🕵🏻‍♂️ The Art Of Customer Interviews

Oct 19, 2022 1:44 pm

Hey ,

Did you know that most marketing campaigns are doomed beforehand because of naive B2B funnels?

B2B companies that still think their customers have a linear buying process like the following:

the prospect saw the ad/outreach message/website snippet on Google and clicked on the CTA ;
the prospect got on the landing page and just submitted a form or purchased the product ;

... are throwing money away (their hard-earned marketing budget😰).

Truth is, the decision-making process usually happens in "the dark funnel":

Communities where your customers ask their peers for recommendation
Live events of industry thought leaders
Social media, just name it

But unfortunately, most companies do not invest in creating demand and building visibility where their buyers hang out. Why? Mainly because:

a) They can't attribute it to revenue

b) They don't understand when and how they can generate leads

c) It requires investing in demand generation, hiring content marketers, and building sophisticated PR programs.

Let’s keep it real, dear , - until you cultivate a lead gen and a company-centric approach, those obsolete naive lead gen funnels will exist.

And that’s why you need to consider the dark funnel and run in-depth customer interviews.

Speaking of customer interviews, Andrei had a talk with Zineb Layachi and they explained in detail everything you need to know. In this newsletter, we’ll cover the main points they talked about.

Why are companies wasting marketing budgets when they are not running customer interviews?

Customers are some sort of assets. They can spend more, buy more from you, and even refer someone to you. By not taking advantage of their knowledge, you're leaving money on the table and you're not extracting as much information from them.

These are people that have believed that you can help them solve their problems in a better way. They've actually gone through a certain process before putting their hands in their pockets and paying for your service. So that's the type of knowledge you should be gathering.

Generally, there are two things that companies, founders, and marketers generally do.

#1: they look outside of the company for anyone that has any quick hacks or any advice. But the thing with those hacks and advice is that they are generally out of context. And more often than not, they will look great in a video and on paper, but they’ll never work.

#2: they look inside the company and focus all their attention on analytics, listening to sales calls, reading reviews and NPS, etc. While these information are not useless, they are not enough. They only tell you the “what” and not the “why”. You’ll barely understand the customer’s journey and the specific reasons why they bought from you - which are crucial data.

What are the recommended formats of customer interviews?

Founders sometimes get in touch with their customers. They call them on the phone and track about six calls every week, but that's not enough. This is an informal judge.

In fact, customer interviews are much more structured conversations. So, you should have a list of questions that will lead them to give you the information you need.

Here are some questions you can ask to better understand the buying process:

Which channels did they use?
How did they go about finding the right solutions?
What did they look at?

You have to understand that deeply. Afterward, you could use follow-up questions like:

Just tell me more about this to get more information out of them.
What did they consider?
Why did they end up choosing you?
What was wrong with the other options?

If you just ask a customer why they buy something, chances are you’ll get a rationalized answer. In fact, they probably don't even know the real answer. And if they do, they wouldn't know how to explain it. So basically that information would be useless.

This is why you have to go through another route. Ask a series of well-prepared questions to get that information out of them.

How do you get customers to devote their time and share all the information with you?

There are two ways you can get your customers to give you their time:

1- Give them something valuable in exchange

First of all, you have to be respectful of their time, which means you can give them rewards. We are not suggesting that you go to the typical gift cards, twenty-dollar gift cards. Think first about how it applies to your business and your targets. You know your target and clients better than anyone else. Find out what they would value and appreciate, and give it to them.

For example, if it's a subscription that costs 10 USD a month, ask yourself the question: would two months free be a wow for them? If yes, that’s your reward.

However, there isn't any universal gift that you can give everyone. It is just generally being respectful of people's time whether it's customer interviews or not. Give something in return or show respect.

2- Record an explanatory video

A second way to convince customers is to share an example of a low-ticket SaaS company that has a huge customer database.

For instance, If you have a company that serves different verticals, like B2B companies with long sales cycles and high ACV, and they don't have that huge database, we recommend the first person in the company to record a video.

For example, it might be the CEO who records a video explaining why the interview is needed. Why do you need this insight, and then finish with a call to action. Then, you send an email and include this personalized video. This will make sense to your clients. They’ll see that your company is really serious about the interview.

What is the structure of customer interview calls?

In terms of customer interview structure, remember at the beginning that this is a conversation you’re about to have. Don’t see it like a set of questions, it's certainly not an FBI interrogation.😂

So it's about asking questions and then asking follow-up questions like:

Can you please tell me more? or
It seems like you were really bummed out about this. How did that make you feel? What was that? etc.

Now, when you start, thank them for their time. You can start anywhere you like, but feel free to start by expressing your gratitude. You can also remind them that this is no sales call.

Next, there’ll be a little bit of small talk. Of course, you ask for permission to record your convo. Unless they're big ideas, there's no need to jot down all sorts of notes, you can revisit it, but just pick out the most important ones.

You might say for example, “I’d like to be 100% focused on the conversation and not bother you with the typing. Is that okay if I record this?”😉

Then you go right in, no need to say okay so let's start. No, you just go right in and start asking the questions.

P.S.: the interview with Andrei and Zineb has been condensed for clarity. You can listen to it here.

Upcoming community events

If you plan to launch a B2B demand gen program, join Andrei and Vladimir Blagojevic this Thursday (20th Oct). Here’s what we’ll be discussing:

The 6 stages of launching and scaling a B2B demand gen program
How to use customer research to amplify demand gen programs
How to refine demand capture
How to operationalize and scale B2B demand gen

Save your spot here.

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