5 Tips To Get The Most Out of Expert Interviews

Blog author Anne Kroijer is a Co-Founder at OnFrontiers, a peer-to-peer market insights platform.

Based on thousands of Expert interviews that we have facilitated over OnFrontiers.com we have put together guidelines to get the most out of your Expert interview:

Connect with our team to learn more about our customized interview templates to increase your learnings from your Expert interviews – Email us at hello@onfrontiers.com.

60min Interview Guidelines:

Like most things, the more you are able to prepare in advance, the more you will get from your time!

  1. Prepare your questions and share them in advance (these do not have to be highly detailed, but should state your main goals/questions for the call as directly as possible)
  2. Align on key objectives [if other colleagues are on project]: Meet for 5 minutes beforehand to agree on main questions/objectives
  3. Optimize your time: Feel free to interrupt the Expert and guide them towards the most important topics – this is your time!  Here’s a suggested timeline:
    • 0-5 minutes: Give context for the call and explain what you know already
    • 5-30 minutes: Try to cover most of your main questions, to understand answers at high level. As you discuss at high level, flag topics of greatest interest where you want to go into in more detail in second half of your call
    • 30-50 minutes: Probe Expert more deeply on two to three topics of greatest importance. Address additional topics of interest that may have come up and think to yourself, “Was there anything else we should have asked?”
    • 50-60 minutes: Agree on any action items discussed (e.g., any data to exchange, other people to contact). Thank the Expert!
  4. Ask Expert to provide data where helpful (e.g. key figures, documents, articles mentioned during call)
  5. Use your call recordings and transcript that you can access via OnFrontiers.com to share learnings with colleagues and discuss key takeaways

Let us know your thoughts on best practices for Expert interviews  and if you’d like to give OnFrontiers a look, you can sign up for free here.