article.

The purpose of expert network calls is to inform research and not directly for business development or sales

The purpose of expert network calls is to inform research and not directly for business development or sales. If you are trying to get more clients, then there are better ways to do it than expert network calls. Cold calling, content marketing and other lead generation strategies may work better for business development.

Expert network calls are for research, not for business development or sales. The way that expert networks work is that the professionals on them have a special skill set. They will help you with your project needs in exchange for some compensation.

Professional follow-up calls are also used for research purposes but in a slightly different manner. They provide an in-depth view about a particular research topic. Expert calls can be used to get a bird's eye view of an industry, product, or service. If you’re looking to know more about your industry, you can make use of expert calls.

Expert network calls focus on current developments in the market. Whereas professional follow-up calls can take a deeper dive into the respondents' jobs, companies, and portfolios

Expert calls tend to focus on current trends or topics in the market. On the other hand, professional follow-up calls can take a deeper dive into the respondents' jobs, companies, and portfolios. The idea of professional follow-up calls is to get an even better view of the research project. Professional follow-up calls are typically conducted after a survey is completed. For instance, let's say that you want to run a survey on users of a certain product in the EMEA region. After you ran the data survey, you found out that there's missing or additional information that is needed. How can you get this crucial piece of data? You can make use of professional follow-up calls for this purpose. They will produce the data that you need for a holistic analysis.

Expert calls are ideal for getting an overview of a particular sector or topic. These calls may have no specific agenda or focus; rather they aim to give you a broad idea of what's happening in your area of research. They're typically conducted by academics or industry experts who know their domain well. They also usually have access to lots of useful information.

Expert network calls are qualitative discussions with industry experts whereas follow-up calls are conducted with survey respondents

Expert network calls are usually short ~30-minute qualitative discussions with industry experts. Or, expert calls can also be longer consultations that last for one hour. You can ask experts about current market developments, their opinions on the topic you are researching, or what topics they would like to see covered in your survey. If you want to conduct an expert network call, it’s best to email your survey questions beforehand so that they can give you their feedback on these. Then, during the call, ask them how they would frame the question or what other questions they think should be asked.

On the other hand, professional follow-up calls are conducted with survey respondents. Hence, the target audience in these two calls is different. Naturally, when talking to a different set of people you are bound to get differing opinions or thoughts. These opinions or thoughts will then form the basis of your final data set, which can diverge depending on who you choose to talk to. Professional follow-up calls are usually ideal to extract particular insights from survey respondents.

When planning a professional follow-up call, you should reach out to all participants of your survey

You can still reach out to all of your survey participants, regardless of whether or not they responded to the survey. You just need to make sure that you provide them with an opportunity to respond. For instance, you could send an email reminder in which you include a link back to take the survey again. If you don't have access to the original survey, consider sending an email explaining the nature of your research. You can also describe what information would be helpful for you (i.e., how people use their time).

Whereas, to conduct an expert call, you should be careful to choose an expert network. You can look for evidence or proof of concept on the expert network's website. Through this process, you can get an idea of whether the expert network would be ideal for you. Thus expert calls have a narrower reach than follow-up calls. This is because you need to select one expert, whereas you can make calls with many respondents.

Professional follow-up calls can convert respondents into future customers or clients

Professional follow-up calls can convert respondents into future customers or clients! They're not as formal as expert network calls, allowing you to get feedback on your survey and improve future surveys. After you’ve completed your survey, send out a professional follow-up call. This is a great way to get feedback on your survey, improve future surveys and also pitch another project in the future.

You may not be able to do the same in expert calls, as the networks would already have their own pool of clients and leads.

There are many differences between expert network calls and professional follow-up calls. But you may need both of them depending on the goals of your survey

Expert network calls are a powerful means of gathering information about market trends, but they're not the most effective way for research.The reason for this is that expert network calls are primarily meant to gather information rather than develop relationships or dive deep into a project.

Expert network calls can be used in conjunction with professional follow-up calls after your survey has been filled out, but they shouldn't be used as a replacement. Expert networks may have great insights into what customers want, but they won't give you any indication of the value or level of interest those customers actually have in your products or services.

If you've conducted an online survey and you want to build upon its results by generating more leads from existing customers and prospects who filled out the survey, then follow-up calls can help guide your efforts on how best to utilize those results and convert them into opportunities (or even sales).

Conclusion

There are many differences between expert network calls and professional follow-up calls, but you may need both of them depending on the goals of your survey. Wondering how to structure your data survey? We’ve got you covered there too! If you're looking for more information about the dos and don'ts of a data survey, check out our blog post. Alternatively, don't hesitate to reach out at sales@grape-data.com to see how we can help you.