RL46: Defining The Buyer Persona
RL46: Defining The Buyer Persona
Part 2 of our sales series - getting specific with who is buying
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This is post #2 in a series about designing a sales process from scratch. You can read the other posts here -
👉 Identifying the target persona - who are we selling to? (today)
Generating sales collateral - selling the benefits
Prospecting through email
Sales calls
Follow up
Closing the deal
Invoicing, payment, delivery of services
In the beginning…
Shortly after starting Paintru, I put together a fundraising deck and begin pitching to anyone who would listen.
I remember that pitch well - here’s the part I thought of as the greatest strength of our product -
It’s such a flexible product that we can paint for anyone - pet parents, newlyweds, recent college graduates, retiring employees - one product, a versatile array of customers and use cases.
In retrospect, this feels foolish.
While it’s good to have a product that can be widely adopted, the subject of today’s post is on buyer personas.
You can’t be all things to all people
The single most critical mistake that founders make when starting out is to focus on a product idea rather than a customer.
You can always tell a founder who falls into this category - I certainly did with Paintru, and I hear pitches from these founders regularly.
Unfortunately, this leads founders to wander aimlessly in search of a customer. We desperately feel around in the dark for product-market fit.
The most surefire way to avoid this conundrum is to have a specific customer for whom you are solving a problem.
The key is to niche down - get specific and give your target customer a persona.
Having a refined set of potential customers makes it easier to build and sell, but it requires extreme discomfort in the short term.
The MOST uncomfortable feeling for a founder -
The SECOND most uncomfortable feeling I can imagine is getting tear-gassed while it’s raining on during day 3 of a 10-day field event in which you haven’t eaten or slept in days back when I was a Marine.
The MOST uncomfortable feeling is saying ‘no’ to customers.
Defining your product or service as a solution for ONLY 1 customer means turning your back on the other 50 potential customers.
This is a wildly uncomfortable experience.
In the early innings when we are desperate for revenue, nothing could be more uncomfortable OR more necessary.
So, who are we selling to?
Coming up with a buyer persona is essential, and the more granular you can be, the better.
Here’s an example from worst to best -
I sell ice cream.
I sell ice cream to lactose-intolerant people.
I sell ice cream to lactose-intolerant women.
I sell ice cream to lactose-intolerant women who live near the beach.
Narrowly defining a buyer persona like this is important because it facilitates a few critical elements of your sales process -
Targeting - where to find your buyer
Copy & content - how to speak to them
Solving their unique problems
A distinct buyer persona will enable you to speak to one individual buyer. You’ll know where to find them, how to communicate with them, and how to solve their problems.
So, how do we define a persona?
Defining a persona
Defining a persona is actually pretty straightforward.
We want to define each of the following characteristics as specifically as possible -
Demographic
Occupation
Location
Background
Challenges
Communication style / medium
Goals
Motivations
Another helpful example is to define the anti-buyer - who is our product NOT for? This can help you hone in on who it IS for.
The Military Veteran Example
So let’s say you run a company whose stated mission is to help veterans transition into meaningful careers.
You have a TON of opportunity as different types of careers are great fits for a variety of different people.
Over time, you learn that the most important factor that will predict whether a company recruits veterans is the presence of an internal champion in a position of leadership.
You come to the conclusion that you can create the most impact by getting more veterans into leadership positions, and decide to start with investor roles.
Investors control the flow of capital and make decisions on behalf of the companies that they invest in - putting more veterans into Private Equity will lead to more veterans running PE portfolio companies, and more veterans hired at those companies.
At least that’s your hypothesis - we’ll need to check back in 20 years to see how accurate this hypothesis is.
OK so we want to sell our services to Private Equity funds.
We know the entity, but NOT the person, so we ask -
Who makes the buying decision?
The fund’s managing partners make the hiring decision, but the HR professionals make the decision about which candidates are even considered for the role.
The key, therefore, is to develop relationships with the HR professionals at PE funds.
Demographic - 70% of HR managers are female
Occupation - duh - HR manager at a PE fund
Location - around the country, but clustered in NYC, SF, LA, Miami
Background - varied
Challenges - finding diverse talent, sourcing great talent, managing the hiring process
Communication style / medium - email and LinkedIn
Goals - find high quality, diverse talent as quickly as possible
Motivations - get promoted, a pay raise, increase equity in their profession
This is a quick and dirty buying persona, but it’s extremely helpful.
We now know how to message, where to find our customers, and can tailor our offer accordingly.
Hell, we even know how to price a niche product.
Defining a buyer persona is a critical first step, but it really facilitates the beginning of the real work.
Tune in next week where we’ll cover generating sales collateral.
Until then - some questions for you -
Who is your buyer?
What questions do you ask to hone in on a buyer persona?
What brands speak to you so directly that you could swear their marketing is made just for you?
I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of Retained Learnings.
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Best,
Brendan