10 ways to find customer interview partners in product discovery

1. "GET OUT OF THE BUILDING"

The quickest and easiest way to find interview partners is: "Get out often the building".

Approaching people in public and approaching target customers is our standard procedure with the Lean Startup Machine and a very pragmatic approach.

This approach is perfect for products that virtually everyone needs: electricity, shampoo, cars, food, etc. It also works well for products for which the target group is relatively clearly identifiable. Pensioners who ride an e-bike or very sporty people such as joggers or people who train in the park are examples of this.

It is best to approach people who have time and are not on the move. We have approached e-bike riders at a viewpoint on a typical cycling tour or at the train station while they were waiting for a train.

However, this method is not suitable for everyone. The hurdle of stepping out of your comfort zone and approaching strangers is very high for many people. As a result, many people find this approach too intrusive. However, with a little practice and a friendly smile, it is usually no problem to strike up a conversation with people in public.

Another disadvantage of this approach is that the conversations usually remain relatively short and superficial. Conversations that have a fixed date and a planned setup are usually more open and have a little more depth.

Nevertheless, "get out of the building" is in many cases the quickest and easiest way to start to better understand the needs and behaviors of users.

2. LinkedIn

"Warm Intro" in the network

Especially in the B2B sector, it is advisable to use your network. LinkedIn is ideal for this.

A quick calculation example illustrates how powerful this approach is. If a startup team consists of 3 people and each has 300 contacts on LinkedIn, that's 900 direct contacts in the team. If each of these 900 contacts has a further 300 contacts, that's 270,000 people. A recommendation from a contact can open many doors in this context. Furthermore, the search function makes it easy to find suitable people in the first or second degree network.

LinkedIn Posting

A post with a description of the problem and a teaser can very quickly lead to suitable interview partners.

LinkedIn "Cold" e-mail

Another option is to write directly to people. These are quasi "cold emails" to strangers. Here it is important to formulate your request individually, briefly and concisely. Here is an example from the past from the office equipment sector.

Hello Mr. XY,

You are an expert in office planning and office concepts.

I would like your opinion on a product for open plan offices that we are currently working on that will give open space workers more privacy and less visual/acoustic distraction.

The opinion of people like you, who have many years of experience in the design and conceptualization of open-plan offices, is important to us to ensure that our product is ultimately successful.

Could we have a short phone call about this?

How about 1 p.m. next Thursday for you?

Many thanks in advance!

Existing customers for customer interviews

Invite newsletter subscribers to a conversation

For many webshop operators, acquiring suitable interviewees is relatively easy. Send an email to part of your newsletter mailing list with an invitation to the interview. Experience has shown that it is advantageous to write the e-mail in plain text, as this looks less like an advertising e-mail.

It is important to keep the e-mail short and to communicate a clear incentive to the customer.

Here is an example e-mail that we have used successfully in the past.

Hello xxx,

We are currently working on the development of new products that will make the shopping experience easier for you. We want your opinion on this!

You have the opportunity to help shape our new products and features in a telephone interview on XX around YY.

The interview lasts a maximum of 30 minutes and you will receive ZZZ after successful participation.

To make the organization easier, we have set up a short form to coordinate appointments, participants and contact details. The form asks for a telephone number, which is only used for the appointment and the conversation and will be deleted after the project is completed.

Unfortunately, participation cannot be guaranteed due to the expected level of interest. Please note: You will not receive any credit for completing the short form; successful participation in the interview is a prerequisite!

Take part now:

BUTTON

We look forward to your commitment and would like to thank you in advance for your time.

Best regards

Use support calls for calls

Support is the easiest way to get in touch with customers. Simply take the calls for support one day, and after you have successfully helped the customer, ask a question and engage the customer in a conversation.

4. find a list of target customers on the Internet

It is often possible to find entire lists of potential customers on the Internet, often with e-mail addresses and sometimes with telephone numbers.

• Yellow Pages: For a planned product for property managers, we had the Yellow Pages entries entered into a spreadsheet via Upwork.com.
• Associations: In the B2B area, we worked with a customer on a product for systemic coaches. We were able to easily identify them via the association's website with contact details.
• Look-Up: In the domain trading segment, we were faced with the challenge of finding suitable contacts. To do this, we took lists of top-level domains for sale and used the https://www.denic.de/webwhois query to obtain the owners' contact details. We were then able to contact them by email. Are there perhaps also public lists in your niche?
• Customers of the competition: For a hotel concept, we invited customers of the competition for an interview. This was possible after we found out that every author of reviews can be contacted on Tripadvisor. We therefore created a list of target contacts with filters for location, hotel, etc.

