It may also be worth researching partner business models. Dent says:  ‘Partners are willing to let a third party in to crawl over their books. We do this and then hold three or four in-depth interviews where we validate the principles before confirming this with a few others.’

“Everyone views focus groups with some mistrust.”

But if you really want to prove a hypothesis or identify what changes you need to make in order to achieve new objectives, you will have to do face-to-face interviews using experts.

Dent says:  ‘We do a lot of these. The trick is to start with an interview map, a series of issues you want to explore, and then to let the interviewee determine the order in which you address them.’

‘To do this successfully you need interviewers who know the issues before they start the interview and who can challenge the opinions being expressed by the interviewee, highlighting an apparent paradox, for example. They have to be really capable of digging. The more insight you can bring, the more respect and data they will give you in return.’

Everyone views focus groups with some mistrust. Anderson suggests that the noisy tend to dominate. Weldon points to the danger of putting competitors in the same room.  Payget at NU uses focus groups for brainstorming but says that the results then need to be validated elsewhere.

So how can suppliers commission and use research better?  Dent says bluntly:  ‘Generally, research is bought badly and used badly.’  He adds:   ‘The really big question is,  "what are you going to do with the research when you get it? What will you use it for?" ’

Sanders at Burlington says:  ‘A lot of the market research that is commissioned  doesn’t have any consequences at the end. This is the research that tends to not be followed up.  For instance, there is little point in commissioning research on what your partners think of your account management if you are not prepared to change it.’

Weldon reckons that all research projects need a senior manager to champion them and a willingness to meet the results with changes. She adds:  ‘I suspect that one-off projects are less likely to be followed up than continuous programmes where market research is built into the job role.

If your salary is partially tied to what the channel thinks of you and you hold regular surveys, then it is much more likely that the research will be used.’

Anderson says that, as part of a channel audit, it is often useful to interview account managers, the suppliers’ staff in the field, and to get their perception of what partners think.  ‘You can then get a good picture of whether your account managers are really in touch with the views of the channel, and where there are real discrepancies, and why.’

Sanders says that some software companies have developed an inner ring of intermediaries who are prepared to roll up their sleeves and get much more involved in helping the supplier get its marketing right.  Cultivating such a group might reap dividends.