Services
Why research?
Why organisations invest in evidence, and what the published research says it is worth.
In a nutshell.
Surveys of business decision-makers keep finding the same thing: evidence changes behaviour. It shapes who they buy from, who they invite to bid and what they are willing to pay.
Below are the published figures behind three of our services, with the sources named, followed by a calculator you can use to test them against your own numbers.
Evidencing your impact
Show the difference you make. Evidence helps you keep the people you work with, supports your case at renewal and persuades new audiences.
25–95%
increase in profits from a 5% rise in customer retention. The range reflects differences between industries.
Reichheld, The Loyalty Effect (1996), Bain & Company; confirmed in Harvard Business Review (2014).
73%
of business decision-makers say case studies influence their buying decisions, yet only 34% of companies use them effectively.
Content Marketing Institute (2025). Self-reported.
60%
of decision-makers say they would pay a premium to work with an organisation that produces high-quality evidence and thought leadership.
Edelman-LinkedIn (2024), around 3,500 professionals in seven countries. Self-reported.
It also costs 5 to 25 times more to win a new business customer than to keep an existing one (Harvard Business Review, 2014, drawing on Bain & Company research).
How we can help: Evidencing your impact.
Original research and sector reports
Be known for something. Research that others can rely on makes you easier to find and easier to trust.
86%
of decision-makers say they would be likely to invite a company to bid based on its thought leadership. Only 38% of the organisations producing it expect that.
Edelman-LinkedIn (2024).
70%
of C-suite leaders say a competitor’s thought leadership has made them question a supplier they already use. One in four decision-makers has ended or significantly reduced a relationship as a result.
Edelman-LinkedIn (2024).
156%
average return on thought leadership, reported in a survey of 4,000 senior executives worldwide. It averages across many kinds of thought leadership, so treat it as context, not a promise.
Anderson and Marshall, The ROI of Thought Leadership (Wiley, 2025), using IBM Institute for Business Value data.
Also in the Edelman-LinkedIn research (2024)
- 75% of buyers and C-suite leaders said thought leadership had led them to research a product or service they had not been considering
- 73% of decision-makers said an organisation’s thought leadership is a more trustworthy basis for judging its capabilities than its marketing materials and product sheets
- Nine in ten said they are more receptive to outreach from a company that consistently produces high-quality thought leadership
How we can help: Original research and sector reports.
Finding the right opportunities
Put your effort where it counts. Only a few of the organisations you might work with are ready at any one time. Evidence helps you find them, and gives you a reason to get in touch.
5%
of the organisations you might sell to are actively in the market at any one time. The rest are not yet ready to hear from you.
Dawes (2022), Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and LinkedIn B2B Institute, the “95-5 rule”.
6–10
people are now typically involved in a business buying decision, so evidence has to work for several readers.
Gartner (2024).
6.5
months is the average business sales cycle, up from 4.9 months in 2019.
Ebsta × Pavilion (2025), an analysis of 4.2 million sales opportunities.
Evidence for the benefit of targeted, account-based approaches mostly comes from technology vendors’ own surveys, so the calculator models it cautiously.
How we can help: Finding the right opportunities.
ROI calculator
Test it with your own numbers.
Model the return on investment on evidence, authority and targeting using your own figures: how many clients you have, what they are worth and how often you win.
How the calculator works
Three options, one summary.
Evidencing your impact
Keeping and winning clients
Estimates the clients you keep because of the evidence, the new clients that case studies help you win, and the better terms some renewals may bear.
You enter: number of clients, average contract value, how many you usually lose, and the cost of the work.
Original research and sector reports
Winning bids and renewals
Estimates the invitations to bid that turn into contracts, better terms at renewal, and the content you would otherwise have to buy separately.
You enter: invitations expected, your win rate, contract values, and the cost of the work.
Finding the right opportunities
Targeting the right organisations
Estimates the clients won by approaching a set number of well-matched organisations, and the larger deals that tailored evidence can support.
You enter: organisations approached, your conversion rate, contract value, and the cost of each cycle.
Handle with care.
- The figures are gross revenue, not profit. Multiply by your own margin.
- It assumes the work is the main reason for each result. In practice, several things contribute.
- The first two options overlap, so adding them together can overstate the total.
- The starting values are set cautiously, using the surveys above, and every one can be changed.
- It gives a direction, not a forecast.
A note on the evidence
Most of these figures come from large surveys of business decision-makers and marketers. The Edelman-LinkedIn series, for example, has run for several years and surveys 2,000 to 3,500 managers each time.
They show what people say they think and intend to do, not what they were observed to do, and they come from business settings rather than controlled experiments. We treat them as useful indicators, not forecasts, and the calculator is built so that you can test the assumptions rather than accept them.
Sources: Anderson and Marshall (2025), The ROI of Thought Leadership, Wiley. Content Marketing Institute (2025), B2B Content Marketing: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends. Dawes (2022), The 95-5 Rule, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and LinkedIn B2B Institute. Ebsta × Pavilion (2025), B2B Sales Benchmarks Report. Edelman-LinkedIn (2024), Reaching Beyond the Ready: B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report. Gallo (2014), The Value of Keeping the Right Customers, Harvard Business Review. Gartner (2024), B2B Buying Journey Report. Reichheld (1996), The Loyalty Effect, Bain & Company and Harvard Business School Press.
Get in touch
Let’s talk about your project.
Whatever your size or stage, we’d be glad to discuss how we can help.