Buyer Persona Insights

Enable Sales & Marketing with Buyer Persona Scenarios

In our new dynamic world, where nothing stays the same for any long periods of time, the difference competitively may be in the ability to anticipate.  Many successful corporations have stayed ahead of the pack due to their ability to read the market and anticipate how their customers will behave.  In sports, accuracy is tied to anticipation.  For example, an All-Pro quarterback is often touted for his pinpoint accuracy.  However when you review films of his throws, you see that uncanny ability to anticipate the exact spot when the receiver will arrive down the field to meet the football descending from the air.  Tiger Wood’s successes are partly due to his unprecedented power driving but also partly due to his ability to “read” the elements and anticipate the trajectory and the placement of the golf ball. 

 

Buyer personas, archetypal and fictional representations of actual buyers, are increasingly being used to attain a deeper understanding of buyers and customers.  Buyer personas give us a good snapshot of buyer background and attributes as well as relevant goals and motivations.  Alone though, they cannot provide the ability to anticipate how buyer personas may actually behave in a marketplace.  What is needed is to put buyer personas through buying scenarios.  Doing so provides the much needed insights into how buyers will behave in certain scenarios.

 

First, how do you get to these scenarios?  It takes some hard work and they usually cannot be created by conventional means such as culling data from sales forces.  Being a theatre buff, I liken scenario creation to seeing what goes on backstage while a production is underway.  Out in the audience, we are enjoying the actors and actresses as they are in character and perform.  What we don’t see is how each scene change is “anticipated” and how stage hands are awaiting the lighting or sound cue to put in motion the scene change.  Once the cue is heard, unbeknown to the audience, movement and action is taking place behind the curtain.    If internal data is only utilized in the theatre of sales and marketing, it will be hard to get a true sense of what is taking place “behind the scenes” when the buying process is in motion.  The only way to get a true depiction of what is taking place in a customer’s buying process scenario or series of scenarios is through rigorous qualitative field study that is complemented by skills in analyzing work flows and processes. 

 

Once scenarios are created, sales and marketing is enabled by their ability to anticipate the behaviors of their buyer personas.  When pain points are discovered, sales and marketing will have the ability to anticipate what particular process is set in motion “behind the scenes” by their customers.  In multiple product or services environments, there is a tendency to treat a customer in a homogeneous fashion.  With buyer persona scenarios, sales become enabled to understand the significant “cues” they are hearing and to anticipate the most likely scenario taking place within the customer organization.  This means sales will no longer have to rely on just one reference point for asking questions but have multiple paths of questioning that are more relevant and accurate.  And as previously mentioned being more accurate in your customer conversations is dependent on the ability to anticipate.  Marketing is also enabled by knowing at what critical junctures in the buyer persona scenario to deliver or have readily accessible messaging that is once again, relevant and accurate.  Accurate because it is based upon the ability to anticipate when the buyer persona will need the supportive messaging.

 

Buyer persona scenarios can go a long way towards giving an organization’s sales and marketing capabilities an edge over competition.  More importantly, they pay long term dividends because it is the ultimate “win-win” for the seller and the buyer.  What it allows is for sales and marketing to become stage hands in the buying process as opposed to just the audience that enjoys its conversation with the customer but never really knows what is going on behind the curtain.  And, if an organization can get buyer persona scenarios right, it will have its’ competitors in the audience on the outside looking in while they enjoy the favorable spot of being on the inside looking out!

Why Companies Must Invest In Sales And Marketing During An Economic Downturn

It’s not looking good.  We have been rocked by dismal and fearful financial and economic events that have rippled through the global economy leaving no company feeling the ill effects.  Credit is harder to come by and hibernation is setting in.  There are dire predictions that our economy could be faced with a severe recession over the next 12 to 24 months – maybe even 36 months.  Causing companies to drastically cut budgets, implement painful layoffs, and to disband growth investment plans.  Not a pretty picture.

 

Typically, in an economic downturn, there is the natural impulse to cut sales and marketing budgets.  We see retractions of sales forces, sales territories, marketing programs, and marketing support.  Is this really wise?  There are three reasons why companies need to invest more into sales and marketing during a downturn while streamlining costly operations:

 

Solving Customer Challenges

 

Many companies today will be faced with unexpected and new challenges as a result of the downturn.  This is the very time companies need to be engaged in collaborative efforts to solve problems and challenges through creative means.  If sales forces retract and these conversations cannot take place then opportunities will be missed.  Opportunities that involve solutions to weather the storm together and to help companies become more efficient. 

