Create your survey

Create your survey

Create your survey

How to create prospect survey about buying timeline

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

·

Aug 28, 2025

Create your survey

This article will guide you on how to create a prospect survey about buying timeline—fast, with the help of a conversational AI survey tool. Specific lets you build a survey like this in seconds, simplifying the whole process so you can focus on collecting real insights.

Steps to create a survey for prospects about buying timeline

If you want to save time, just generate a survey with Specific. You’ll have it ready in seconds. If you want to do it from scratch or tweak it for other needs, you can start via the AI survey generator.

  1. Tell what survey you want.

  2. Done.

Honestly, you don’t even need to read further if that’s all you came for. The AI instantly creates the survey with expert-designed structure and will even ask your respondents smart follow-up questions—giving you deeper, more actionable insights than any static web form.

Why running a buying timeline survey really matters

Let’s get straight to the reasons: First, 81% of consumers research online before making a purchase[1]. If you’re not understanding when and how prospects are making buying decisions, you’re flying blind. Only those who make data-driven decisions get ahead.

  • If you don’t ask questions about buying timeline, your outreach is likely badly timed.

  • You miss mapping your sales process to actual customer intent and timing.

  • You can’t spot the signals or objections that slow down their decisions.

Consider, too, that 70% of buyers research a company's products before even engaging with sales[2]. If you’re not actively capturing feedback about buying behavior and timing, you’re leaving your sales and marketing teams in the dark. And with 60% of the buyer’s journey happening before they ever talk to you[2], being proactive about these insights is no longer optional. It's a competitive advantage.

The importance of prospect recognition surveys lies in their ability to create a direct feedback loop: when you understand how your target buyers move through their journey, you get to shape your product strategy, content, and outreach to fit their real needs. If you’re not doing this, you’re missing out on higher conversions, shorter sales cycles, and the ability to serve your buyers better—all based on what they actually need.

What makes a good survey about buying timeline?

For a prospect buying timeline survey to be effective, it must encourage candid (and useful) answers. Here’s how we do it at Specific—and what you should look for in any buying timeline research:

  • Clear, unbiased questions: Avoid leading words or jargon. Prospects shouldn’t feel “guided” to a specific answer.

  • Conversational tone: The survey should feel like talking to a real person—not filling out a tax form. This is what helps people open up.

You want both a high quantity and high quality of responses. If people aren’t responding, or their answers are one-worded or inconsistent, something’s off. Here’s a simple breakdown:

Bad Practice

Good Practice

Leading: “You probably buy quickly, right?”

Neutral: “How long do you typically take to decide on a purchase like this?”

Overly formal: “Please estimate your decision-making timeline for capital expenditures.”

Conversational: “When you’re considering something expensive, what does your decision process look like?”

Generic: “When do you buy?”

Contextual: “What signals or events usually prompt you to move forward with this kind of purchase?”

Keep your questions approachable and your answer options clear. That’s how you unlock the real voice of your prospects.

Question types and examples for prospect surveys on buying timeline

Not every question is created equal. You’ll want a mix of question types to get both depth and structure in your results.

Open-ended questions let prospects share detail and nuance—invaluable for discovery. Use them early when context is needed, or after single-select questions to dig deeper. For example:

  • “Walk me through how you usually make this type of buying decision.”

  • “What is the biggest factor that slows down your decision to buy?”

Single-select multiple-choice questions work best when you want fast data you can chart or filter. It’s great to use after you’ve collected open-text context. For example:

“How long is your typical buying process for products like this?”

  • Less than a month

  • 1–3 months

  • 3–6 months

  • Over 6 months

NPS (Net Promoter Score) question is good for quickly profiling buyer enthusiasm or loyalty, especially when paired with an AI-powered follow-up (“What’s the biggest reason for your score?”). Try an NPS survey here. Example:

“On a scale from 0–10, how likely are you to recommend our solution to a peer considering a similar purchase?”

Followup questions to uncover "the why": These unlock the story behind a response, clarifying ambiguity or surfacing hidden hesitation. Always ask followups when a response is vague or rich in signals you want to explore.

  • “You said your process takes 3 months. What are the key steps or approvals that typically add to that timeline?”

For a deeper dive, we collected the best questions for prospect surveys on buying timeline along with tips on crafting them to maximize honest feedback.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is an interactive, chat-like experience designed to feel like a genuine exchange—not a traditional form. Here’s why AI-generated surveys change the game:

  • Faster to build: You never have to manually structure every question. The AI creates a logical flow for you.

  • Smarter logic: No more wading through conditionals; the AI asks relevant followups based on what respondents say.

  • Engagement: Respondents stick around longer and give better answers since it feels conversational, not clinical.

Manual Survey Building

AI-generated Survey (Conversational)

Drag-and-drop questions, manual branching, time-consuming edits

Describe your needs and survey is built instantly by AI; edits via natural language

Static, often boring for respondent

Dynamic, engaging, asks smart follow-ups

Basic conditional logic

Intelligent, context-aware follow-up questions

Why use AI for prospect surveys? AI survey generators like Specific let you create surveys that adapt in real time, probe for detail, and summarize responses with true conversational intelligence. Try an AI survey example and you’ll see why the old way just can’t compete.

Plus, Specific delivers the best user experience: slick, mobile-friendly, and genuinely pleasant for your prospects—raising your completion rates and data quality. For step-by-step guidance, check out our guide on analyzing prospect survey responses or explore our AI survey editor to make fast, conversational refinements.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions make or break a great conversational survey. When you ask smart, on-the-fly follow-ups, insights go from vague to truly valuable. Read more on our automated followup questions feature.

Specific uses AI to generate expert-level follow-up questions in real time, drawing out meaningful details based on the respondent’s initial answer. Automated probing not only saves time—no more endless email chases—but gets you to the heart of “why” far faster. This is what makes a conversation natural and insightful.

  • Prospect: “It depends, sometimes it takes us a while.”

  • AI follow-up: “Can you share more about what factors cause you to take longer deciding?”

How many followups to ask? Generally, 2–3 clarifying questions are enough to uncover the full story. Specific lets you set maximum follow-ups and define when the AI should move on to the next question, so you never annoy your respondent while still capturing their context.

This makes it a conversational survey: The back-and-forth mimics real interviews—resulting in deeper, higher-quality responses than static surveys ever could.

AI-powered response analysis: Even with lots of non-standard text, it’s easy to analyze at scale. See how in our guide on analyzing prospect survey replies or chat with AI about your data using AI survey analysis.

Try using automated followup questions—you’ll be surprised how fast and rich the feedback becomes when the survey feels like a real conversation.

See this buying timeline survey example now

Ready to boost your insight into when prospects buy—and why? Create your own survey with real conversational AI and capture richer, more actionable feedback in minutes.

Create your survey

Try it out. It's fun!

Sources

  1. Consumer Gravity. Online Shopping Statistics: What You Must Know in 2024

  2. zipdo.co. Buyers’ Journey Statistics: What You Need to Know

  3. blog.hubspot.com. The New Buyer’s Journey: How to Sell to Today’s Buyer

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.