A common mistake commercial leaders make is thinking they have all the information they need on-hand to create a buyer journey map. Often, they rely on sellers’ documentation and articulation of the buyer journey, which can give a false read. Or they may assume they can use their informed assumptions about what the buyer is doing, or rely on their recollection of past sales experiences. They also may rely too much on win/loss feedback. However, no matter how long someone has been selling, they will always have a limited understanding of what is happening on the buyer side of the deal without direct input from buyers. Markets evolve, and buyers think differently than sellers.
This is why we view it as essential to conduct interviews with buyers about their buying journey. A well-constructed interview guide centered on the buyer journey is essential for gathering meaningful and clear feedback from the buyer about their thoughts, actions, and values. By conducting interviews, you hear first-hand how buyers move through the buyer journey. Interviews can also relay what pain points they may have, criteria they prioritize, emotional drivers they respond to, and hesitations they get stuck on.
There are three important best practices for building a good interview guide.
Structure the interview guide with a buyer-first perspective
When creating an interview guide, it is important to build the questions specifically around the buyer journey and keep them buyer-centric. Often, interviews get too tightly focused on the product or what the commercial team did, and not enough on what the buyer is doing or experiencing. Construct your guide around the buyer journey map and work backwards to make sure you will be able to gather all the information necessary.
It is also important to categorize questions as a way of ensuring you stay on topic during the interview. Wavering from the conversation can cause confusion and stray away from the information needed. By sticking to the guide, you are in a better position to gather information useful to filling out the buyer journey map, and to clearly understand the journey the buyer went through.
Prioritize questions
When writing out questions, prioritize them by separating them into primary and secondary questions. The primary questions should cover the most important information. The secondary questions may not be as vital but would still help gather information and continue the conversation if the interview is running through the primary questions quickly.
Having this separation will avoid packing in too many questions that you know won’t fit into the interview window. You can also consider switching questions across the categories for different interviews, based on what you think the buyer you are speaking with is best able to respond to, and where you have information gaps you need to fill.
Make the questions clear, and conversational
Keep questions clear and concise in the interview guide. This improves the quality of the responses and reduces misinterpretation, saving time. The buyer is less likely to ask you to rephrase, and more likely to respond directly rather than veer off into an area you’re not interested in. Aim to phrase questions in a way that anyone, or at least your interviewee, can understand without needing clarification.
For example, instead of asking “Was something going on with your team or maybe the whole company?”, ask “What were the challenges or events that were happening at your organization during that time? Was it specific to your department, or a broader organization-wide situation?” The first example question is vague, overly casual, and imprecise. It lacks context and clarity about what information you are asking about. The latter provides a clear timeframe, problem identification, and narrows down the area of the problem.
To keep the questions conversational, start with introductory questions to build rapport. This often leads to more valuable insights than you originally expected, so factor that into your timing. Have a mix of open-ended and more direct questions. The open-ended questions give the interviewee more opportunities to talk while revealing more information than your questions may have intended. Direct questions will get you the specific information you need to fill out the buyer journey map. When creating questions, have follow ups and use transitions in your questions to keep the interview a conversation.
Another way to keep it conversational is to phrase questions in a way for a story response rather than waiting for facts, for example, “How did you begin your search? What different “channels” did you use? (Did you contact people, google search, something else?)”. This leads to a story of the motions they took when searching for a solution that will result in more information.
Use these three best practices when developing your interview guides, and you will be much more likely to gain clear information to inform a deep understanding of the buyer journey. Our buyer journey interview template provides a great starting point, Buyer Journey Interview Discussion Guide.