 

Buyer Behavior and Processes Will Change

 

Undoubtedly, buying behavior and buying processes will change as a result of the economic downturn.  The buying process cycle will become longer and the cast of buyer personas will increase.  How?  Let’s say for example that your product and services typically cost $100,000.  At this level, a Senior Director may currently be the decision maker and it fits into his or her budget.  The evaluation, decision, and purchasing process take typically four weeks.  Now consider that a company reacts to the downturn by implementing new purchasing guidelines.  These new guidelines call for more layers of approvals from Vice Presidents for any expenditure over $25,000.  In addition, all purchase orders must be reviewed by a committee and justified with data which must come from the supplier and outside third party sources.  The purchase order accompanied by supporting paperwork then must go to the CFO with a no or yes recommendation from the committee.  The change in the buying cycle has now gone from 4 weeks to 10 weeks.  As you can see, there will be a significantly longer buying cycle, new buyer personas, increased demand for supporting data, and a new set of drivers which have to be met.  Without actively engaging with customers and learning about these changes, opportunities will be lost because of the inability to adapt to new buying processes. 

 

Nurturing the Upturn

 

With the economic downturn cementing into place, lead and client nurturing will become more important than ever.  At some point, an upturn will happen.  It may be in 6 months, 18 months, or 24 months.  However long it lasts, companies will remember who their friends are!  Sales and marketing especially have to work in a concerted effort to provide the right level of messaging and communications that engages the lead and the client in an ongoing dialogue.  Sales must make investments in long term relationships by truly being the trusted advisor during difficult times and offering periodic advice without the precondition of a sale.  Meaning also those organizations will have to revaluate current compensation plans and adapt to the economic downturn not only to allow for nurturing but to ensure they keep in their brightest and best people in place for the long term.  If nurturing takes place effectively at the lead and client level, both the supplier company and the client company will be poised to act when the upturn takes hold.

 

Organizations today who act impulsively and go into hibernation mode with their sales and marketing functions may be doing themselves irrevocable long term harm.  Allowing competitors to gain entry and a strong footprint into their customer’s businesses.  They will also present themselves with a real risk that exceptional talent will leave and mediocrity will become part of their company DNA.   What are four actionable steps that organizations can take today to invest in heir sales and marketing during a downturn?

 

Customer Insight

 

The downturn will have a cataclysmic effect on buying behaviors and processes as aforementioned.  Organizations will need to gain insight into these changes and identify how hey must adapt.  This is exactly the time to actively engage in customer insight research that allows for buyer persona profiling, buying process scenario building, and getting at the core insights driving buying behaviors and decision-making.  The outcome will be a more targeted and effective identification of how to connect with buyers and how to navigate the changes in buying processes.

 

Training Correlated to Customer Insight

 

Once insight into buyer personas and buying processes has been achieved, organizations should invest in training and education of their sales and marketing forces on how to understand buyers, meet their goals, and help facilitate the buying process.  It is important to make a distinction here between sales training and education correlated to customer insight.  Sales training will always be a prudent means of improving sales effectiveness but it will be less fruitful in an economic downturn unless it is tied to understanding of real-time shifts in buying behaviors and buying processes.  It is critical that sales and marketing have education on these important insights and how they must adapt.  This type of education will not only maximize return on conventional sales training but will also produce the type of effectiveness that reduces wasted dollars in chasing improperly vetted opportunities.  In addition, continued and refreshing education will help to keep the talent pool stocked with dedicated winners.

 

Customer Messaging

 

Marketing efficiency is determined by its ability to connect with customers and buyers with resonance.  Based upon buyer persona profiling and gathered customer insight, Marketing will need to adjust customer and sales-ready messaging that connects with buyers on a level that appeal to their drives and goals.  Web strategy will need to be evaluated so that customer interaction points are aligned with the buyer’s needs during the buying cycle process.  Armed with insight, Marketing will need to align messaging and supporting data with that of the buyer’s process.  In the hypothetical example provided previously, marketing will need to insert an interaction point whereby it makes it easier for buyers and buying committees to pull down third-party supporting data such as analyst reports.  In an economic downturn, it becomes doubly important for Marketing to support Sales with sales-ready messaging that is on target, purposeful, and useable.  Primarily for the reason that in a downturn, you have fewer chances to get your message across to potential buyers and clients.  There is little room for error in getting your message right.

 

Sales and Marketing Alignment

 

An organization can gain significant efficiency in sales and marketing strategies if they are aligned.  Again, with fewer opportunities to get a story in front of potential and existing customers, discord or discrepancies will be magnified if sales and marketing are out of synch.  Having a deep understanding of the buying process, sales and marketing can be aligned around providing the buyer with the critical messaging and information needed at the right moment.  Potential and existing customers are fairly astute at knowing when a “fire drill” is on in order to meet a specific request during an interaction point.  Too many of these “fire drills” will seed doubt into the minds of buyers about the company’s ability to serve them after the sale is made.  In effect, introducing “buyer’s remorse” early into the process and causing the buyer to perhaps flee.

 

The organization that can focus on these four areas during the economic downturn will find itself in a stronger position when an upturn is starting to take hold.  In tough times, companies are afforded the opportunity to sharpen their sales and marketing prowess, tighten their focus on customers and messaging, and gain efficiencies in alignment. 

