Opener to preserve a non-pitch frame
Use this exact frame before any substantive question: “We are not pitching on this call. We are trying to understand actual buying, adoption, workarounds, and failed attempts in construction through concrete examples. I will ask for recent projects, tools, numbers, roles, and artifacts; rough ranges are fine.”
Extracting real numbers when someone says “it varies”
Ask: “Could we pick the most recent example and use that, even if it is not representative?”
Ask: “Which band is closest: under £1k, £1–10k, £10–50k, £50–250k, or above £250k?”
Ask: “Who has access to the invoice, renewal, purchase-order, or day-rate number if you do not?”
Ask: “What was the amount on the last signed purchase order, renewal, or invoice you remember?”
Ask: “Was the spend project-level, department-level, company overhead, group budget, client-funded, or charged through another line?”
Signals to trust
Trust money already spent, renewed, cut, or reallocated.
Trust vivid stories with dates, project names, roles, artifacts, and a beginning-middle-end sequence.
Trust active workarounds that people maintain despite official systems.
Trust a past switch, cancellation, expansion, re-hire, or renewal fight.
Trust a named blocker, signer, champion, or document owner.
Trust numbers with provenance: invoice, PO, renewal, board pack, project budget, licence count, support contract, or timesheet.
Noise to discount
Discount compliments, future claims, “that sounds interesting,” “we are exploring,” “AI is important,” “visibility would be useful,” and “we would consider it.”
Discount opinions about what the industry needs unless they are attached to a specific purchase, renewal, failed pilot, workaround, or budget owner.
Discount stated enthusiasm when the person cannot name a paid tool, trial, artifact, internal action, or follow-up from the last year.
Discount broad market claims until the speaker names how many companies, pitches, purchases, or renewals they are drawing from.
Things not to say in these calls
Do not describe a product, feature, demo, platform, agent, automation, workflow, service package, pricing model, or wedge.
Do not ask “would you buy,” “would you pay,” “would this be useful,” “do you like this,” or “is this a problem?”
Do not signal the answer you hope to hear by mentioning AI enthusiasm, field intelligence, productivity gains, cost savings, claims, disputes, or any named opportunity before the interviewee raises it.
Do not ask for market-size guesses, ideal pricing, future budgets, or speculative adoption.
Do not rescue vague answers with your own examples; ask for the last real case instead.
Do not pitch your team’s capabilities, background, speed, technical strength, or intended direction before the close.
Clean firm-insider close
Ask: “Which anonymised artifact from the examples we discussed could you share afterwards: an invoice, renewal email, purchase order, spreadsheet, workflow screenshot, approval note, rollout plan, project report, or post-mortem?”
Ask: “Who else inside or adjacent to the firm can walk us through a different concrete buying, renewal, churn, or workaround story?”
Ask: “Could we schedule a follow-up around one specific project or purchase and reconstruct the timeline with dates, roles, costs, and artifacts?”
Clean investor close
Ask: “Which founder can walk us through a real construction sale, renewal, churn, or stalled pilot with dates, buyer roles, and evidence?”
Ask: “Which buyer or operator can give the other side of that same story?”
Ask: “Which anonymised diligence note, board memo excerpt, churn reason, pipeline summary, or reference-call question could we use to make the pattern concrete?”