Now that we have our list of potential consumers to interview, we have a defined plan and we know which topics to avoid, the next step is to organize the interview.
The first thing to do is to know who will be conducting the interview. To help you decide, a recommendation would be someone who has not been involved in sales or on a sales call. An ideal profile would be someone with a sense of curiosity, who wants to understand how things work. Keep in mind that it is not necessary for them to be an expert in the subject, but it is advisable for them to know the terminology that the user might use.
The second point to address is how to conduct the interview, as we have two options: by phone or in person. In both cases, you must take into account the following characteristics:
Block off more time than necessary and schedule the interview ahead of time.
Interview time: 20-30 min. It is important not to go on longer than planned, out of respect for the interviewees' time.
Prepare an agenda and send it to them before the call so they understand the process and know what to expect.
One of the questions we can ask ourselves is: "How do I get in touch with him or her?"
Start with a call , preferably at the beginning or end of the workday. The first contact should be by phone, not by email. If they don't answer, I recommend leaving a voicemail. If it's an assistant who answers the phone, I would ask for their name and explain exactly why we're calling.
After the call, we send a follow-up email. The content of the email should be exactly what you told the assistant or the voicemail, and it should be sent right after you have hung up.
No news? Call back. If there's no answer, I don't think there's any need to text again.
Third call? We'll try, but if they don't answer again, we'll stop.
What to ask in the interview
Once you have defined who and the process to follow, the big question comes: "what do I say?"
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? kuwait data 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.” |
