RainKing employs a rigorous research process that is the envy of the sales data and intelligence industry. At the heart of the RainKing process is our team of 30-plus (and growing) well-educated and -trained research analysts working from our Washington DC-area headquarters. To meet our researchers and see their backgrounds click here.
The mission of a RainKing researcher is to accurately explain and map out the technology decision-making process of the world's largest buyers of technology.
The RainKing researcher finds and interviews the key managers deep inside these technology-rich companies who control billions of dollars of technology budgets — the managers technology vendors need to influence to get their solutions successfully sold. Researchers explain each decision maker's area of responsibility, how buying decisions get made, which technologies are employed, as well as provide accurate direct contact information.
Here is the step-by-step research methodology that our researchers employ:
- Company sources are identified and interviewed by a dedicated researcher from one of our "enterprise" research teams. Sometimes a dozen or more phone calls are made before a single source is found. Once enough interviews are conducted to complete the puzzle, the company's overall technology decision making structure is profiled.
- Meanwhile, a separate team of researchers identify the specific technologies and applications the company is currently using (allowing our customers, for example, to market to the technology managers and companies who use competitive products). To gather this dataset, we use a highly proprietary methodology, (which we won't reveal here. Sorry.)
- Once we have the company's technology decision-making map complete, the researcher will begin the highly labor-intensive process of gathering the intelligence, responsibilities and backgrounds of the individual managers. This becomes a second dataset that sits beneath the company map and profile in our relational database structure.
- After an initial review and approval from the researcher's team leader, the complete set of profiles (company and staff) is now ready to go live and is made available to our customers.
- Within five days of release, yet another reseach group — the Quality Assurance (or QA) team — carefully checks the profiles for inconsistencies, clarifications and any mistakes. All changes are immediately forwarded to the appropriate researcher to be edited, further researched or fixed.
- Meanwhile, phone numbers are independently verified by a separate sub-group of the QA team who calls the profiled managers' direct phone numbers after hours to verify that the number in our profile is indeed correct.
- Customers who are now employing this data in the marketplace, meanwhile, often add their own intelligence and corrections (for example, a manager may change jobs or move to a new location between our re-verification cycles). This is done through RainKing's prominent and easy-to-use "fix data" links, which connects the customer directly to the researcher responsible for the profile. These "fixes" from customers are immediately verified and added to the live site by the researcher.
- Within 90-to-120 days, the formal "RE-verification" process begins. This is handled by a different team of researchers with a different skill set from the enterprise researchers, the QA team or the technologies research team. Previous contacts are called again; new contacts are found and profiled. Company and staff profiles get completely refreshed and updated, giving our customer the most accurate and detailed sales data and intelligence imaginable.
- The process starts anew...
