The next phase of the research involved a
telephone survey that was used to further evaluate the
prospects. A sample of just over 1,000 firms was
drawn from the new list of 3,000 total prospects for
telephone interviewing. A group of trained
interviewers used a WATS-line facility to make the
calls to each company on their list of prospects. When
the buyer of steel components was contacted (after
several call-backs if necessary) a brief introduction to
the study was provided and the buyer was asked if he
or she would be willing to participate in a short phone
interview. The net result of this process was that just over 500 buyers agreed to participate in the research
and completed a short questionnaire over the phone.