Watch enough interviews or focus groups and you’ll start to notice a few phrases…

• “Tell me more about that.”

• “What does it mean to you?”

These questions can be effective tools to keep the conversation moving and can sometimes elicit interesting responses. However, they are also used when a moderator feels a bit out of their depth, especially as conversations veer into more specialized or technical topics that require deeper industry knowledge.

While “sophisticated naiveté (aka playing dumb)” can be a successful strategy to encourage participants to reveal more of their thought processes, an inability to speak the same “language” as the participant often leaves impactful insights uncovered…

Over-reliance on this technique robs the interview of its key value in more technically-oriented projects – depth. By not being able to dive deep with the participant being interviewed, a moderator may end up missing or glossing over key details that go beyond generic feedback.

Alternatively, knowing what key words and industry jargon means that moderators can process emerging feedback in real time and go deeper than just the set of topics they’ve been briefed on. Pushing past surface level feedback and delving into the heart of topics is often where the most valuable insights are uncovered.

To give an example from a past set of interviews with a highly technical audience…

A TL;DR moderator was interviewing participants about emerging cloud technologies. In the early interviews, participants consistently mentioned apps and classes of technologies that pointed toward an audience outside of our original research scope.

Recognizing this on-the-fly, we probed deeper to confirm our hypothesis, leading to the recommendation to repurpose a portion of the research to this new audience.

This deviation from the original plan ultimately led to one of the most important insights from the research: identifying an emerging audience we expect to become more prevalent in the industry that was not previously a strategic focus.

The skill to keep up with sharp technical minds requires preparation and practice. It requires becoming a de facto subject-matter expert.

B2B moderators must be able to recognize key terms, comprehend the subtext of an interviewee’s responses, and identify opportunities to go deeper together. Building this expertise takes time, but these are a few techniques that we leverage in our approach:

1. We do our homework – Background knowledge is critical. There are so many sources to pull from, including vendor documentation, third-party blogs, and learning content, just to name a few. Interview prep must go beyond a discussion guide and participant bio.

2. AI can lend a hand, as a starting point – while every researcher must be careful with exposing confidential information when using Generative AI, tools like ChatGPT can be a starting point to begin your learning journey. Gen AI can be used to summarize topic areas or better understand job roles. While you still must do the learning yourself, Generative AI can help act as a road map and identify where to look.

3. Immerse ourselves in the audience – We follow the same publishers, thought-leaders, and industry news as members of our frequently interviewed audiences. We also debrief key emerging insights from our interviews internally, sharing those ah-ha moments amongst ourselves to further our own knowledge of our participants.

While our primary job function remains focused on being effective researchers, acquiring some of the same knowledge as the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) that we interview can help elevate their insights and provide a more nuanced and faithful voice of the customer. As you seek to learn from nuanced B2B audiences, always consider whether your moderator is equipped to get the most out of your participants and can help tell the detailed version of their story.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series on building trust with B2B audiences.