 

An economic downturn is without question tough for both suppliers and buyers.  Measures must be taken to streamline and reduce expenses.  All too often though, sales and marketing can be seen as the easy target for the amplification of dropping numbers is most felt in these areas.  Good and smart organization fight the impulse to scale back their sales and marketing dramatically under the false pretense that customer(s) are not buying at the moment.  Understanding the reasons why this is the precise moment you must invest in sales and marketing and what actionable tactical efforts can be made will prevent companies from making this fatal mistake.  And buyers, at those moments of upturn, will remember who their friends were during those rough days.

Buyer Persona Profiling and the Importance of Insight

Over the past year, experts have emphasized the importance of knowing who your buyers are. As a means to this, the art and science of buyer persona profiling has been advocated to help marketing and sales functions better know who their buyers are and what needs they must attend to.

An archetypal representation based upon real customers, a buyer persona profile consists of relevant information on backgrounds and goals. Those companies engaged in developing such profiles have very realistic outlines of who their target buyers are and as such should have an advantage over their competitors. However, many companies are not quite sure how to maximize the value of the buyer persona developed. So what is missing?

The key ingredient to maximizing the use of buyer personas is that of insight. Without some valuable insight, senior executives will wind up questioning the point of the whole exercise - "Our best sales person could have come up with that profile.” If you hear this, then you know you have got something wrong!  Unfortunately, some organizations find themselves so driven to get to 'know' their customer or buyer, they believe that the end means is the buyer persona profile itself.

In the case of marketing, for example, a tremendous amount of expenditure goes into market research, taking the form of focus groups, research reports, surveys and the myriad of CRM applications promising valuable customer data mining.  However, for many companies, real customer insight continues to remain elusive.

An argument can be made that this is primarily due to the inability of these methods to get at the underlying motivations, drivers and goals that provide the insight into customer buying behavior. This internal processing of market research and data 'crunching' leads to a false belief that a buyer persona profile can be created - a buyer persona, in particular, that can be justified by the data.

So how do we gain insight from buyer persona profiling?

Qualitative research

Certainly there is a strong correlation to the amount of qualitative research to the amount of insight received. An example is helpful in demonstrating this.

I recently worked with a client which, after experiencing falling sales, decided that getting a more robust picture of their buyer persona would help marketing and sales to reverse the trend. It was confident that the products and services were solid and that the organization simply needed to do a better job selling. Fortunately, we had been granted ample time to do extensive qualitative work.

At first, customers we visited heaped praise upon the company. But as we dug deeper, we discovered some interesting findings. Recently, the industry had been rocked by new legislation that affected almost every facet of the relationship between buyer and supplier. We discovered that two behavioral insights were taking place. Firstly, the buyers were uneasy about how to adapt to the new legislation. Secondly, they were placing value on the marketing and sales representatives of those suppliers who became conversant in the new legislation.

Sales were declining for our client because the buyers did not believe the marketing and sales representatives of the company were as conversant as those of its competitors, despite the company's superior products and services. This turned out to be profound revelation for the organization and it significantly changed how a buyer persona should be constructed. More importantly, the insight maximized the life value of the buyer persona.

As we shared the buyer persona in conjunction with the key insights, the organization quickly recognized the deficiency and began to mobilize around the content of the new legislation and provide their customers with guidance - thus, helping to reverse the trend.

Unarticulated meaning

Let’s take a brief look at what happened in this example.

At first, the buyer was reluctant to share their unease about the new legislation. Many customers had long tenured experiences with our client and were not comfortable admitting they were a little perplexed by how to adapt. This was compounded by the fact that it is human nature to be indirect with company representatives when it comes to expressing what they really think.

In our qualitative interviews, they heaped praise on the organization at first, since the company had provided superior products and services that helped to create a sound reputation in the marketplace. It became evident, however, that they were not getting what they believe they needed from the organization’s marketing and sales representatives.

Over a series of qualitative interviews, we began to pick up a pattern of hints about these inadequacies, even though they were naturally reluctant to be critical about an organization with which they had enjoyed a long-term relationship. This is referred to as searching for the 'unarticulated' meaning - where customers will either have a conscious difficulty, a lack of understanding, or are unaware of articulating a goal, motivation or drive that is lying beneath the surface.

Digging deep

We dug deep into this unarticulated pattern. In this example, the pattern we uncovered was the belief that marketing and sales representatives were not knowledgeable or conversant enough in the new legislation to be of help to them and alleviate their unease about how to adapt.

The inherent danger for an organization is that if these unarticulated notions are left to fester for too long, they can harden into what we call mental models - attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and assumptions that form. Specifically for this organization, the danger was that a mental model would form that the company was not keeping up with new legislation and that it could not rely on its marketing and sales representatives. Allowed to firmly cement in the minds of customers, the company would be faced with a very difficult task of convincing its customers that this was no longer true.

Without these valuable insights, the organization could still have easily created buyer persona profiles based on customer data and perhaps other research means. However, their value would be diminished if they were created without profound customer insight as the central component.

The end means is not the buyer persona profile itself but the journey by which we arrive at the buyer persona profile. In that journey, we uncover meaning and insight into how we can meet the goals and needs of customers in a way that provides a competitive advantage. The buyer persona profile then becomes the vehicle used to communicate to marketing, sales and product management deep 'insights' into customers - and how best to formulate strategies that create an electric connection with buyers.

