- Hello everyone. So my wife and I are currently
enjoying a weekend stroll, here from Munich. We are on our way to our
favorite ice cream place here in our neighborhood, right now we're walking through
an urban gardening project that is around us as well. So yeah, just stick in
here with me for a second and then we will start
with this week's new video. (melodious rhythm music) - So here's some zucchini. Then you can see some fresh kale. And if you want some rhubarb
cake, here is some rhubarb. - There is one thing
that you will for sure do very frequently in consulting and this is conducting expert interviews. So on different types of projects, it will be necessary for you
to tap into expertise of people who have a lot of experience in a specific industry or function, to get that knowledge and consolidate that into insights for your clients. So welcome to another video here on my channel Firm Learning. My name is Heinrich and on
my channel I want to help you to become successful in the
first years of your career. Today, we are going to do
this video in three parts. First, I'm going to talk about
what expert interviews are, what the contexts are
in which you need them. Second, I'm going to share a
couple of very insightful tips on how to conduct them and also how to find the
expert that you might need. And third, I'm going to show you a tool that you could do to do exactly that because this video is
sponsored by Inex One. It's a platform where you can source expert interview partners. So let's get into it. I trust
it's going to be interesting. Let's start by talking about why you
even need expert interviews in professional services. Shouldn't a consulting team already know all the things by themself? Well, of course, it is usually the case that
on a consulting project team, there will be consultants, project leads, and, of course, especially,
also partners staffed on that that will have deep industry
and function expertise and will be able to
contribute significantly to the project's success. Though what's also true is that you, in general, do not just want
to base your recommendations based on the insights of
1 or 2 or 3 people or so, but as a general best practice to tap into knowledge of other
industry experts as well, ensuring that every person
who knows something valuable can be staffed on a given project. But this is not only true for consulting. Another sector that also
very frequently relies on expert interviews is private equity. So private equity is the
type of firms that purchase other firms with the hope
to in a couple of years, sell them for an even higher price. And what these companies, these private equity companies need to do, is when they look for targets
to potentially acquire, they need to have a very,
very solid understanding of that company's industry, of that company's market position. So what they do is something that is called
a commercial due diligence. They look into the
company's business model, they look into how the company
is currently positioned, how the market looks like. And here, again, surely they don't know all
of this for themselves, but very frequently, they tap into expert interviews. They reach out to industry experts, people who really know the industry well, to get their insights
and better understand how the company is currently structured, what their value proposition is, and whether it might
be a worthwhile company to acquire indeed. Now let's look into
some tips and insights, what you can do to conduct a successful expert interview. And the first question is: What people should you actually
talk to for your project? And, of course, it will
depend on the specific project that you're working on. I will now focus on due diligence type of projects, but this is applicable to
many other situations as well. So in these projects I like to speak to three
different type of experts. The first is former C-suite
people or former sales directors of direct competitors of the company that you are actually interested in. If you talk to people
who worked at competitors of that company, they will likely understand
the market very well. Especially the C-level people
often have an overall view on the whole market. And similar things are true
for the sales directors. Next will be former procurement directors of companies that would be
customers of the company that you would be interested in. And the reason is that
these procurement directors, they will be the people that
will buy from the company that you're looking into. So these people will very well understand what the buying criteria are and how the offering of this
specific company differentiates itself from maybe offerings
of some of their competitors. When now you can understand what the relative position
of strength of the company is or maybe also some weaknesses that the offering of this company has. Last but not least, you will want to talk to
C-level people of companies in the supply chain of the company that you're interested in. So both the tier one and
the tier two suppliers of that company, just to get a better feeling
of how the company is perceived by its biggest supplier partners. Another question is: How
should you approach them? What questions should
you ask these people? And here, two tips I'd like to share: The first is, what's always key, is to have the end product in mind, right? So with the results of that interview, what do you wanna do with that? What do you need to create based on that? And in these types of projects
and these due diligences, often it's a slide deck. It's a document that you create that you will then later work with. So what's always super
beneficial for this exercise, but also for many other similar tasks, is to already have an outline
of that document ready. Make sure that you have
prepared a straw man of the document, because then you exactly know what the pages are that you want to fill. Ideally, you also what the structure of these pages are supposed to be. Because then you can in a
very targeted way collect the information that you need
to fill all of these pages. And if you want to learn
more about how to create such a straw man, I will link a video above here
that discuss this in detail. So check it out. Now, my second tip is about the questions that you are supposed to
ask in these interviews. And now I can talk a lot
about very specific questions that you should ask. What I actually did as a service to you is that I created a list of the most relevant questions
for these expert interviews that you can very well ask
these different types of people that we just talked about. I compiled these questions in
a questionnaire cheat sheet, which I would assume will be quite helpful if you are planning to
conduct expert interviews in the future. So you can find a link to
exactly this questionnaire in the video description. So check out the link
in the video description to download it. Now let's look into some behavioral tips, what you can do to make the
most out of your interview. And now we'll skip all the
general interview tips and tricks because I already created a
video about that in the past. I will link it somewhere above here. I just wanna make two
very specific remarks. And the first is to be
