In this episode of the Full Throttle Leaders podcast, host Michael Falato interviews Alyssa Quinn, Chief Revenue Officer of Insights‑Driven Research (IDR). Alyssa explains that IDR is a global expert‑network firm that connects corporate clients, consulting firms, market‑research companies, and financial services with vetted industry experts via calls and surveys. She highlights IDR’s differentiation: a human‑to‑human recruiting process, three regional operational hubs (Americas, Middle East, APAC), and a focus on up‑to‑date expert verification, which allows lower‑cost, high‑quality matches compared to traditional networks that rely on static databases. The conversation turns to AI, where IDR uses AI for initial expert sourcing and explores AI‑moderated interview tools, especially for hard‑to‑reach healthcare professionals, while retaining human analysts for nuanced vetting. Alyssa outlines her B2B sales philosophy—no single lead‑generation channel works for senior‑level decision makers (partners, principals at private equity, consulting firms); instead, a multi‑channel approach combining outreach, marketing tools, and direct contact is essential. She notes the team size (about 14 globally) and discusses target clients, including Gartner, the Big 4, pharma companies, and healthcare consulting firms, emphasizing the value of one‑to‑one expert insight over static reports. Alyssa shares her career trajectory: early experience at a startup expert network, roles at IHS Markit, Oxford Economics, and a successful exit at Coleman, followed by a stint in executive search before returning to expert networks at IDR. The episode concludes with contact information (LinkedIn and email) for prospective clients.
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Good morning everybody. We have a special guest today, Alyssa Quinn from IDR. How you doing, Alyssa?
I'm good, how are you?
Not too bad. Um, everybody probably knows me by now because I've been doing these for a while, but I'm Michael Falato. I'm the CEO and founder of Full Throttle Full Auto Leads. And this is Full Throttle Leaders podcast. So, Alyssa, tell us a little bit about IDR, what you do, why— I think you joined not too long ago, right?
Yep, sure. I did enjoy or join IDR a few months back to head up the commercial structure and practice as our CRO. IDR is a global expert network company which falls within the research and information services industry, providing experts between our— providing calls and surveys between experts and our clients. Our clients are corporates, our clients are market research companies, consulting firms, and financial service companies. And whenever they are doing due diligence or research into a particular company or technology or industry, and they need sort of boots-on-the-ground perspectives, they would come to a company like IDR to help facilitate, again, either those calls or a survey of participants to help them fill their gaps in their research.
And what, what What makes IDR different than— I don't even know for sure what competitors are out there. What's different about IDR?
Sure. So the expert network industry is over 20 years old, and it was created because a lot of the clients were relying on market research, lengthy, expensive market research reports, or similar lengthy, expensive consulting projects that were conducted with the big consulting companies, and they were slow and very expensive. And they realized they needed these experts more on the fly, in real time, to, you know, either prove out or refute some sort of thesis that they had. And so IDR is newer to the space. We've only been in business for about 5 years, but the company exists or was formed by our 2 co-founders to try to do things a little bit differently than some of the traditional expert networks have done. And that's primarily been accomplished through the way in which we structure our operations. We have 3 different operational hubs, one in the Americas region, one based in the Middle East, and one out in APAC. And we have hundreds of analysts across those 3 regions that are doing the recruiting of our experts. And so it's one-to-one, human-to-human recruiting to really hone in on the right, you know, expertise and knowledge base of the experts vis-à-vis the requests from our clients. A lot of other providers rely more on static databases. Contacts get stale. They don't verify their knowledge based on the client's project. Where because of how we've set up the operations, we're actually able to do that for each and every request. So that's really the foundational difference. So we can pass along that expert, that high-quality expertise and do it at a lower cost because of how we've set up these operational hubs. So that's really the key differentiator for IDR.
How has AI changed the way you do business?
It's a good question. So we involve AI in some of the initial early steps of the research process. So identifying, sourcing the pool of experts that we want to go after. But then we do firmly believe that to do the proper vetting, to kind of read between the lines and be able to ask the proper follow-ups, that we want to do that with our actual human teams. So that's where we, we would then continue to leverage the analysts that we have to conduct the more nuanced vetting for our clients.
How about the results of the surveys or the conversations itself and how maybe 20 of them compare to each other using AI? I mean, I would think there's a lot of Tools that you can either give you a new perspective or shorten the time of deliverables?
There are a lot of AI analytical tools that can take their results and produce out different insights. A lot of our clients use those and put them within the process. AI moderation is a big hot topic in our space. Can we moderate These interviews using AI. That way people could do it. We work with a lot of doctors because we do a lot of healthcare provider work. And, you know, they don't necessarily work that, you know, aren't necessarily available during the usual daytime hours. So if they could just hop on with an AI moderator at 9 o'clock at night when they're back home, you know, could that be useful? So it's definitely something that we're pressing on and that we're exploring.