The "Personas" of Obama, McCain, and now Joe "the Plumber"

In more than any election in recent history, the pushing of the candidate's persona has become central to each campaign's messaging.  It has not been confined to only in what they wish to convey about themselves.  But also in what they wish to convey about their opponent.  Personas are meant to represent archetypal representations of a target person, albeit a product user, consumer, business customer, or voter.  In the political realm this usually gets stretched a bit whereby the choices of descriptive labels are meant to provoke powerful images.  The uses of powerfully descriptive words are intended to create a mental image in the minds of the voters as well as the media about each other.  What do these choices of words convey and create in mental images?

    calm, cool, collective, angry, fighter, professorial, paling around, erratic, impulsive, experienced, hero, maverick, patriotic, leader, change, dangerous, liar, judgment, elite, champion, terrorist, fraud, temperament, bail out, rescue, reformer, we, I, and you 

Among many other words, each word is calculated to help create a mental image as well as descriptive "persona" about each person.  In the third and final debate, we were introduced to Samuel Wurzelbacher now famously known as "Joe the Plumber."  The attempt by McCain here, in addition to making it relevant to criticizing Obama's tax policy, was to conjure up the mental image of being in touch with the "persona" of the average middle-class worker and business owner.  Now poor Joe (or correctly Sam) really does not even own a business yet and he has been thrust into the limelight unfairly to represent the persona of a small business owner who struggles yet makes $251,000 annually and thus does not qualify for Obama's plan to reduce taxes for those 95% of Americans making less than $250,000 per year (for joint filing; $200,000 single filing). 

Also interesting in this presidential election are the vice presidential candidates and the "personas" they are attempting to project.  In the case of Sarah Palin, you have the descriptive word labels of hockey mom, reformer, maverick, folksy, hunter, and executive being used to create a "persona" of Sarah the Barracuda.  Of course, Tina Fey has done more than the media or the Obama-Biden campaign to create a different "persona" of Sarah Palin in the minds of the voter than the McCain campaign had hoped for.  Joe Biden consistently harkens back to his roots in Scranton, PA to embrace a persona of being one of those hard working blue collar people who have struggled economically in their lifetime of living in Pennsylvania.  The stories of his dad telling him when a champ gets knocked down, he gets back up is meant to instill the image of the working class guy persona on your side.  Of course the McCain-Palin camp hopes to wrap Joe Biden in the persona of a Washington insider.

The recent financial crisis also offered up how each candidate's behavior is meant to elicit a mental "persona" in the mind's of voters.  John McCain's announcement to suspend his campaign and to charge into Washington appeared as an attempt to paint the mental persona of the fighter, the leader, the man who leads the troops on the front lines, and the man who can single handily save the day.  Sort of your political Jack Bauer of the day, meant to suspend the campaign for 24 hours and ride out of Washington as the hero who saved the country from imminent doom.  Obama on the other hand attempted to foster a mental persona of the leader who is calm under fire, a consensus builder, knows how to get people working together, can manage from afar, and can articulate principled plans and assurances to the American people. 

In past presidential campaigns, we have had downright comical behavioral attempts by politicians to fit into a persona they think will resonate with voters.  Who can remember John Kerry going hunting?  How about Michael Dukakis riding an army tank?  What about Bill Clinton hitting every donut shop and gaining 30 pounds that was parodied in a SNL skit?  And remember George H.W. Bush shopping in a grocery store and failing miserably at the check out counter?  This year, I think Obama learned the lesson of staying away from a bowling alley.

Body language and stature also have been used to help create a picture of a persona in the minds of a voter.  Obama has a more reserved body language that is meant to align with the calm leader under crisis persona.  McCain's body language has been to lean forward and to align with the image of a fighter. 

At times, both have let their guard down and displayed body language that is shall we say - out of whack.  In the third and final debate, McCain's body language of sighing and eyes rolling was eerily similar to that of Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election.  His body gestures caused voters to paint a mental persona of the "angry" man.  Obama, in an earlier debate with Hillary Clinton, smirked and made a comment that caused voters to paint a mental persona of one who is dismissive and arrogant. 

Since 1964, how many political aspirants have used the famous gestures of John F. Kennedy at press conferences and briefings to paint a mental persona of the thoughtful, articulate, and humorous leader with exuberated royal Camelot-like leadership?  Too many to count!

At each of their respective conventions, we saw the carefully staged drop backs and visuals to support the persona they wished to project for each candidate.  In the case of Obama at Mile High Stadium (I just can’t say Pepsi Center!), we saw the columns and the setting that may have been meant to evoke a Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” moment in history.  With John McCain, the portrayal of the “war hero” was most evident.  The visual of McCain’s entrance on the extended stage may have been an attempt to project McCain in the same light as George C. Scott’s portrayal of General Patton in the movie “Patton.”   Whereby there is the famous scene of General Patton giving an expletive laced speech with a giant American flag as the drop back.

