Ultimate Guide to Interviews #3: Framing the interview

How to manage expectations in outreach and the interview itself

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Recap last week

Last week, I covered interview structure and offered some ideas on how to open the interview. If you missed that, click here. There are some neat frameworks in there.

Chapter overview

1. Goal: Build a customer theory

2. Structuring and starting the interview: Keep your baby in your bag

3. Framing the interview ⬅️ This post

4. Don’t open with problem search

5. Finding emotions and purpose

6. Identify the big picture of your customer

7. Understand the criteria of success via competition

8. Using the film reel technique to get detailed explanations

9. Six techniques on how to wiggle out extra information

10. Getting your baby out of the bag

11. Crafting your customer theory

3.0 Framing the interview

To get a smooth start, not only does chitchat help, but clear expectation management is key. I refer to this as framing the interview. Good framing makes sure

• People know what you are going to do

• People can evaluate if they want and can help you

• People don’t get surprised during the interview

A good frame starts in the contact you have before the actual interview. Rarely do you just jump to questioning people.

3.1 Your outreach message

These are the three outreach strategies I see the most:

• Wild on the street

• Cold Outreach (DM/Email)

• Warm intro / existing customer

For inspiration on where to find people, check out this guide.

A. Wild on the street

For consumer research, visiting busy places such as train stations can be a quick way to gain insight into the market. These interviews often are short, 3 to 5 minutes, but sometimes people can take 20-30 minutes for you. Again, people love talking about themselves.

This obviously works best if your solution is potentially mass market. An online supermarket I once mentored used this technique, with effect, because basically everyone does grocery shopping.

Frame 1: The Stranger

How to open such an interview without scaring people away? You should try a couple and see what works best for you. Let’s say you are building a coffee brand:

You: “Hey, I’m not trying to sell you anything, I’m building a new product for coffee lovers and doing some market research. Can I ask you two brief questions?”

While it’s true that you often only get 3 to 5 minutes for each of these brief chats, you can ask for contact details for a longer talk. If they say yes, that’s a good signal.

The guide continues after the paywall

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Special offer: 50% off for the first year!

That’s less than €2.50 per month for full access to Doctor Market Fit.

Offer valid until November 5th.

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