Solutions / Custom Services / Executive Interviews
Executive Interviews
Executive research fails on access and on interviewing. Both need a different approach from mainstream fieldwork.
Access at the right levelTargeted recruitment to named roles, framed around value to the respondent rather than incentive alone.
Interviewed by peersSector-fluent interviewers, because executives disengage from generic question sets.
Confidentiality handledBlind sponsorship where appropriate, with attribution rules agreed before the conversation.
In simple terms
You tell us which senior roles you need to hear from. We reach them, and we use interviewers who can hold a peer-level conversation and push past the official line.
What Executive Interviews is. Executive interview programmes reach C-suite and senior decision-maker respondents through targeted recruitment and senior interviewers who can hold a peer-level conversation and probe an evasive answer.
What makes this different. Fieldwork quality is decided long before anyone answers a question: in the screener, the instrument design and the quality control. That is where most of our effort goes, and it is why the findings hold up.
What the service covers
These are the areas we work across, such as the ones below. We combine them in the proportion your question needs, and we tell you which ones your question does not need.
Senior recruitment
Targeted approach to named roles, with recruitment framed around value to the respondent rather than incentive alone.
Peer-level interviewing
Interviewers with sector fluency, because executives disengage quickly from generic question sets.
Confidentiality handling
Blind sponsorship where appropriate, with clear rules on attribution agreed before the interview.
Board-ready synthesis
Findings written for a leadership audience, with disagreement between respondents preserved rather than averaged away.
Questions this answers
If something like this is on your agenda, the engagement is already half scoped.
- Can you actually reach decision-makers at this level?
- How do you get a useful hour from someone with no time?
- How do we interview executives at companies that compete with us?
- What incentive works for a respondent who does not need the money?
- How do we know we are getting the real view rather than the official line?
How you can use this
A few of the situations where this service does real work.
Researching a senior audience
Your buyer is in the C-suite and standard panels cannot reach them.
Understanding competitor thinking
You need the view of executives at rival organisations.
Testing a proposition upward
Your pitch targets executives and has only been tested below them.
Informing a board discussion
The board wants external senior perspective, not internal opinion.
What changes for your business
The practical difference between running on this and running on what you have now, such as the following.
You get evidence where none was published
Primary research reaches the questions no dataset answers, which is most of the questions that actually matter.
The data is clean enough to rely on
Screening, quality control and documented exclusion rules mean findings survive scrutiny rather than collapsing under it.
You get topline fast
Headline findings arrive within days of fieldwork closing, so decisions do not wait on the full report.
Respondents tell you the truth
Independent fieldwork changes what people are willing to say, particularly about what is going wrong.
You can run it again
Instrument, screener and methodology are handed over, so tracking the same question over time costs a fraction of the first wave.
You test before you commit
Concepts, prices and propositions get checked with real respondents while changing them is still cheap.
Who this is for
Roles that commission this work most often include those below. Each asks a different question and gets a different cut of the same evidence.
Research and insight teams
We need fieldwork we cannot run in-house.
Specialist capacity to your standards, with instrument, dataset and methodology handed over for reuse.
Product and marketing leadership
What do our customers actually think, rather than what we assume?
Evidence from real respondents, with verbatims, so findings can be acted on rather than debated.
Strategy and commercial leadership
Is there enough here to justify the investment?
Primary evidence on demand, pricing and competitive position where no published data exists.
Operations and quality leadership
Is what we designed actually happening in practice?
Independent observation and measurement, reported by location and behaviour so it supports coaching.
Investors and diligence teams
Can we verify this independently before we commit?
Primary market and customer evidence gathered to a defined protocol, with full quality control.
Typical clients
How we work
The third step is the one that makes the output usable, and it is the one most work of this kind skips.
Understand the decision
We start from what the findings have to support, because that decides sample, method and the precision you actually need to buy.
Design and field properly
Screener, instrument and protocol built and piloted before full fieldwork, with quality control running throughout rather than checked at the end.
Read it for your position
Findings are interpreted against your market position and the decision in front of you, not reported as a neutral data dump.
Deliver so it can be reused
Dataset, verbatims, instrument and methodology handed over, so the next wave costs a fraction of the first.
What you receive
Full dataset with respondent metadata and quality flags
Topline findings within days of fieldwork close
Analytical report with verbatimscross-tabs and implications
Instrumentscreener and methodology note for reuse
Access to Phi, our AI research platformincluded
Every engagement comes with access to Phi. Ask questions of your own findings in plain language, pull the evidence behind any number, and keep querying long after the work is delivered. Your team gets the working intelligence, not just the document.
Open PhiWays to start
Tell us the decision and the date it has to be made by. We will recommend the smallest engagement that gets you there.
Pilot wave
A small first wave to validate approach, screener and instrument.
Full fieldwork
Complete fieldwork to target quota, with analysis and reporting.
Tracking programme
The same instrument repeated on a set cycle, reported as change over time.
Common questions
What incentive do senior respondents accept?
Often insight rather than fee. Sharing anonymised findings back is frequently the strongest recruitment lever at this level.
How long do these take?
Three to six weeks for ten to twenty completes, depending on seniority and sector.
Who owns the work?
You do. It is exclusive to you, it is not resold, and working files are handed over unlocked.
Will you sign an NDA?
Yes, before the first conversation if you prefer.
Tell us the decision you are facing
Send us the question, the context and your timeline. You get back a recommended first step, what evidence it needs, and what it costs. Not a capability deck.