As I am positing here, the concept of calculating personas has become an ingredient of political campaigning.  If we were to imagine a group of advisors sitting around discussing personas, what rough sketches of personas might they come up with?  Let’s start with the McCain campaign:

Here is the “persona” they hope to project about Barack Obama (I am using capitalization to show what they may emphasize):

Now let’s see how they might create a McCain persona they want to project:

Now let’s take a look at the McCain campaign’s latest target voter, Joe the Plumber:

Imagine now the Obama camp of advisors, strategizing about personas.  Here is what they may be thinking of how to project a persona of John McCain to voters:

 Of course, they want to put the best foot forward for their candidate, Barack Obama:

 Imagine if you will, the Obama camp getting into an argument and saying that Joe the Plumber is not their target voter.  What might be Obama’s target voter?  Let’s take a look at a fictional persona, Susan Masten, from suburban Philadelphia:

Following some of the principles of persona creation, in this rough sketch Susan can easily be an independent voter who leans Democrat.  In contrasting Joe the Plumber with Susan, it is a little more obvious in how each candidate might be messaging to their base as well as independents. 

Undoubtedly, in this new technology age of presidential elections, the use and power of personas will become increasingly prominent.  There is an inherent danger in this premise that we must all be on guard.  That is, how candidates will shape their own persona as well as that of their opponent further and further away from what is real and truthful.  This is already a common problem in politics when we have 20 second sound bites and organizations like Fact Check to weigh in on the attacks and assertions of candidates.  However, there is a very big upside to political campaigns if they adopt persona-based research and creation into their efforts as have an increasing number of corporations in their design, sales, and marketing efforts.  (And I am not talking about focus groups that many of these same corporations have lessened their use of due to the lack of insight they provide.  I am talking about real qualitative research that yields profound insight.)  They will deepen their understanding of voters and constituencies.  Giving them the insight they need to connect better with voters and to deliver messages and platforms that are in tune with that of the voters.

Being in tune in this sense is the key.  Unfortunately, many people are “tuned out” on politics because they hear the same 4 or 5 point based messages from political candidates over and over ad nauseam.  Barack Obama seems to have captured the essence of this premise early in his campaign and it is one of the reasons he is on the verge of becoming the next president.  John McCain, at this moment in time, never seemed to have captured the connection to voters that was beyond the same rhetoric commonly heard from politicians. 

It is not an easy task to find that “nerve” that electrifies.  Adopting persona principles and understanding in political campaigns offers a promise that politicians will understand their constituencies better and connect with voters on a meaningful level.  Certainly, a process by which more people will become engaged in the political process.   

Speaking of which, make sure you exercise your civic duty and right to go out and vote!

Bridging the Gap Between Marketing & Sales with Buyer Personas

The issue of sales and marketing alignment has been floating in the corporate hallways for several years now.  What I am finding most interesting is that the definitions surrounding the "sales & marketing alignment" conundrum are, to use the proverbial expression, all over the map.  What prompted me to think about this was Dave Stein's post, Marketing's Knowledge of Salespeople, on his Commentary on Sales Leadership blog.  The main tenet of his post is best said by Dave:

"What’s going on is that many CEOs, COOs, GMs, and other executives haven’t figured out that sales and marketing alignment is more about culture, philosophy and business orientation than it is about marketing providing sales with leads, marketing messages and sexy product brochures and sales selling enough so everyone, especially those in marketing, gets to keep their jobs."

I am sure some will find this to be quite a provocative statement.  One thing I can say is that there have been many undertones in recent webinars, blog posting, and articles about this gap in culture.  I use undertone because most of the discussions seems to be around marketing "placating" sales with leads and getting them to make more money - without really addressing what lies underneath the gap.  Yes, sales wants these things and marketing is more than happy to oblige because they need to see successes in their product marketing strategies. 

Dave's point that the gap is best defined through culture, philosophy, and business orientation gets to another crucial point.  That is, that these three variables create different prisms or lenses by which marketing and sales views the customer.  Marketing and sales, through their divergent cultures, can wind up with vastly different views of the customer.  The next time you are in a meeting with marketing and sales representation, perk up your ears and listen to the conversational tennis match of "what I think the customer wants" literally bouncing off the walls of the conference room.  Like Dave, I served as a VP in both sales and marketing.  The adjustment to the "culture" of each was pronounced.  What is unfortunate is that the gap has created an environment whereby each area doesn't garner a high opinion of each.  And both claim that the "other side" just doesn't "get it."   

How do we get sales and marketing to see through the same lenses and have a common view of the customer?  Buyer Personas offers the opportunity to create this common view and become the bridge that soars over the raging cultural waters running below.  Buyer Personas are archetypal or fictional representations of a company's buyer.  They are grounded in qualitative field work that helps to create a common view of goals, issues, motivators, needs, and insight.  More importantly, once they are created, they introduce the much needed objectivity into the discussions about customers. 

