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Our team at Google Ventures meets with startups every week to advise CEOs, give design feedback, and answer pressing questions. We talk a lot about customer research — why it’s so important, and how to run research sprints. One objection is that it can be tough to find customers to interview, especially when they are busy professionals or experts. The questions usually go something like this:

Our customers are super-busy experts. How can I recruit enough of them for research interviews? How do I convince them to give us time and access?

I’ve run hundreds of research sprints for companies across dozens of industries. I’ve interviewed oncologists, traders, pediatricians, corporate executives, restaurant managers, and many other specialized, busy, and/or well-compensated people. When I recruit for these interviews, I often lean on the startups themselves to get started.

That’s right — you probably already have the contacts and access needed to recruit these “hard to find” customers! If you’re an oncology company, you probably know some oncologists. If you’re working in finance, you probably know other people who work in finance. And so on.

Once I’ve made contact with a few of the right people, I try several recruiting strategies to find more. Here are some of the techniques that have worked well for me:

Snowball sampling. Ask each participant to suggest or introduce colleagues who might be interested in the project.

Incorporate research into sales and support calls with potential and current customers. This makes some founders uneasy, but customers often appreciate it as a sign of your commitment to understanding their needs. (Just be careful to switch out of “pitch” mode and into “listen” mode if you combine research with sales.)

Tap your own network of friends, coworkers, and family to see if they know anyone who fits the bill.

Contact professional associations. A quick Google search will turn up an organization, association, or society for just about any profession you can imagine. Reach out to the membership director for help contacting members who might be willing to talk.

Go to them. Visit places or events where your customers are likely to congregate — conferences, seminars, training sessions, and social events. Advertise with websites, forums, journals, and other media where your customers spend time.

Hire a professional recruiter or expert network with experience or contacts in that domain. Vendors can be expensive, so I usually treat this as a last resort.

Before you contact these expert customers and ask them for an interview, there are a couple of sensitive issues you’ll want to figure out: incentives and confidentiality.

I typically offer a $100 gift card for customer interviews. That’s not going to cut it with these customers. Some people may be enticed by a larger “honorarium” or charitable donation made in their names. But experts often respond more to professional incentives, such as sharing a version of the research results, previewing a new or advanced technology, or giving them credit in a public way.

Many experts will be sensitive about sharing proprietary or confidential info with you. For example, investors won’t want to share their secrets; physicians are required to protect patients’ personal info; et cetera. Go out of your way to reassure people that you’re not digging for professional secrets. Explain your goals and the kinds of things you’re interested in. And be prepared to conduct your interviews without video or audio recording. (Bring someone to take notes.)

Customer research isn’t easy, but it’s absolutely worth the investment of time and effort. Don’t let the difficulties of finding specialized expert customers get in the way of benefiting from research at your company.

For more information and resources on research, check out the GV guide to research, including How to find great participants for your user study.

If you have other tips or experiences to share, please Tweet us at @GVDesignTeam or @MMargolis.