TOPO: Quantitative Market Research Services

Too Research Support Case Study quantitative survey

Background

Prior to its successful acquisition by Gartner Inc. in 2019, TOPO was an independent research and advisory firm helping sales, marketing, and sales development teams grow revenues faster. Its analysts delivered playbooks, training, advisory support, research, and consulting that power over $20 billion in revenue for more than 240 clients. Founded in 2013, TOPO grew rapidly and quickly became the go-to market analysis firm for sales and marketing professionals.

Business Problem

A significant part of TOPO’s business consisted of one-off custom market research studies and consulting projects for its clients, and while for the most part these projects were performed by its on-staff team of analysts and consultants, on rare occasions TOPO found it helpful to supplement its market research services and consulting capacity to support demand for specific projects. On one such project, TOPO was asked to do a large custom research project to understand and characterize best practices in customer relationship management. Wanting not only to outsource the data collection and research for this project, but also to add project facilitation skills unique to Callan Consulting, TOPO reached out for help.

Solution

The project consisted of several phases. First, Callan Consulting led a kick-off session with TOPO and its end client, with the goal of unearthing spoken and unspoken project objectives, identifying core research hypotheses, and developing a research approach to address them. Based on the outcome of this kickoff session, the Callan Consulting team developed a quantitative survey and fielded it. The market research survey was conducted into 250 B2B buyers and 250 B2B sellers in the US and was designed to develop a deeper understanding of buyer perspectives and buyer engagement at different stages of the buying cycle, and to look for disconnects between the two audiences. Callan Consulting then developed a detailed findings presentation and shared it with TOPO and their client.

Results

The quantitative study yielded a number of surprises and busted some common myths, such as that the majority of the buyer’s journey today is digital; in fact, the study identified that many buyers actually want direct, personal engagement with sales reps, and want to engage with them early in the process. The client used the data to fuel its messaging and product direction, and based in large part on the success of the project, over the next 12 months, TOPO received a three-fold increase in investment from the customer.

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