B2B fieldwork benchmarks: what incidence and cost look like in practice

B2B fieldwork is priced on incidence and delivered on patience. The gap between the two is where most project overruns live, and it is almost always an incidence assumption imported from a study with a much broader audience.

Seniority is the dominant variable

Across our B2B work, moving a target from manager level to director level typically halves achievable incidence, and moving from director to C-suite halves it again. Sector and company size matter, but neither moves the number the way seniority does.

The practical consequence is that a brief which loosens seniority by one level often costs less than half as much and fields in a third of the time. That trade is worth putting in front of the end client explicitly.

Verification cost rises faster than incidence falls

The cost of verifying a senior respondent does not scale linearly with how rare they are. Each additional verification stage adds analyst time on every candidate, including the ones who are rejected, so the effective cost per accepted complete rises steeply at the top of the seniority range.

Where timelines actually go

• Screener agreement and translation: three to five working days, routinely underestimated
• First week of fielding: reveals whether the incidence assumption holds
• Weeks two and three: quota management, where most studies are saved or lost
• Final ten percent of sample: frequently as long as the first ninety

The practical guidance

Build the field window around the last ten percent rather than the first ninety, read the funnel on day one, and agree in advance what happens if a cell will not fill — a longer field window, a relaxed definition or a reduced target. Deciding that under time pressure mid-field rarely produces the best answer.