Audience research
Part of Before you brief a prospecting software audience research project
Planning prospecting software customer interviews in the UK
Plan prospecting software interviews in the UK: choose participants, set inclusion criteria, organise calls and prepare a booking checklist.
What to take away
- Data protection is part of prospecting software buying research. UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 apply to interview notes and recordings, alongside the ICO's guidance for organisations.
- Run interviews when the decision involves several people and a story you cannot guess.
- Pick sectors and company sizes from published business data, not from whoever replied to your last campaign.
- Write the inclusion criteria and the list of five to eight organisations before you write a single question.
Decide the method before the guest list
Prospecting software customer interviews suit questions with a story behind them. How a team agreed a budget, who blocked a purchase, what went wrong in the fortnight after a trial ended: none of that fits a tick box.
Surveys suit frequency. If you need to know how many buyers in a sector share a complaint, ask a few hundred of them. If you need to know why the complaint exists, ask eight.
Interviews are the cheaper way to find out which questions are worth asking at scale. Use them to understand how buyers find, qualify and hand off leads; a survey can then test how widely a theme appears.
When interviews are useful
Use interviews to understand a buying decision involving several people or a story that cannot be inferred from campaign data.
Five interview triggers
- Deal stalled, objection unclear
- Same obstacle, different words
- Pilot pricing changed, feedback quiet
- Data storage asked before price
- Non-caller on approval chain
If your question is how common a view is, use a survey after interviews have clarified what to ask.
Inclusion criteria to apply to every name
Businesses registered or trading in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland can all be in scope. Note which nation each participant trades in, because invoicing and compliance questions can differ.
Inclusion criteria filters
- Rolesigner, blocker, daily user
- Sectorchosen from ONS data
- Size bandfrom ONS breakdown
- Outcomewon, lost, stalled
- NationEngland, Scotland, Wales, NI
Then apply four filters: role, sector, size band and outcome. Include the person who signs, the person who blocks and the person who uses the tool daily—for example, a sales development representative, a sales operations or revenue operations lead, and a sales leader. Ask which prospecting software they use, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo or Cognism, and how it fits lead sourcing, qualification and CRM hand-off.
The ONS bulletin on UK business activity, size and location covers the whole of the UK. It breaks the population down by industry, size band and location, which is a sounder basis for choosing sectors than your own reply rates.
Who belongs on the call
Book two interviewers at most. Ask open questions and follow the answer; have someone else record the exact words. A third voice tends to turn the call into a pitch, which is the fastest way to lose the thread. If you cannot spare two people, record with consent and take notes afterwards.
UK data protection and consent
UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 govern personal data in interview notes and recordings. Before collecting either, identify and document your lawful basis, explain it in a privacy notice, limit access and set a retention period; taking part or agreeing to a recording is not automatically your lawful basis for processing.
Use a form titled “UK Customer Interview Consent and Privacy Form”. Include the purpose, data collected, lawful basis, who can access it, retention, participant rights and a contact route, plus a separate yes/no choice for recording. For example: “I agree to take part in this interview. I have received the privacy notice and understand how my information will be used. I agree / do not agree to audio recording.”
Follow the Market Research Society (MRS) Code of Conduct for voluntary participation and fair treatment. If recruitment messages promote your product as well as invite research, check PECR and the ICO's direct marketing guidance; do not treat a research invitation as a sales pitch.
Check whether your organisation must pay the ICO data protection fee unless exempt. Fee payment is not notification of each interview.
How long the round should take
Book the calls inside two weeks. Notes decay quickly, and a round that drags into a second month mixes in everything the team learned in between. Six calls of 30 minutes is little diary time.
Keep pricing questions honest
For a pilot, ask whether the proposed price would fit their budget, how the buyer would judge value, who approves spend and what pricing structure is easiest to procure. Distinguish what they would pay from what they merely consider reasonable; ask about the approval process rather than pitching a number.
When numbers beat reasons
Interviews cannot tell you how common a view is. Once three or four themes keep repeating, counts are the next step. Turn those themes into survey questions and use a survey to test how widespread they are.
Checklist before you book
- A list of five to eight organisations, each with one backup name.
- Written inclusion criteriarole, sector, size band and outcome.
- Consent wording agreed, covering notes, recording and storage.
- Pricing questions mapped to what a finance team will ask.
- Two people on the call, one asking and one writing.
- A notes file the participant has agreed you may keep.
