TrueFuture Media · Buyer research
A facilities manager says price mattered. The purchase record shows that a cheaper machine never made the shortlist because the maintenance team couldn’t service it. Both details belong in the interview notes. Only one tells you what the marketing team needs to explain first.
The short answer
Run customer discovery interviews around a real purchase decision. Ask someone to walk you from the moment the problem became urgent to the moment they bought, chose another option, or stopped looking. Find out who could block the decision, what they needed to see, and what happened when that evidence was missing. Then separate a veto, which can stop the purchase, from a preference, which helps rank options that still qualify. Keep the participant’s account separate from your explanation of it. If the same question shows up across different outcomes and your team can answer it with evidence, make one useful piece of content and test whether it helps the right buyer take the next step. A handful of interviews can suggest what to test. They don’t tell you how common the issue is across your market.
That distinction matters when a product needs an installer, a safety review, or a second person’s approval. A headline about convenience won’t help the buyer who can’t tell whether the product works with their existing setup. The Social Demand Loop shows what comes after you identify that buying tension: choose proof the buyer can use and give them a next step that fits the decision.
Who should you interview?
Pick one decision before you recruit. “How do small facilities teams replace a failed machine?” is a better brief than “What do people think of our brand?” It gives everyone a recognizable event to talk about and lets you compare choices made under similar conditions.
Start with people who recently made it far enough to compare real options. Include buyers who chose you, people who chose another option, and people who postponed the decision. A buyer who signed can tell you what cleared the last hurdle. A team that kept its old equipment may show you a hurdle you never got a chance to clear.
Within a purchase, ask whose job it was to check the claims. That may be the person who saw the ad, but it may be an installer who never visited your site. If the buyer says a maintenance lead ruled out an option, ask the maintenance lead what they checked. Keep their account separate. A discovery call asks the buyer what happened during the purchase. A product expert interview happens downstream, when you know the question and need someone qualified to explain the answer. Those two conversations describe one buying decision, not two independent examples.
The UK Government Digital Service’s participant recruitment guide gives a typical range of four to eight people for a round of interviews or usability tests. For this work, use a small round to learn where to look next, rather than as a quota or a representative sample. If all your participants came through the same distributor or sales rep, note that limitation before you plan the next round.
How do you reconstruct a purchase?
Start at a moment the participant can place: the old machine failed, an installer sent an estimate, or the budget opened. “What happened next?” is often enough. A question like “Were you worried about downtime?” puts your guess into their mouth before you know whether downtime came up.
The Government Digital Service tells researchers to “focus on stories and real examples” in its in-depth interview guide. Its experience research guide uses event cards to help people place actions in order. You can adapt that idea with a row of notes on a shared screen. Let the buyer correct the order as they remember more. If they say a catalog search happened after the distributor call rather than before it, change the sequence. The order can change what you make.
Questions you can take into the call
- Trigger: What happened that made you look for a replacement?
- First action: Where did you go first? What did you ask for or look up?
- Shortlist: Which options did you seriously consider? Which dropped out, and when?
- Handoff: Who else needed to see something before you could move forward?
- Decision: What did you choose, including the option to wait? What happened right before you decided?
When a participant gives you an opinion, follow it back to an action. If they say one vendor was hard to trust, ask when that became a problem. Did they look for a document and fail to find it? Did they send a question to an installer? Were they remembering a problem with a previous product? A time, action, and consequence make the note easier to use.
If they can show an artifact, ask for the least you need. A redacted screenshot or the name of a document can be enough to check what kind of evidence the buyer sought. Explain how you’ll use notes or recordings and get consent before recording. Keep the interview for research; clear any public quote, image, or identifying story separately. The government’s guide to taking notes and recording research covers practical ways to capture and handle the session.
How can you tell what blocked it?
