Begin with the business question you set in Chapter 1. If the goal is to lift trial-to-paid conversion, every prompt must serve that end. Draft a three-act script.

Act one covers past context. Ask when the problem first became urgent and what alternatives were considered. Act two explores present pain. Probe the single biggest frustration today and how it affects their targets. Act three imagines the future ideal. Invite them to describe a perfect day if the problem vanished.

Limit each act to two open prompts plus one scaling question such as “On a scale of one to ten, how confident were you at sign-up?”. Conclude with “Anything I should have asked?” to surface angles you missed.

This concise script keeps the call under thirty minutes and leaves space for unexpected depth, setting up the best-practice tactics in the next section.

Open the call by stating purpose, confirming recording and stressing the thirty-minute cap. Respecting time builds trust and candour.

Use a recording tool so you can focus on the conversation. Any platform works. Right now I alternate between Notion AI’s built-in transcriber, Fireflies for automatic summaries and a straight Google Meet recording when other options fail.

Once recording starts, stop typing. Eye contact and silent pauses encourage richer stories. When a reply ends, wait three seconds. Most guests add the gold sentence during that silence.

These practices extract clear quotes without notes, preparing you to ask targeted questions that matter, which we tackle next.

Trigger moment questions reveal the buying spark. “Tell me the day you decided the old approach no longer worked.” Listen for deadlines, stakeholder pressure or personal risk.

Decision-process prompts map the internal journey. “Who else had to say yes and what convinced them?” In B2B services this often uncovers hidden influencers such as finance or legal teams.

Competitive lens questions surface differentiators. “What nearly stopped you choosing us?” For the SaaS example add, “Which part of the trial almost made you quit?”.

Close with outcome reflection. “How does success look six months in?” The answer guides future case-study metrics.

Not all insight arrives in the call. Capturing immediate reflections ensures none is lost, which is the focus of the following section.

End the recording and spend five minutes writing raw impressions. Note emotional words, exact phrases and unexpected objections. Mark lines that could double as ad copy with an asterisk.

Add a quick mood verdict such as “excited but price sensitive” and log unanswered curiosities to update the next script iteration. This rapid reflection preserves context while it is fresh.

Store notes beside the transcript in your workspace. Notion allows inline highlights; Fireflies adds timestamped comments; Google Meet recordings can be paired with a separate note doc.

With thoughts captured, your data are ready for thematic clustering, which you will perform in the next chapter.

A lean script tied to the business question, disciplined interview practice, targeted prompts and immediate reflection transform half-hour chats into growth assets. Five such calls deliver language that rewrites ads, objections that reshape funnels and metrics that persuade stakeholders.

Run the playbook before your next creative brief. Insight gathered today will save thousands in guess-and-check spend tomorrow. In the next chapter you will turn these raw notes into structured insights that power tests instead of filling slides.