Yeah, I actually made a digital twin of myself with all my notes, all my Fireflies AI, put my voice to it. And so you could say like, uh, what does Full Throttle do? Or how long you been doing this, Michael? And it's a digital twin, so it's actually pretty cool. I don't think it replaces the human aspect, but it couldn't make me 24/7 when you do need an answer or you do want to interview someone at their time. Right.
Absolutely. Yeah. So those are the types of things we're very interested in incorporating and just having available to our clients who would like that.
Tell me a little bit about your sales role and your sales team, and then how you're going to market for top of funnel and go-to-market. Sure.
So my strategy hasn't changed, and this— people might disagree with this or not like to hear this, but my strategy hasn't changed that much over the 20 years that I've I've done this in that I still firmly believe that when you're building out a sales team and when you're giving tools to your sales team to go out to market with, you have to use a variety and you have to do it consistently. I haven't yet seen one lead generation channel or one top-of-the-funnel mechanism that is one-size-fits-all and works for everybody, right? And I've always been in— I've always been managing sales teams that are going after rather senior-level stakeholders. So, you know, partners and principals at private equity companies and at large global consulting firms. And there's a certain approach and technique that you have to be mindful of when you're going after that audience. We're not going after consumers or other types of channels. We're perhaps you can rely on one or two different tools. So, I firmly believe that for a B2B sales team, particularly in the markets that we serve, you have to use multiple channels. You have to use, you know, different marketing tools. You have to use marketing lead gen tools. You have to use different sales lead gen tools. You have to do direct outreach, you know, good old-fashioned roll up your sleeves, find a contact, Have a story, have a pitch, have a hook, reach out, follow up, rinse and repeat, right? And use all the different channels to get, you know, to ensure that you have enough coming into your pipeline to produce the deal flow that, and the results that you're required to, to hit your quotas and to hit your targets. So I continue to encourage my teams to use All things available and balance, you know, you create the right balance depending on what type of outcome you're looking for.
How big is your team?
About 14 globally. Yeah.
And how would you compare what Gartner does to what IDR does? And what does IDR stand for?
Insights-Driven Research.
Okay.
I don't really know the story behind it, to be honest. I should ask our founders. To Gartner. So Gartner, you know, a firm— I'm not confirming or denying who's a client of ours, but that type of firm can be a client of IDR because they produce their, you know, more in the market research, sector-specific research domain. Whereas they're putting together their reports on behalf of their clients, They often need the direct insights of experts to advance their materials. So that's when they would come to us to help fill in when they need the type of expert insights that we can provide.
How about the Big 4, Big 5? Are those potential clients? Because they're being asked to be analysts and help a business, and they probably might reach out to you and say, hey, we don't— Yep.
Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much all of the— anyone who's engaging in research and has, you know, doing any type of diligence, you know, in any type of category, those, you know, when you are— we were just at a healthcare conference. And so we met with several healthcare consulting companies, healthcare market research, and then pharma companies. And a pharma company approached us and said, you know, we are exploring a new drug therapy, very early stage. We need to better understand the viability of this and the receptivity of something like this. Can you find different key opinion leaders and different practitioners? We don't do patients, so— We're not the company for that, but anyone kind of in and around that, that we can speak with to discuss our potential ideas on this and kind of how they would receive a therapy like this. And so to be able to have that, you know, to be able to discuss that concept in detail with an audience that deals with different, you know, different technologies like this or therapies like this day in and day out, Is hugely valuable, and a research report's not going to get you that. An actual person, one-to-one, will get you those insights.
What is— would a CCO, Chief Commercial Officer, be your ideal persona at a— like, maybe a company is trying to go to trial? Sure.
Yeah, researched, or anyone sort of in the research Domains, sales, absolutely works in that type of a client.
Okay. Tell us what kind of got you to this spot in life. Like, where did you work that kind of shaped you to be ready for IDR?
So I started my career at another expert network and spent my first 7 years there. It was a startup at the time. I was the 4th employee. And then when I left, there were hundreds of employees globally. So that let me have a little feel and taste in lots of different functional areas and lots of different departments. So that was very helpful foundational experience in my career. And then I went on to a few other research companies, some small, some large, like IHS Markit, Oxford Economics, and others to just continue to see how things were done at those organizations and to continue to build out sales teams within those. Then I returned to Coleman to help bring the company to a position to be acquired. So, went through a successful exit there. And then decided to spend a couple years in something a little bit different in executive search because I wanted to Experience a new industry. But then, glutton for punishment here, I found my way back to the expert networks. I couldn't stay away and then joined IDR.
What's a great way to get a hold of you and who should get a hold of you to maybe start a discussion?
Yeah, I mean, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to provide my email, which is just Alyssa.Quinn@idr.co. You can reach out to me that way. But yeah, I think anyone who wants to explore how this type of research can, you know, help them be better prepared for what their client demands are, then they can get in touch and we're always happy to provide a proposal and a bid. Even if you're not quite sure how you would engage with a firm like ours, and then we can just start the conversation and see where things go.
Well, thanks for your time, Melissa.
Thank you.
Great talking to you again, and we'll talk to you soon.
