Most business owners, sales managers, and sales professionals strongly believe they have a firm grasp on their ideal buyer. In most cases, they are correct. But, this knowledge was obtained over years, if not decades of experience working in the industry, market, selling to prospects, managing customer accounts, and held in their brain. Now, we both know that everyone in your company does not have all this information at their disposal. This is why developing a buyer persona is extremely important to the overall success of your sales and marketing.

Our goal is to give you a foundation for identifying and documenting your buyer persona(s) to ensure you are working with customers who are a great fit for your company.

What is a buyer persona?

Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand your customers (and prospective customers) better, and make it easier for you to tailor content to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups.​

The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20. Start small and only focus on developing one or two. You can always add more.

How to get started.

Most businesses have some customer data stored in a spreadsheet, customer resource management (CRM) tool, or another type of database that is a treasure trove of information.

In our example, we have used a client's data in the document destruction industry, which was exported from their CRM (HubSpot) into an Excel spreadsheet, and manipulated using pivot tables.

Needs

• Protecting their identity from theft.
• Protecting patient or client information.
• A fast solution

Behaviors

• Spring cleaning and need a vendor.
• Shop other vendors before making a purchase.
• Typically receptive to marketing email communication.
• Require a lot of follow up and documentation to make an informed decision.

Concerns

• Shredding trucks arriving on time.
• Friendly staff.
• Price.
• Tired of being taken advantage of by other companies.
• Minimal contact with staff.
• Background checks and security of their property when staff is on premise providing service.

Uncovering this information really helps us understand how to position our marketing and sales messaging in an emphatic tone to address their needs and concerns. Which builds rapport and trust with the prospective buyer.

Now, let's name this persona something easy that everyone can easily understand and relate to when mentioned. How about, "Security Sam".

Armed with this information your sales and marketing team will be positioned to create meaningful interactions with prospective buyers, quickly know rather or not the buyer meets the criteria, and close more deals faster.