If you want to ask something, make a note to ask again later
Your first question should be the only one that is defined and fixed: “Do you remember the moment when you looked for…?” An English expression that illustrates this first question would be “Take me back to the day when…”. This allows us to put the focus on the history of the evaluation and the decision process. A good example would be: “I know that your time is valuable, so I am going to start directly with the first question: let’s go back to the day when you evaluated the solution… and tell me what happened.”
It is important to start with a question about the moment when your customer begins to realize that they have a need and are attentive to the solution they need (what is known as the “awareness” phase), a situation that is present long before they thought about your product.
consumer analysis what to askThe buyer persona may start telling us the benefits, and it seems like we have the whole story in 3 minutes, but no. We need to understand what happened for them to put a solution like ours on their “To do list” and spend their time looking for it.
Let's move on to the next one: once they've decided to look for a solution, what have they done to evaluate their options? For example, if they tell you that they've searched on the internet, then it's your chance to ask how many sellers they've found, what information they were hoping to find, what words they searched with, see if they've checked social networks, if there were any really helpful websites, etc. In short, all the questions that help you understand their information search process.
If we continue to move forward in the interview, the next question would be about how many possible solutions you decided to include in your analysis and what reasons led you to exclude some of the possibilities. Example: you mentioned that you considered 3 solutions but you mentioned 2 at the end, how did you decide to eliminate the third company?
And we move on to another essential question: How did you decide? This question invites the buyer persona to reveal the actions they took, the information they evaluated, and the criteria that made them choose your solution or your competitor's, eliminating the other.
Another point we are interested in is who else was involved in the process, so we have information about the influence on the decision. Very often in B2B decisions there will be several people involved. Example of how we can achieve this: if they have mentioned looking for information with other people, ask again: “You mentioned that you looked... who else was involved? I don't need names, just the role of these other people.”
Concrete examples: HubSpot & InboundCycle
Tips for conducting interviews
Your job as an interviewer is to put the focus on the interviewee, not on you. In order to do this well, it is important to keep in mind the following tips that we have defined in three main blocks: attention, confidence and preparation:
Attention
It is important that the person being interviewed sees that you are paying attention to him/her, so it is necessary to:
Hear
You don't always have to fill the silences
Do not interrupt
Trust
For everything to develop properly, trust must be a line data key pillar. How can it be fostered?
If we use their own words, they will see that it is not a script and that we are really involved in the conversation.
Avoid thinking about the terms you use in the company to define what you are telling us.
Avoid any comments that seem insincere or like you're reading from a script.
Never assume you already know the answer
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