Expert Calls: Why They’re Crucial to Corporate Strategy

Investment analysts are no strangers to insights from subject matter experts. In a fast-evolving, globalized economy, and in markets that have recently seen high levels of unpredictability, insights from an expert with deep firsthand knowledge and experience with a company or industry are the difference between a profitable investment and a significant loss.

Today, as the investment world becomes increasingly nuanced, portfolios continue to diversify, and digitalization accelerates the speed at which decisions must be made—demand for expert insights is growing faster than ever. In 2020, despite the pandemic, the expert network industry grew to $1.5 billion and that growth is only expected to continue expanding.

At this point, these insights from subject matters experts go beyond the financial services space. While investors, such as hedge fund and mutual fund managers, and venture capitalists have always leveraged expert insights, more and more competitive intelligence professionals and corporate strategists at leading corporations have found expert calls to be the missing piece in maintaining a competitive edge.

So what exactly are expert calls? Expert calls are one-on-one interviews with seasoned experts—like former executives, customers, competitors, and channel participants—from a specific industry or company who can provide insights not otherwise accessible to analysts and other professionals. These insights stem from firsthand experience, providing a key insider perspective that enables corporations to make smarter and more informed decisions.

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Both financial services and corporate professionals alike are familiar with LinkedIn messages asking for the individuals to participate in a paid consulting opportunity about their experience in a specific industry. This is an example of how expert calls can be secured.

Since it’s impossible to have deep in-house expertise in every area and industry relevant to company operations, many corporations—across different industries—turn to these types of unique insights.

How Expert Transcript Interviews Are Sourced

To fully understand how to leverage expert calls in your corporate strategies, it’s important to first understand how they are sourced. What kinds of companies are typically targeted for expert interviews?

There are a few key indicators that make companies (and their experts) a particularly good fit:

• Change of leadership (especially new CEO)
• Being acquired or going public
• Launching a highly-anticipated new product
• Entering a new market
• Operates in an industry seeing significant change
• Affected by new regulations or laws
• Significant and/or quick change in stock prices

All of the above are the kinds of scenarios where companies want to find inside perspectives that tell a bigger story than news headlines or public financial reports. Often, one small key piece of information found in an expert insight call can make the difference in making strategic decisions.

That doesn’t mean companies who do not fall into one of the above scenarios are not relevant for gaining expert insights from. Within expert call libraries, you’ll find frequently sought-after companies who are always at the top of their industry and/or the forefront of new innovations and industry trends. While corporations may not be trying to make investment decisions about these companies like the financial services industry, these calls can provide high-level insights into the direction an industry is going, as well as trends that companies within it need to know.

The Types of Insights You Can Find in Expert Calls

The main purpose of expert insight calls is to gain a firsthand, expert perspective on current events, news, and other happenings related to a company. But what kind of insights are professionals able to glean from these calls?

• Company details: An expert can deep dive into a company’s operations, history, teams, competitors, and other strategies. Understanding these details from a firsthand perspective can be the difference between making a profitable decision or incurring a loss.
• Industry trends: Experts can provide important firsthand insight into how industry trends are impacting a particular company. From their experience, they can also likely provide a larger analysis of how trends are affecting companies industry-wide.
• Competitive intel: One of the most important things for corporate strategists to understand about a company is how it stacks up to its competitors. Experts featured on calls often have direct experience dealing with competitor organizations and leadership, and can provide insight into specific competitive advantages and gaps that are important.
• Industry and company forecasting: While big data has democratized intelligent forecasting, experts can provide firsthand and anecdotal insights that tell a deeper story than those that numbers can provide. Combining smart data insights with experiential knowledge creates a more holistic and complete picture of a company’s potential.
• Commentary on news and events: Experts provide commentary on how industry news and events impact a target company. They can comment on how internal teams and leadership within that company have responded to significant industry events, so you can have an important understanding of how the company navigates evolving business environments.
• Technical expertise: For companies looking to launch a new product, a deep understanding of how other products are built and operate is important. Experts who have worked on engineering and product development teams within a company are capable of providing deep insight in these areas.

Interested in learning the different types of research perspectives you need to drive successful corporate strategies? Join our webinar, The Secret to Effective Decision-Making: Why Expert Insights are Crucial to Staying Ahead, and hear real-life use cases across TMT, CPG, Life Sciences, and Transportation on how to leverage expert transcript libraries, like Stream.