By creating and using buyer personas, organizations can begin to see real gains in the effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies.  Why?  Buyer personas can achieve alignment around a common view of the buyer.  One of the most influential books I have ever read was The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.  In it, the author has a chapter about how to place a hotly contested issue in the middle of the conference room and create objectivity.  Buyer Personas offers a very tangible and literal way to make this happen.  Placing the buyer persona(s) in the middle of the conference room is an effective way to introduce objectivity and to have the focal point be about the common view of the customer.  This elevates the cultural and business orientation strengths of each area to a complementary level. 

Creating buyer personas is not as easy as it may sound and I cannot certainly give it the full treatment in this post.  Today, we are seeing smart thinking organizations that are now training and staffing buyer persona experts in their marketing and sales groups who can steer each department towards this common view of the customer.  These buyer persona experts truly offer the potential to bring to life the voice of the customer in a way that has not been achieved before. 

Three Challenges That Market Research Faces Today

Market research today finds itself in somewhat of a quandary.  Mostly, it is a field that is trying to remain relevant amidst the sea of changes taking place in marketing and sales today.  As the gatherer of market and customer data, market research is struggling to prove its value to senior management.  The AMA (American Marketing Association) has voiced this concern in several of its conferences over the past year or two.  This topic was an especially notable theme at the AMA's Annual Market Research Conference last year and no doubt is a hot topic this year. 

What are the some of the challenges that face market research?

• The first is what I call the "how and why" complex.  Conventionally, market research has focused on getting to the "who and what" of potential markets and customers.  Gathering some good demographic information as well as finding voluminous reports on what is being purchased.  With the hope of understanding trends and purchasing patterns.  What is missing in many of the strategic meetings for senior executives is insight into understanding customer behaviors and attitudes.  Some may argue that psychographics provides this but psychographics focuses more on lifestyles as oppose to insightful and deep understanding into how and why customers buy.  The kind of insight that reveals competitive advantages and innovative breakthroughs.
• The second challenge can be termed "proliferation" in the sense that market research has become big business.  Thus, gaining insight must come from distilling volumes of reports, quantitative data, surveys, focus groups, and every imaginable new way to look at a customer that has been created in the past 20 years.  There appears to be a built-in inertia related to how many reports are bought each year, how many new ways to cut and slice data, and discovering new ways to perform statistical modeling each year.  I do not propose that this is entirely a bad thing but it is very easy to see today that the proliferation of choices for market research has increased substantially in the pursuit of insight.
• The third challenge is one we can call "relevancy."  That is, how does market research communicate relevant and real customer insight?  I know I have and some of you have sat through presentations with beautiful slides and graphics of graphs but leave with that sinking feeling in your stomach that you really did not gain any new insight that is going to help to drive strategy.  It is a challenge that senior executives today are seeking to fix for the "go-to-market" windows continue to shrink and what is needed is relevant and real insight today and not tomorrow.

Market research is faced with many more challenges but these three appear to be the most prevalent.  What can market research do?  One solution is to use personas, whether they are user or buyer personas, to serve as the interface for the voluminous data and insight gained.  This allows market research to not only distill meaningful insight but it also allows for communicating relevant persona-centric insight that truly drives strategy. 

By blending the power of quantitative research with advanced qualitative tools (such as the use of buyer personas) to create a powerful story that can be told to senior management, personnel, and to customers - market research can become a major contributor to the formation of strategy.    

"Accidental Branding" - a not so accidental book review

Do you ever get the feeling that most good things happen by accident?  Somewhere in your career, I am sure that after long weeks and long hours, it all seemed hopeless that this "breakthrough" you were working on just wasn't going to happen.  And, of course, you pick up the paper and read of this marvelous success story of a company that has grown astronomically in the past two or three years and find that it all happened by "accident."  No business plan, no major marketing plan and strategy, no thought given to branding, and etc.  In your head you scream: "what luck!"

If you relate to this, you should check out David Vinjamuri's new book Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands. In David's book, he covers such entrepreneurs as:

• Craig Newmark of Craig's List;
• John Peterman of J.Peterman Company;
• Gary Erickson of Cliff Bar;
• Gert Boyle of Columbia Sportswear;
• Roxanne Quimby of Burt's Bees;
• Julie Aigner-Clark of Baby Einstein;
• and Myrian Zaoui and Erik Malka of The Art of Shaving

All of these people were entrepreneurs who David points out enjoyed "accidental branding" success and were not minted MBA types who succeeded.  Some were downright eccentric in their personalities and beliefs also.  So, was all of their success truly an accident?  If you judge by virtue of conventional wisdom, as David says, you could say this all was accidental.  However, if you look at what traits do these entrepreneurs possess in their pursuits, you can see a different picture.  In fact, you can see a picture of extraordinary traits that led to their success.

What types of "persona insights" might we pick up from David's book about these people?  David highlights a few:

• Yes, there was lots and lots of luck involved - so let's get that out of the way first
• They each experienced the problem they were trying to solve
• They knew how to be their own customer
• They were perfectionists and "do sweat the small details"
• They had faith and persisted
• They were very good storytellers

David points out that they were very good at "listening to customers and breaking the rules." 