Additionally, blogs can be a valuable resource to learn more about conducting user surveys and gaining user insights.

Here is the original cover letter we used for this target group (in English).

Hi XY,

based on your reviews, you are traveling a lot and you care about the details in hotels.

I am an entrepreneur working on a new hotel concept and would love to get your opinion on my ideas. Usually it takes 15 minutes and I will say thank you with a 15 Euro gift certificate for booking.com or amazon.com.

How about Friday 11:00? If Friday does not work, just send me an invitation according to your schedule.

Thanks in advance.

Some of the examples given here are of course very specific. However, the system can be applied to a wide range of topics.

5. facebook

Group Posting

Facebook offers groups for every conceivable topic. This means you can also find people for relatively small target groups. There are even numerous groups for type 1 diabetes, a very specific target group with around 300,000 people affected in Germany.

Many group administrators do not want posts to be published in the groups that do not serve the exchange on the topic. If you post publicly in groups, the content should be useful for the group.

Of course, you can also clarify with the group administrator in advance whether you are allowed to post or under what conditions. If you do not do this, you run the risk of the administrator removing you from the group.

1:1 Cover letter

In our experience, it is better to write directly to group members. To do this, look at who has been active in the group in the recent past and write a short and meaningful request. In our case, we were able to gain around 4 interviews from 20 direct messages. Here is our original text.

Hello XY,

I'm writing to you because I saw your profile in the Diabetes/Diabetiker Typ1/Typ 1 Bayern forum. We are currently working on a product that will simplify screening for type 1 diabetics. We are not affected by the disease ourselves, but would like to understand how people with this disease live (dealing with the disease, problems, etc.). Can I ask you a few questions about this over the phone (max. 10 minutes)? Then I would be happy to tell you what the idea is specifically about! It would be great if you could get in touch! Thanks in advance! Best regards, Paula

Acquiring interview partners for user surveys on classifieds portals

Classified ads: Ebay, Quoka, etc.

This strategy has worked very well for us in the past. With such an advertisement, we reached 1800 people in 2 days and gained 30 interested parties for interviews.

With a short teaser text, a license-free image as an eye-catcher and a small incentive, we have been able to fill our customer development pipeline several times. Here is a screenshot of our ad in which we needed BMW drivers for interviews.

For better results, we chose a paid positioning on Ebay classifieds that cost around €3.

With classified ads, it is crucial to choose the right category that suits your target group.

To avoid unnecessary correspondence, we send visitors to the ad to your Google form. Here is a copy of the form for the ad shown above. This form collects all the data required to filter suitable interview partners (filter questions) and to collect the necessary contact details.

We typically send suitable contacts to a youcanbookme.com to schedule a phone call or interview.

Organize Meetups

Meetups are an excellent way to get in touch with your target customers. Meetups have become increasingly popular in recent years and can now be found in almost every city on a wide variety of topics. Organizing a group helps to network with the local community and people.

Visit Meetups

If you don't have the time to organize a Meetup, you can simply join existing Meetup groups and use these Meetups to link up with the topic groups.

Write to Meetup group members

A time and location-independent way to benefit from Meetups is to write directly to participants of Meetups. To do this, you must join the respective Meetup groups and can then write directly to the group members. This is limited to 12 people per day. Therefore, the people should be well chosen and the address to the individual person should be short and precise.

8. conferences, trade fairs or industry meetings

Conferences and trade fairs are also an excellent way to get in touch with target customers. We have already used these in a wide variety of subject areas such as agriculture, the insurance industry and many others. Depending on the profile you are looking for, you can get in touch with participants or exhibiting companies and their employees.

9. place advertising

Of course you can also place an advertisement on Google, Facebook & Co. which leads to a landing page with a form. Our favorite landing page tools are Unbounce.com and Wix.com or Google Forms. This is an important step in the product discovery process to identify and validate market opportunities.

10. get creative...

As you have read up to this point, every situation and target group is different. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for acquisition. It takes a little creativity and courage to find the acquisition channel that works and to understand the needs of the users. The key question is always, where do I meet my target customers? What is their behavior? Which offline / online offers do they use?

1. GitHub for developers
2. Twitter for journalists
3. ...

With these 10 sources, anyone should be able to find suitable interview partners. If even these top 10 sources don't help you find people to interview, you should stop your project. If no one is willing to talk to you about the problem, you won't be able to sell your solution to them later.

You are welcome to share further ideas for finding suitable interview partners or experience reports in the comments.

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