RESEARCH OPERATIONS · ENTERPRISE SECURITY TECH · CRAFT

Building a participant panel from the ground up

One round of research was consuming a third of our annual research budget. Something had to change, but the solution required months of organizational patience before it started working.

MY ROLE

Co-researcher;

owned screener & outreach design, panel management

TIMELINE

~7 months to full operation

METHODS

Screener design, recruitment strategy, panel management, stakeholder engagement

CLIENT TYPE

Enterprise B2B SaaS,

enterprise security tech

THE CHALLENGE

A consistently challenging recruit made research feel at odds with budget and timeline.

Hard to find users

The client had two distinct user groups, and recruiting enough of either was a consistent challenge. Platforms struggled to surface participants who met our technical criteria, and one group was especially hard to reach, even with specialized recruiters.

Increasing costs

Hard to find users meant higher incentives and recruiting platforms added recruitment fees, which meant we spent ~$400 per participant. We even tried specialized recruiters, but a single round cost roughly a third of the annual research budget.

Proxy-driven decisions

Internal teams had long relied on employee proxies and high-profile customers for product and design feedback, giving outsized weight to unrepresentative perspectives. The lack of participant input wasn’t seen as a blocker or a reason to adjust timelines.

THE PLAN

After existing recruiting solutions failed, we proposed creating a participant panel to help make research more sustainable.

The time investment in recruitment felt steep, but we bet that building an ongoing pipeline would pay off with lower costs and more consistent engagement. Without direct customer access, we knew we'd need to work through sales and product — so we focused on making that handoff as easy as possible, arming them with proposals, plans, and templates. Even so, momentum stalled almost immediately despite early buy-in from the client.

Present detailed proposal to stakeholders

Meet with client sales teams & share outreach templates

Create screeners & panel management files

Follow-up with stakeholders and sales contacts

☑

⛔︎

THE ROADBLOCK
Everything was in place, but accountability and urgency were missing.

Recruitment was always top of mind for me since I managed it every cycle, but because we consistently made it work behind the scenes, stakeholders didn’t see the mess or feel the urgency.

At the same time, internal dynamics slowed us down:

Product understood the need but lacked access
Sales held relationships but limited access
Stakeholders voiced support but lacked follow-through

THE PIVOT

We identified a gap in ownership and requested a dedicated client-side point person to partner with us and drive recruitment forward.

Our stakeholders already supported the effort in principle, but we needed a different type of research advocacy: to make the need felt, keep the ask visible without becoming noise, and identify the right owner on their side.

We reached out to a key stakeholder with a clear, specific ask: not “can someone help,” but “we need a named point person to own this.” That clarity made the difference. With a dedicated contact in place, screeners went out, responses came in, and we ran our first panel-based study within weeks.

THE OUTCOME

Recruitment improved and client interest and engagement increased.

We shared results back deliberately — not just findings from the research, but evidence of the panel working: faster timelines, lower costs, and participants with clearer profiles.

Seeing the panel’s value, stakeholders shifted from tentative support to active investment. They suggested new ways to grow the panel.

THE IMPACT

From near-collapse-level recruitment to a self-sustaining infrastructure.

As their teams began using the panel for their own testing, I introduced a lightweight tracking approach to keep participation balanced and sustainable. This momentum helped secure a full-time researcher supported by a more robust infrastructure than we had as consultants.

Now, the client runs their own studies independently using the panel - the clearest possible sign that the impact outlasted the engagement.

200+

Participants in panel

15+

Studies supported the first year

$150

Incentive vs. $300 + recruitment fees

1-2 wks

Recruit time vs 3-6 weeks before

REFLECTION

I wish I had asked for a named point person at the very start — before any proposal, before any calls. I'd also look for smaller, collaborative wins earlier in the process to build momentum and internal champions, rather than leading with a comprehensive proposal that required organizational lift to execute.