Gather Empirical Evidence From Sector Stakeholders
Conduct structured interviews with target buyers, review industry procurement guidelines, and analyse historical sales data or benchmark reports. Capture first-hand insights regarding formal approval steps, sign-off thresholds, and compliance requirements.
Grounding the map in empirical data removes dangerous founder assumptions regarding how enterprise software or sector services are bought. This builds an audit trail of real-world evidence that validates the true mechanics of the buying journey.
Collate primary interview transcripts, secondary industry procurement frameworks, and competitive deal teardowns into an organised evidence log. Every identified stakeholder role must be cross-referenced against at least two independent primary or secondary sources.
Five questions an expert would ask when reviewing your output
Use these to challenge assumptions, pressure-test your logic, and check the quality of this action's output in the context of the parent task and wider venture development.
- 1
What proportion of your stakeholder insights originates from direct primary interviews with actual procurement leads versus secondary assumptions?
- 2
How did you control for selection bias when interviewing friendly industry contacts who may not reflect standard procurement rigidity?
- 3
What contradictory evidence emerged during customer discovery regarding who holds final sign-off authority, and how did you resolve it?
- 4
What specific regulatory or compliance hurdles were uncovered that were missing from your initial market assumptions?
- 5
How fresh is the secondary procurement data you relied upon, given recent macroeconomic shifts in sector IT spending?