Customer discovery interviews with busy professionals
Talk to 10 to 20 people who have the problem you're working on, before you build, to learn how they handle it today and what they'd pay to fix it.
To get customer discovery interviews with busy professionals, describe the role you need, write a short note saying what you're trying to learn, and offer each person a fee for a 30-minute call. With Instant Expert you set the offer and a total cap, invitations go to their work email, and you pay only for calls that get booked.
How people usually do it
Most founders start with their own network, then LinkedIn messages, cold email, Slack and Discord communities, and research panels.
Where it breaks
- Your network runs out after the first few calls, and those people are friendly rather than representative.
- Cold email to a senior buyer asks for 30 minutes and offers nothing back, so it's easy to ignore.
- Research panels are strongest for consumers and common roles. A hospital procurement director or a head of trade compliance is rarely in one.
- Chasing replies takes weeks that should go into the interviews themselves.
How it works with Instant Expert
- 1
Describe the people, not the companies.
Write who has the problem, for example "directors of procurement at US hospital systems with five or more hospitals". You get a list of matching people to review, and you can remove anyone before sending.
- 2
Say it's research, and what you want to learn.
Your note goes to each person as written. Say you're not selling anything, name the problem you're studying, and say how long the call is. A specific question gets better answers than "pick your brain".
- 3
Set a per-call offer and a cap.
Choose the call length (15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes) and what you'll pay per interview. Invite more people than you need: the cap closes the remaining invitations once enough people have booked, so you can't overspend.
- 4
Run the interviews on the call link.
People pick a time and both of you get a calendar invite with a video link. If someone doesn't join, you get a full refund or can pick a new time with them.
What it costs
Worked example
You invite 30 procurement directors to a 30-minute interview at $100 each, with a cap of $1,000 for 10 interviews.
- Each interviewee receives
- $80
- Instant Expert's fee (20%), per interview
- $20
- If 6 people book, you pay
- $600
- If 10 book (the cap), you pay
- $1,000
- If nobody books, you pay
- $0
Once 10 people have booked, the cap is spent and the other invitations close. When you send, one authorization hold of $100 (the largest single offer) is placed on your card; it isn't a charge.
When this isn't the right tool
Use something else when:
- You're interviewing consumers or very common roles. A research panel will fill those faster and usually cheaper.
- You're running a structured study with screener surveys, unmoderated tests or 50+ sessions. Panel tools are built for that.
- The people you want are already your users. Email them yourself; you have a relationship to draw on.
- You can't yet say who has the problem. Do a few conversations in your own network first to narrow the role.
Questions
How many customer discovery interviews should I do?
Keep going until you stop hearing new things. For a single, well-defined role that's often somewhere between 10 and 20 conversations. Set your cap to the number you're aiming for, and add more later if the answers are still surprising you.
How much should I pay for a customer interview?
You decide. Each person comes with a suggested price you can raise or lower, down to $5. Senior and specialized people usually need more. The price includes our 20% fee, and you pay only for calls that get booked.
Does paying people bias the interview?
Paying for someone's time is standard in user research. It buys the conversation, not their agreement. Say up front that it's research, ask about what they did in the past rather than what they would do, and the fee shouldn't change their answers.
Related
- Instant Expert vs User Interviews and RespondentRecruiting from an opted-in research panel versus inviting the exact people you want to learn from.
- Instant Expert vs LinkedIn InMail and Sales NavigatorA free message inside LinkedIn versus a paid offer in the person's work inbox.
- How to find customers to interview before you have customersFind people for customer discovery before you have customers, with real places to look, a bookkeeping example, and a short paid research invitation.
- Customer interviews: how to plan, recruit, run and analyze themA guide to customer interviews in four stages: plan around a decision, recruit people who do the work, ask about real past events, and analyze notes against the decision.
- A 30-minute customer discovery interview scriptA timed customer discovery script with moderator prompts, contingency branches, a worked example, and a practical post-interview debrief.
- How Instant Expert works and what it costsThe full pricing rules, refunds and who you can reach.
- Expert directoryBrowse examples of the people you can reach, by specialty.
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