empathetic with the interviewee, given that for many of these people, especially if they are external experts, for many of them it might
likely be the first time they conduct such an interview. So understand that for them
it's a rather new thing. Maybe they are nervous. Maybe they are a bit unsure
how to behave, what to say. So be empathetic with that and make sure that in the beginning you create a comfortable
conversation environment where these people can slowly break up and then talk to you and
share their knowledge. My second advice comes from working with some junior consultants who sometimes conducted
these interviews as well. And what I've often seen is that some of these
people are like very strict from the beginning, asking super detailed
number-oriented questions in the couple of very first sentences. This often is a bit difficult. It can often feel intimidating and can feel like putting
the person in a corner. So you will lean from my
experience what works better to create just this open environment, is rather starting with
some more general, wide, open-ended questions where the person can
slowly get going sharing some information with you. This will often be done easier. And also the likelihood is higher that you really get the
information that you want if you give the person some time to ease into the conversation. Now, I hope you are convinced of the value of expert interviews, but now you might ask
yourself the question, "Where do I even get these experts from? How do I find people that I can talk to for these purchases?" And usually in these
firms you have two sources that you can tap into. The first is internal experts and the second is external experts. So let's start with the,
probably, easier one, the internal experts. So, usually, in your network,
in the consulting firm, you will find people who might be able to contribute something
to that specific topic. You also might be able to
just write an email newsletter to the interest group of people working in that specific industry
or function practice, to find another senior project lead, another partner who has worked
in this specific industry and has a lot of things to
share that you can reach out to. But in many cases, the internal
experts will not be enough. And indeed also, depending
on the firm you work for, maybe your internal network
of people with expertise in a specific topic is not even that vast. So here you need to reach
out to external people, not working for your firm. So how do you do that? And here, thank God, something
like expert networks exist. They are different service
providers out there that you can reach out to, and they will be able to
come up with a list of people with a background in a specific industry. Often even people who have
worked in a very specific company that you can target. These are people that signed up for a specific expert network. They'll let this network know that they would be open to
conduct such an interview. Of course, it would cost
something. It's not for free. But then via these networks,
you can find these people. Of course, I hope from what I've said, the issue with using these expert networks already became clear. And this is that it's
not really guaranteed that only because you talk
to one specific network, you really find the best profile
that you're interested in. And because there are
different service providers, often you end up talking to
lots of different parties. They all have a slightly
different process. They send you lists of
potential candidates. It's a back and forth of many
different service providers. I know this from experience, having handled this in the
past, a lot as an associate. And this is where Inex
One comes into play. It's a service provider that aggregates all the different expert
networks out there. It was founded by another
former McKinsey consultant. So let me show you what it's
all about and how it works. So let's look into how you
could do that with Inex One. So this is the webpage
of them that you see. So you see here, The
Expert Network Marketplace. I will link it also in
the video description if you are interested in it. You'll see that their services are focused on firms like consulting,
private equity, and so on, but certainly you can also
use it for your own projects. And what I think is pretty cool is that access to the platform and working with it is
completely free of charge. It is only once you really sign up and then conduct expert calls, that they charge you for it. So in case this is of interest, just sign up and check it out, I guess. Now here to the platform itself. How it works is that you can
just create a new project where you're write into
what it's all about, some descriptions, what
you're interested in, when you want to conduct the interview, what geography the person is
supposed to be in and so on. So you can really fill
in all the information that is important to you. Then once you filled it all
out, you click Continue. Then you can choose
from the expert networks that they prioritized based on your input, that you can select. Then you press Publish. And then a new project is created where now people can apply. And they also have an interface where then people submit
their information, their CVs, and then you can really
schedule the interviews with the people you want. Here are some examples of ongoing projects where there are people
that you already talked to. Here the experts that you
might already have talked to. You see the fees, how expensive they are, then just schedule them, and then this is just what you need to do. So when I first saw this
I was quite impressed just because I remembered how
painful this whole process of interacting with
the different agencies, selecting the experts, and deciding and
scheduling the interviews, how painful this all was. So if you're interested in something, if this is something that
you need to do as well, I encourage you to just
check Inex One out. Again, signing up is free of charge. And then see whether this is a solution that works for you as well. I'm sure that I'm not the only one here in the Firm Learning community with expertise in conducting
expert interviews. So I'd love to hear about
your insights as well. Do you have any tips to share? Please leave them in the comment section for the benefit of everyone
watching this channel. And as always, if you took any value out of
watching this video at all, please hit the like button
for the YouTube algorithm, and also subscribe to this
channel to stay up-to-date on all my content. My name is Heinrich. You also can find me on other platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok,
Twitch or LinkedIn. I will leave links to
the socials here below in the video description. In the video description
you will also find the download link to the cheat sheet with all the questions
that I talked about. Big thank you also to the sponsor of this
week's video, Inex One. If you want to learn more about them and test their platform, link to their platform is
in the video description and last but not all, a big thanks to all the
members of the channel. You're really helping me.
Thank you so much for that. And my name is Heinrich. I'm releasing new videos
every single Saturday. So see you again next
week. Until then, bye bye.