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OMC | CVP

Contextual inquiry | Discussion guide
SME Recommendation 1 - Gaining access to paying customers
10 August 2021
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Interview outline
This document serves as a guide and does not require the questions to be asked verbatim.
The facilitators may ask probing questions, in addition to the questions in this guide, in order to gain a deeper understanding.
Contextual interviews require the focus to be driven by the participant’s current behaviour and environment i.e. areas that are most pertinent to their work.
This may vary between participants depending on their behaviour and experience.
The timings in this guide are estimations.
Research objectives
The objective of these contextual inquiries is to gather and document information around the challenges people may face in “getting access to paying customers” and particularly around working with corporates. regarding the job to be done of ‘gaining access to paying customers.’ This will be done by identifying their activities around identifying opportunities and the challenges involved in working with large enterprises, as well as the benefit to their business.
Identify how the opportunity to work with OM came about?
What was the process of coming to work working with corporate as an SME?
Identify challenges in gaining opportunities to work with LE?
What is the journey from initial introduction to onboarding?
How do you manage your working relationship with LE
​​What has been the largest challenge in working with LE
What has been the greatest benefit to your business from working with LE
Identify if there is an opportunity for them to leverage OM’s networks & resources to gain greater market access

Session overview


Introduction
Facilitator introduces themself and other researchers to the participants and runs through points as ethically required.
We start by asking background questions to set context for the session.

Section 1 | Overview (Background)


General questions about the participant’s role within their company. Understand corporate vendor history

Section 2 | Identifying the opportunity to work with LE and managing working relationship

Discuss opportunity to work with LE and how this came about. Understand the process of how this opportunity arose.

Section 3 | How has working with a LE impacted your business

Understand the benefits and challenges of working with LE. Understand how working with LE can assist in expanding SMEs client base.
What opportunities can OM provide to your business
Can you scale to work with multiple LE

Introduction

(3 minutes)
Welcome and thank you for talking to us today.
My name is [moderator name] and I work for a company called The Delta.
As part of discovery with OML, we are looking to understand SMEs challenges in gaining access to paying customers. We are particularly interested in the role which LE can play in supporting your business in increasing your customer base.
The purpose of this session is to get an understanding of your business and any challenges you may face.
We’re a team working on this project and some team members are sitting in on this session. They will only be listening and might ask questions at the end of this session.
We would like to record this session. The recording will help us listen and pay attention to you, and not worry about taking detailed notes. The recording will stay with us and will not be shared with anyone. Everything will be kept confidential. We also ask that you keep our discussion and anything that we share with you during our session confidential.
NDA Agreement:
Typeform NDA
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Do you have any questions before we begin?




Section 1 | Background
(5 minutes)

Overview (Background)

These are general questions about the participant’s role to help us understand their role within the business and ensure we recruited the right participant.
To begin, I’d like to understand more about you, your company and working relationship with OM

Tell me a little bit about yourself
What is your role in your company?
How long have you been in this role?
How old is the company?
How many employees do you have?

Could you give me a quick overview of your organisation and what services you provide?
Who is your target customer

What is your corporate vendor history?

Section 2 | Building a corporate relationship
(15 minutes)
We will ask participants to talk through experience of building & managing a working relationship to work with OM
Talk me through how most of your business development work occurs?
Probe: is it through networks, advertising, referrals?

What was the first product/service which you provided to OM/LE

(Actively in the process of trying to work with a LE)


We would like to understand the way in which the opportunity arose to work with OM, how you came across the opportunity, all the way through to being on boarded as a supplier in order to understand if there is any way in which this process could be formalised or improved for an SME, not just for OM but also for access to other LE opportunities.
How did you become aware of the opportunity to work with OM?
If you have worked with other LE: How did these opportunities arise
Who within your organisation is responsible for building the relationship with OM
Who manages this relationship?

What did the process/journey of getting to supply OM look like from initial introductions up to the point of being onboarded?
What was the timeline from first discussions up until the point of securing supplier work?
What were the greatest challenges within this process?
Do you feel that this could have been shortened?
Follow up if they have worked with other LE: How did this process differ from that of OM (Depending on time)
Did you feel that when trying to secure business with LE, you were always speaking to/knew who to speak to, when selling your product or service?
Were there any challenges in communications?
What were the greatest barriers to securing work with LE, with you being an SME.
Probe: Awareness around opportunities, corporate barriers, lack of experience and knowledge; knowing who to talk to?

What are the largest challenges in delivering contracted OM work?
Probe: is it in meeting quality standards; regulations, requirements documentation or is it in scaling to meet the demand?
(Depending on time)
Now that you are a supplier of OM how are you made aware of new work opportunities?
(Probe) Means of communication/platforms/tools

Section 3 | Impact of working with LE for an SME
(10 minutes)
How has working with OM/LE assisted or grown your business?
Probe: How much has your business expanded/grown since landing LE contracts. Has the number of employed staff increased as a result

Have you worked with any other LE’s or have them as existing clients now? How did you go about acquiring them? Are you looking to service any other LE and if so, how are you going about this?

How could you benefit from the resources & assets which the likes of OM and LE have at their disposal?
Probe: Could you benefit from access to OM’s networks to increase your customer base and drive business growth

What impact would a referral from Old Mutual have to your business?
Probe: could this assist in securing future business and contracts?

Section 4 | Assumption Testing Le Map

Our “Le Map” platform
help/s SMEs
who want to get access to the right person at a corporate to talk to and pitch their services
by using multiple data sources (including experts, linkedin etc) to simply explain who they should approach
(unlike) “Walking the floors of old mutual” or trawling linkedin or looking for referrals
Have you worked with any other LE’s or have them as existing clients now? How did you go about acquiring them? Are you looking to service any other LE and if so, how are you going about this?

We believe that businesses seek new contracts with corporate clients more than x times per year
What details are you looking for when identifying people to whom you should reach out to?

We believe that providing the name; surname; contact details and best medium of outreach is a value add to business
Does the lead introduction need to be facilitated by a 3rd party who has an existing relationship with that organisation/person?

Would you be willing to pay for a product which provides you with an overview of the corporate structure and leads relevant to your business?
Would you be willing to pay per lead?
Would you want to pay a success fee?
How much would you pay?

We believe that a user would pay xyz for this platform

Section 5 | Assumption Testing TrustSME

Our TrustSME platforms
help/s SMEs who want to gain access to new cusomters
by establishing a wholisitc trust score compiled of customer, user, supplier and partners referrals. This is validated by a 3rd party (TrustSME)
and allows any potential customer to view the score and level of the SME before working with them.
Are testimonials beneficial to your business when doing business development/sales work?
How important are they in landing new customers?

We believe that businesses utilise testimonials when seeking new business opportunities
Do you have any difficulties in collecting B2B client testimonials?
If yes, how do you usually go about collecting testimonials?
How frequently are you requesting business testimonials?
Would you be willing to utilise a 3rd party to collect, vet and score your testimonials?

We believe that it is difficult for businesses to collect testimonials
s
Does your business ever require anonymised testimonials i.e. if a customer is not willing to provide their company's name next to a testimonial?

We believe that businesses can’t always disclose who they have worked with
We believe that not all corporates are willing to provide business testimonials
OMC | CVP
Session overview
Section 1 | Overview (Background)
Section 2 | Identifying the opportunity to work with LE and managing working relationship
Section 3 | How has working with a LE impacted your business
Introduction
Overview (Background)
(Actively in the process of trying to work with a LE)
Section 4 | Assumption Testing Le Map
Section 5 | Assumption Testing TrustSME
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