When choosing who to hire for your market research, start by focusing on people who have the characteristics that apply to your buyer persona. You should also:
Aim for 10 participants per buyer persona.
We recommend focusing on one person, but if you feel it is necessary to research multiple people, be sure to recruit a separate sample group for each.
☛ 1. Select people who have recently interacted with you
You may want to focus on people who have completed ig database an assessment in the last six months, or up to a year if you have a longer sales cycle or a niche market. With very detailed questions, it's important that their experience is new.
►I gathered a mix of participants
You want to recruit people who have purchased your product, purchased a competitor's product, and decided not to buy anything at all. While your customers will be the easiest to find and recruit, getting insights from those who aren't customers (yet!) will help you develop a balanced view of your market.
►Pull out a list of customers who made a recent purchase. As we mentioned earlier, this is usually the easiest group of buyers to recruit. If you're using a CRM system, you can run a report on deals that closed in the last six months and filter it by the characteristics you're looking for. Otherwise, you can work with your sales team to get a list of suitable accounts.
►Get a list of customers who were in an active evaluation, but did not make a purchase. You want to get a combination of buyers who either bought from a competitor or decided not to make a purchase. Again, you can get this list from your CRM or whatever system your sales team uses to track deals.
►Call out participants on social media.
Try to reach out to people who follow you on social media but decided not to buy from you. There is a chance that some of them will be willing to talk to you and tell you why they ultimately decided not to buy your product.
►Take advantage of your own network
Let your coworkers, former colleagues, and LinkedIn connections know that you're conducting a study. Even if your direct connections don't qualify, chances are some of them have a coworker, friend, or family member who does.
►Choose an incentive
Time is valuable, so you'll need to think about how to motivate someone to spend 30-45 minutes with you and your study. On a tight budget? You can reward participants for free by giving them exclusive access to the content. Another option? Send a simple, handwritten thank you note once the study is complete.
☛3. Prepare research questions for your market research participants
The best way to ensure you get the most out of your conversations is to be prepared. You should always create a discussion guide, whether for a focus group, online survey, or phone interview, to ensure you cover all the most important questions and use your time wisely.
Your discussion guide should be in an outline format, with a time allotment and open-ended questions for each section.
Wait, all open-ended questions?
Yes, this is a golden rule of market research. You never want to “lead the witness” by asking yes or no questions, as that puts you at risk of unintentionally influencing their thoughts by leading with your own hypothesis. Asking open-ended questions also helps you avoid one-word answers (which aren’t very useful to you).
Here’s a general outline for a 30-minute survey for a B2B buyer. You can use these as talking points for an in-person interview, or as questions on a digital form to administer as a survey to your target customers.