It brought to mind for me my own remembrance of visiting Jeff Skoll at eBay when they only had 20 employees.  Jeff and I worked together at Knight-Ridder for two years and had become frequent lunch buddies.  Jeff was the first President of eBay and I remembering seeing a "war room" they had, with helmets and fake guns, to go after their competitors.  And, I remember hearing him tell me how Pierre Omidyar started this company trying to help his fiance' find PEZ dispensers and PEZ collectors to trade with her own PEZ collection.  The plan was still quite casual and they were "experiencing" it and making it up along the way.  Well, I think they did pretty well!  And core to their success was a basic principled belief that they shared.  That was, that humans were fundamentally good and honest and that given a medium to auction and trade, they would be good to each other.

This is a fun yet insightful read and David has an engaging style of writing that will keep you turning the page.

   

What Channel Convergence Means To B2B Buyer Personas

In more conventional terms, marketing has often thought of the "buyer" within a one dimensional framework.  Especially in B2B marketplaces where marketing and sales tends tend to think of the buyer as someone who sales "meets" with and sells to.  The definition between an offline customer and an online customer has also become fairly blurred in B2B markets yet many marketing departments tend to be concrete in categorizing customers in one of two segments.

When you contrast this with consumer markets, where consumers generally are more clearer about whether they are "click" or "motor" type customers, you see we have a dilemma in identifying buyer personas.  Unlike consumers who tend to lean more strongly one way or the other, the B2B buyer tends to now converge channels into an integrated buying cycle and process.  And, I bet confusing the heck out of many marketing departments. 

An example of this is the "buyer" of delivery services such as FedEx or UPS.  The buying process, even in just one day, could involve multiple contacts online and with a FedEx or UPS representative.  Sourcing online and in conversations with a person, a "buyer" is making a decision about services that fits his or her needs at that time.  On top of that, he or she may also be in conversations with third party channels who handle freight for FedEx or UPS.  Thus, in one day, a buyer could be interacting with three different channels in the buying cycle.

What does this now mean to the practice of identifying buyer personas.  It certainly means that the notion of just answering "who are our buyers" today is not sufficient.  Marketing Communications and Product Marketing must delve deeper into getting answers to:

A. How does the buyer engage in the buying process?

B. Why did the buyer make the decision to use our product or a competitor's product?

My partner Angela Quail and I have seen a rise in the advocacy of buyer personas over the past year.  This advocacy has called for identifying "who" your buyer personas are.  Which we could not be more ecstatic about!  On the surface, crafting a buyer persona may not look much different than doing that of a consumer persona.  Believe me, there is a significant difference.  There is also an unclear spectrum about the quality of personas that are being developed today.  Angela addresses this eloquently in her recent post, Beyond Fake Personas, on her Persona Creation blog. In essence, the degree of qualitative and ethnographic research affects the overall quality and usefulness of buyer personas. 

Given that buyers today are integrating and converging channels into their buying processes, what do Marketing Communications and Product Marketing do?  They must answer the two questions mentioned in this manner:

A.   Investments need to be made into identifying the buying processes of buyers.  What you may find is that segmentation along "channels" is no longer going to work.  Especially if your marketing department is organized by channels.  A scenario mapping of how the buyer flows through the buying cycle process needs to be derived.  This is so that all channel departments can see how a buyer engages and at which point in the buying cycle.

B.  To get at "why" a customer makes certain buying decisions, there is no room for guessing!  This will take the artful skill of engaging in qualitative conversations with buyers.  Whereas the "how" can be determined with ethnographic skills, the "why" is going to take some anthropological skills to understand the culture of organizations and how it affects buying decisions.  If it sounds tricky - well - it is!  Identifying the mental models by which buyers make decisions is a hard practice.  It is truly analogous to the anthropologist who digs a few shovels deeper and uncovers a chest filled with gold chalices.  The gold chalices in this case are the revealing insights that can lead to a market changing competitive advantage or innovation breakthrough.

The summation is that channel convergence means that the creation of buyer personas today cannot stop just at answering the "who" and having a profile of the buyer.  Answering the "how" and "why" to complete the buyer persona research and development is critical to gaining the maximum advantage of buyer persona insight. 

Angela and I will be launching a series of workshops and seminars this year to help companies learn about how to implement buyer persona creation and get at the who, how, and why of buyer persona research and development.  The first of these will be a Buyer Persona Creation Workshop in July in San Francisco.  There, we will cover not only how to create a buyer persona but how to do scenario mapping and how to identify the mental models of buyers that affect decision-making.   

One thing we are advocating is that every B2B organizations needs in-house buyer persona research and development expertise if it is to stay competitive.  So, we hope to see you at one of our future workshops or seminars! 

