Course 1.2: Customer Interviews | Finding the Right Interview Subjects

1.2.  Finding the Right Interview Subjects

Now that you’ve planned out your interviews, let’s discuss who to interview.

You might be asking yourself, “Do I need to talk to the decision-makers or the end-users? Or both?” It depends on the product. \

Think of a low-cost product versus a larger corporate solution.

Selling a low-cost solution, like Slack, might be as simple as a customer taking out their credit card to make a purchase.

In this case, the decision-maker and the end-user are the same people.

But if you’re selling a CRM like Salesforce to a larger organization, you’ll have to keep in mind that they have a buying committee.

Most of them won’t be using the product daily.

In this case, you’ll need to talk to end-users and decision-makers. And you’ll also need to dig a bit deeper to find who the influencers are.

Next, let’s consider if you want to talk to customers, prospects, or both. I like to aim for a 50-50 split. Here’s why.

Your customers are easy. You already know who they are and how to get in touch with them. Plus, they already know you and your product.

All you have to do is get them to share their thoughts on a product they already know -- and you have feedback on how to improve it. It’s a win-win. But prospects are valuable too. First, you’ll learn why they aren’t your customers yet.

You won’t be talking to them much about your PRODUCT, but more about the PROBLEMS they have -- so that you can help them with a solution.

But you won’t know what they need until you talk to them. It’s important to talk to different types of people. You want to get as many perspectives as possible.

A good rule of thumb for selling to large companies is to seek out interview subjects with different job titles.

For example, if I’m selling a content marketing solution, I might want to talk to a marketing manager, content manager, chief editor, and so on. But I'd also talk to director-level people, like Director of Marketing, Director of Content and to VP level, like VP of content, VP of marketing.

Another thing you should keep in mind is the size of a company. Think of a Marketing Director for a smaller organization -- this person is probably doing everything on their own, from managing to day-to-day operations. On the other hand, a Marketing Director for an enterprise company is more focused on managing people and less on operations. Same title, two completely different roles.

Finally, I recommend speaking with what I call “mainstream users” and “extreme users”. While working with the publishing platform Publishnow, I spoke to companies that did a lot of content creation and publishing. I’d call them “extreme users”.

I also spoke to companies that only did a little bit of content creation, what I’d consider “mainstream users”.

When I spoke to extreme users, I learned that since they produce a lot of content, they invest resources in their teams and tools.

So they are less concerned about inefficiencies in content management processes.

Why?

Because they have junior employees managing it! 'Mainstream users' on the other hand were typically smaller companies. They had just one person who writes content AND manages the content strategy calendar, AND is responsible for publishing and sharing content.

So saving this person even 30 minutes a day on content publishing would be a huge value for them.  

To recap, when deciding who to interview, you want to consider:

- Who is the end-user?

- How large is the company?

- Do you need to talk to customers, prospects, or both?

- Look for mainstream users and “extreme” users to identify the differences in how your solution may be used

Next, let’s talk about planning your questions.