Pitfalls when Conducting International Fieldwork

The purchasing and the coordination processes are rife with pitfalls, too. So, for the successful execution of international projects professional expertise and knowledge of these traps is essential, regarding every country involved and every phase of the project.
 

1. Pitfall: The Lady at the reception

All surveys start with the screening process of the target persons. Especially with respect to b2b projects screenings are often very demanding. The smallest mistakes at this stage may result in the failure of the whole fieldwork. This already applies to the first contact with the company, i.e. to the Lady at the reception.

The access to a company and its decision makers (by phone) is internationally very differently organized. Apart from other qualities - in particular the language skills - it is the detailed acquaintance of these structures and how to bring forward a convincing argumentation peculiar to the local circumstances, which allow the interviewer to prevail against the massive amount of undesired phone calls and to gain access to to the target person. Not until this point the actual screening and routing process, documented in the questionnaire, begins.