Harvard Gets "Ecosystems" for Building Customer Centric Organizations

Last week, my partner Angela Quail and I were chatting about business ecosystems.  We got involved with this concept last year in talks with IBM and later on began crafting persona ecosystems for clients.  IBM is a big proponent of establishing an ecosystem view of your internal organization and its connections to customers and markets.  Thus, we had some fairly robust discussions around this idea.  We were pleasantly surprised to see the following on Harvard's Executive Education web site:

"Attaining true customer centricity requires a fundamental, enterprise-wide shift in thinking and reorientation of your value proposition—moving away from a business organized around functions or products toward one aligned around the customer. This entails reconfiguring your firm's entire "ecosystem"—customers, internal stakeholders, and channel partners, along with organizational processes, structures, and systems. A well-developed understanding of the ecosystem can help your company achieve superior product and service innovation."

This is an extremely important viewpoint and offers a pathway for building customer-centric organizations.  Equally important, is this view not only offers understanding the ecosystem of your internal organization but also for translating the same perspectives of your customer's ecosystem.  For one of our clients last year, we exercised bringing their customer's businesses and markets into full view by creating a persona ecosystem of their buyers, users, stakeholders, channel partners, markets, and the ultimate end user of their customer's businesses.  It entailed the rigorous and deepest type of qualitative study we were ever involved in.  The revelations were profound.

Through persona ecosystems, you can achieve a more refined view of which roles are involved from a user and buyer perspective, which roles your customers interact with outside of their own organizations, and achieve refined understanding of your customer's organizational characteristics.  From a B2B vantage point, this is critical for the "customer" or the "buyer" is often times the company.  And, rarely is the buyer just ultimately one person.  In the true sense of the word, it is a company of people.  In fact, a recent study by Sirius Decisions showed that the average lengths of sales cycles have increased by 22% and that they involved 3.6 or more decision-makers to close a deal.  Note that is 3.6 or more decision-makers involved in closing a sale!  I would call that a company of decision-makers!

Previously, I wrote about B2B complexity being at the heart of the matter for buyer personas.  With B2B marketing and sales becoming increasingly more complex, persona ecosystems may be a requirement to fully understand how to improve the businesses of your customers.  This is an increasing buying criterion on the part of buyers today.  Understanding your buyer persona is one component.  Crafting buying process scenarios are another important component.  However, you will most likely discover that your buyer persona now has expectations that in complex environments, marketers must be fully knowledgeable about how to make an impact on the top-line revenue and bottom-line profits of their customers. 

Buyer personas have come a long way in the last couple of years.  Nevertheless, adoption by B2B companies with complex marketing and selling environs still appears to be relatively modest.  But for those who have adopted buyer personas, some are expanding the "science" aspects of persona development into the realm of ecosystems.  Persona ecosystems hold plenty of promise for organizations committed to building true customer-centric organizations. 

Personas Are All About Context

I recently met with the head of a fairly large consumer goods company.  We had an interesting discussion about how to interpret data and research.  As we conversed, I could see frustration building.  In essence, what he found frustrating was that the enormous mountain of data and research still was not telling him what he needed to know about his customers and buyers.  The market is changing and the data is telling him so however it is not telling a story of how it is changing and why it is changing.  It is not telling him how buying habits and patterns are changing and why now.  Equally frustrating was that although the organization had a sense of who their buyers were, they could not pinpoint much else  about the buyer other than what their data was telling them.  As we were talking, I couldn't help think of this cartoon:

How many of us in our career have sat around a table and poured over reams of data, market reports, research studies, and sales anecdotal reports to arrive at a target composite customer?  And we all leave the room with that uneasy voice in our head saying: "I'm not so sure if that is right but if everyone thinks so, I'll go along."

What he was missing most was the context in which all of the data could have meaning.  Personas, in particular to this situation, can help provide the context for which all of the data can sit and tell a story.  Often times, marketing and sales executives insert data as part of their presentations to employees about markets and customers.  Employees do gain insight into the customer but walk away with a more factual view and have no context in which to place the customer.   

Performing qualitative and ethnographic based fieldwork helps to identify the context in which buying decisions are made.  I suggested that to truly find out why buying patterns were changing, he was going to need to get in the "field" and have the heart-to-heart with buyers on why.  Good evidence for this need was that the sales anecdotal reports could not provide a clue.   

Since the buying process appeared to be changing amongst his customer base, he was in need of getting a view of exactly what that looked like.  Building various buying scenarios showing personas in action would help provide the context of how and why the buying process was changing.  In the end, providing the context to gain insight and meaning from the data mining the company exercises.  In cases like this, it is important to have a good sense of what the quantitative data is providing but also to recognize the limitations in terms of providing context.  The qualitative creation of buyer personas and buying scenarios gives context and meaning to what the data may be saying.

In the beginning of persona development back in the mid to late 90's, I can remember the concept of "context" was talked about heavily in relations to understanding users.  As buyer personas and buying scenarios make their way into being a useful process for sales and marketing, conversations about context should be in the forefront.  If we are left with just data and even just a persona profile alone, we'll be left with the famous words of Joe Friday in the venerable detective show Dragnet: "Just the facts, Mam.  Just the facts."