Ask what the buyer did after the concern came up. If the operations lead asked for a service manual and delayed approval until it arrived, that’s a stronger clue than hearing that serviceability was “important.” If they bought the harder-to-service unit anyway, find out what made the tradeoff acceptable. The same feature can be a veto in one facility and a preference in another.
| What happened | Working label | What to check next |
|---|---|---|
| A unit was removed after maintenance checked the available parts list. | Possible veto | Which part or service rule mattered? Would a supplier commitment have kept the unit in play? |
| The team liked the quieter unit but bought the louder one. | Preference in this decision | Did noise ever rule out a unit for another buyer? What else won this time? |
| The team paused after its budget was moved to a different project. | External constraint | Could clearer information have changed the timing? If not, don’t assign this to content. |
| One participant remembers a “bad feeling” but no next action. | Unclear | Ask another participant or check available records. Keep the label tentative. |
There’s a useful parallel with John C. Flanagan’s original critical incident technique, which focuses on concrete incidents relevant to an outcome. A purchase interview is usually based on recall, not direct observation. Use that distinction in your notes: “the buyer said procurement removed it” and “the shortlist shows it was removed” are different kinds of support. Neither by itself tells you why every future buyer will choose.
How do you turn notes into a content brief?
Give each decision one row: participant role, trigger, action, evidence requested, outcome, and what you still don’t know. Add a column for the participant’s actual words if useful, with a clear label that the wording is for internal research. The Government Digital Service’s analysis guide recommends recording what you saw or heard before sorting observations into findings and actions. That order gives a teammate a chance to disagree with your interpretation without losing the underlying note.
Check for a case that doesn’t fit your first explanation. Suppose two teams said they needed a local service partner, but a third purchased without one because it could swap the module in-house. The pattern might be “we need a way to recover quickly,” rather than “we need a local service partner.” The second explanation suggests a useful piece of content for both teams: show which repairs users can handle, which need a technician, and how to tell the difference.
For more on what buyers ask different channels to do, see how people research complex products before buying. A short video can show what the panel looks like in use. The drawing can give the installer the dimensions needed for approval. Plan the handoff before you film.
How do you test whether the content helps?
Start with one decision, one asset, and one next action. In the service-panel example, check whether a few target buyers can identify the right drawing and say whether they have enough information to measure their space. Watch where they look or ask them to point to the detail that made the answer clear. If they miss the model number, revise the label before you try a new hook.
Once the asset is live, pick a signal that matches the job. Drawing visits are a sign that people looked for more information. A qualified inquiry with the model and clearance already filled in is a stronger signal that somebody used the answer. Even that inquiry doesn’t prove your video caused the sale. Sales notes can help you see whether buyers still have the same question and whether a different part of the process is holding them back.
Keep a record of what changed between tests. If you switch the audience, replace the video, and change the landing page at once, the comparison won’t tell you which revision helped. Keep the handoff consistent with the question that earned the click. TrueFuture’s guide to connecting a social landing page to the buyer question explains how to carry the same proof into the next step.
Key takeaways
- Interview people about a real decision, including people who bought elsewhere or waited.
- Look for a consequence before labeling a concern a veto.
- Separate the participant’s account, supporting evidence, and your interpretation.
- Give one content asset a clear job and check whether buyers can use it.
Customer discovery interview FAQs
How long should an interview take?
Set aside 30 minutes for one decision as a starting point. If several people had to approve it, you may learn more from separate conversations than from stretching one call.
Should sales run the interviews?
Sales can help identify cases and explain the buying process. A neutral interviewer can make it easier for prospects to describe why they didn’t buy. If a sales colleague runs the call, set the expectation that it’s for research and leave the pitch out.
What if buyers disagree?
Look at their roles, use cases, and constraints before merging their answers. A commercial installer and a homeowner can disagree about what counts as easy setup and both be describing their own work accurately.
Can discovery interviews replace a survey?
Use interviews to learn how a concern works and get the wording right. If you need to estimate how common it is, choose a separate measurement method with a sample that matches the market you’re describing.
Start with the decision your buyer couldn’t make
Pull one recent sale and one deal that stalled. If the two buyers faced the same question but only one got a clear answer, you have a useful place to start. Find out what the second buyer needed to see and whether you can show it.
If you sell a product that needs to be understood before it’s chosen, a Fit Review is a focused 20-minute conversation about what you sell and what your buyers still need to understand. Bring a recurring buyer question and whatever proof you already have.
Sources
- Government Digital Service: In-depth interviews, participant recruitment, experience research, note-taking and recording, and session analysis.
- John C. Flanagan, The Critical Incident Technique, Psychological Bulletin, 1954.