How to recruit B2B users to interview
Interviewing users, customers and conducting market research is a core part of building successful products.
But for those who have worked with both B2C and B2B products, you have probably noticed a significant difference when it comes to finding people to interview.
Finding users in a B2B world can sometimes be much more complicated than your B2C counterparts. Going into the street and asking random people is likely not an option. There’s a high likelihood that the people you’d be speaking to aren’t your target market.
This becomes even more difficult when you consider B2B products with a narrow segment. For example, Doctors, Game Developers, Truck Drivers, and Finance Managers, just to name a few.
Having faced this challenge several times in the past working on B2B products, I’ve developed a few strategies to source users to interview.
1) Leverage friends, colleagues, network, family
This is my first go-to. You’d be surprised how networked you are once you start asking questions.
They believe that there are only six or fewer social connections between every individual in the world. Meaning, that someone that you know, knows someone else, who knows someone else…etc…do that six times and you will (theoretically) touch every individual globally.
Therefore whether it seems that way or not, there is a high likelihood that someone in your family, a friend, or a colleague knows someone in your target market — or at least, knows someone who can connect you to someone in your target market.
I actually had a recent example of this.
A few weeks ago I was catching up with an ex-colleague and good friend of mine. The conversation got onto work and the product he is managing is in the disability services sector. It just so happens that one of my best friends is an Occupational Therapist. At the end of our catchup, he mentioned he was looking for people to interview and it lead to an intro.
2) Linkedin
There is a goldmine of data that you can tap into from Linkedin.
I’ve regularly used Linkedin as a data source for market sizing and segmentation.
It’s really easy to conduct searches and filter in Linkedin to acquire rough estimates on things — e.g. if you wanted to determine how many accountants work at different companies sizes or how many people work in Product Management in the United States — Linkedin is a good place to pull ballpark data.
Additionally, Linkedin is a great source to search, vett and reach out to people for user research.
If you combine this with the previous strategy, you can also look for mutual connections for people in your target market and leverage that connection for an introduction.
If you are using this strategy and doing any cold reach out. Be sure to be polite and not spam people with mass messages.
Personally, I dislike cold reach outs so I look for mutual connections first but a good general rule of thumb is to be personable, ensure you explain who you are, why you’re reaching out and what's in it for them.
3) Use your existing users
Using your existing users is a no-brainer for companies and products that have an existing user base.
One strategy I like to employ is to build a bench of users that you can reach out to for research.
You can do this by adding a question at the end of feedback forms, support requests, customer calls, etc — really any time your customer touches base with you — ask them if they would be ok with you reaching out to them in the future for further feedback.
Whilst a great source of feedback it’s easy to get tunnel vision with your existing users. It’s important to have a healthy balance of existing users vs non-users — why aren’t they using your product? Are they using a competitor? If so, why?
4) Find where they hangout
Next you can always discover where your users like to hangout.
For example, if your target market has a big annual conference where thousands attend every year consider attending. It’s a great way to immerse yourself in their world and also to create connections that you can leverage later when it comes to customer research.
But it’s not just conferences. Meetups and other locations — for example, I did some early-stage market research for an idea in the transport industry. We ended up going out to the largest truck fuel station near the airport and spent the day interviewing truck drivers.
It also doesn’t need to be physically, it can be virtually too. Slack groups, community forums, etc are also great communities and networks to tap into — e.g. ‘Product Twitter’ and slack groups seem to be where us product people largely hangout.
5) Build a customer community
The final strategy I’ve employed is building a customer community.
A customer community, as the name suggests, is a place where users and even prospects (typically fans of your brand) come to interact with your company and, in some cases, with each other as well.
Taking many different forms, the goal is the same. To establish a relationship between the market and your company through regular dialogue.
Customer communities can be used for a wide range of functions, from accessing customer support to discussing your product with other users.
They can also range from small, closed groups to open communities in the thousands like the Lego Ideas Community.
In the context of sourcing users for interviews, customer communities provide a direct line to a group of your most loyal customers and users.
However, the benefits of customer communities go beyond user interviews. Having an avenue to interact with your users and prospects is a great way to elevate the customer experience beyond their product and build customer loyalty. Leveraged well and they can also provide you with amazing data, feedback and insights into your target customer.
Customer communities are everywhere. Typically taking the form of online forums, social media groups, Slack channels, and even in-person community events are all successful ways companies have to build thriving customer communities.
Conclusion
Sourcing users to interview or even conduct user testing is a skill in itself. For niche products and B2B spaces it can be exceptionally hard to source.
I’m sure you’re probably already employing one or more of these strategies, but I hope that this has given some inspiration or for those stuck, it has helped unblock you.
If you’ve employed other strategies, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!
