You want to make sure you have a good set of candidates you can use for interviews and usability tests. To recruit them you’re going to create a qualification questionnaire. The qualification questionnaire should be no more than 5-7 questions. The first two questions should qualify the user, and the next ones should dig into the specifics of the problem.
Here’s an example of a questionnaire that I created for BizeeBee:
1. Do you currently own a yoga studio or manage one? ← I am mainly
interested in talking to studio owners and managers, and no one else just yet.
2. Do you use a software program to manage your studio?← I want to
know if they are using a competitor’s solution.
3. If you answered yes to #2, are you happy with your software
program?← If they are unhappy, then they may be looking for a better solution.
4. If you answered no to #2, why aren’t you using a software
program?← If they hate software, then chances are they won’t be early adopters.
If they just hate what’s out in the market, then they may be looking for a better solution.
5. Would you be interested in exploring a new software program
to manage your studio?← If they aren’t interested then I don’t want to waste
their time or mine.
Notice that I’m not getting into any details of my solution; I am merely determining whether they are interested and would be a good interview candidate.
Exercise 5.1: Create your own qualification questionnaire and send it out!
Objective: To recruit people who are actually interested in your idea, may be
potential customers, and can help with various stages like customer interviews and usability testing.
Directions: Do not type these questions inside of an email and expect people to
email you a reply back. People are lazy and hate to type; they’d prefer just clicking! Plus, you might not have everyone’s email addresses and may need to post the questionnaire on other channels.
My two favorite products for creating forms are Wufoo 28 and Google Forms. 29 I
love their forms because they are super easy to create and you can embed them into your website. This is especially important if you don’t have people’s email addresses and need to reach out to them via a tweet or a post. Embedding the form into a website gives it more context and credibility than if it’s just a direct link within the tweet or post.
Pro tip: If you are going to embed the form on your site, make sure that the page
you send them to doesn’t have additional links like site navigation or unrelated CTAs (calls to action), such as buttons. This will distract people from filling out your form! Wufoo also gives you some great analytics, like how many people viewed the form and filled it out.
Now, take the link to your form and put it in a very short email—3 lines max! Here’s an example with a link; Google Forms also gives you the option to embed the form in the email:
Hi there,
I’m building a solution for yoga studios to manage their businesses, and I’d really appreciate it if you took just a moment to answer just 5 questions. Your feedback will help me build a better solution!
Answer questions now! 30
Kindly, Poornima
You can also post the questionnaire link on your favorite social media channels. If you’re sending it out in a tweet, do something like:
I’m looking to help yoga studios manage their business & need some feedback. Want to help? Please answer 5 questions http://buff.ly/1eoN55r
3 more important tips:
• Get the survey respondents’ contact info. This is not a blind survey.
You want to follow up with these people, so you’ll need to include fields for their names and email addresses or some other contact info.
• Add validation to the form elements. People will inevitably fat-finger
their email addresses or ramble on if you give them a text box (if you do, limit the number of characters). This is super easy to do with Wufoo, more so than with Google Forms. And be sure to indicate a field as "required" if you need respondents to answer a question.
• Test your form out! Go through the form once, answer the questions, and
make sure the responses were recorded.
Pro tip: If you want to get fancy, you can also customize any email responses that go out once they’ve submitted the form. I find that these personal touches keep people interested and engaged because you’re showing your appreciation.
Once you’ve sent your qualification questionnaire out, you’ll need to wait about 24-48 hours to get a response. Most people respond within that period of time. Some will take up to a week, but after that point, it’s highly unlikely that they will respond. If you send it out via email and don’t get a single response within a week, then send a follow-up email with a friendly reminder. Don’t feel like this is an intrusion; sometimes people just have a busy week, and there is no harm in sending them a short follow-up note.
If you sent the link out via social media, then people may miss it if they weren’t around at the time you posted. So feel free to post it at a few different times during the course of a week.
If you still don’t get any responses, then chances are you’ll need to take an alternate approach like honing in on people from your network and reaching out to them. Or changing your messaging to help people understand why it’s important for them to respond by explaining to them the end goal of what you’re doing.
Section 6
Following up
Once you do get responses, you need to take the time to identify the people who are qualified and follow up with them.
The next step is to do a customer interview, and I’ll get into the specifics of how to conduct a customer interview in the upcoming sections.
The key to following up is to keep building engagement, and to do that, you’re going to need to keep the momentum going. So contact the qualified person, thank them for filling out the questionnaire, and ask if they’d be open to doing a 30-60 minute interview either in person or online. Give them a few time slots when you’re available, and if that doesn’t work, then ask them what works for them.
You want to make the process as noninvasive to their schedule as possible, but you still want them to commit and be focused during the interview.
Don’t wait more than a week to do the follow up! It’s fine if it takes a few weeks before you have the interview.
If they don’t respond, remember that people get busy, and don’t hesitate to send out a friendly reminder!
For friendly reminders in general, I have a 1-2-3 rule. I follow up 1 week after my initial contact. If I haven’t heard back, then I reach out again 2 weeks after the first friendly follow up. If I still don’t hear back, then I’ll wait another 3 weeks before I send a final follow up. If I still don’t hear back, then I’ll just move on because they’re either too busy or uninterested.
Section 7