Resources
Understanding your “Buyer Personas” will not only help your sales team, but every employee in your company.
Small Business owner Mark is sitting in his home office. It’s 2:30am and he is trying to write a blog post for his website (Interesting fact: 70% of small business owners work past the normal time they should be sleeping). Mark has writer’s block. He can’t think of anything to write about.
Does this sound familiar to anyone? Mark can’t be the only business owner that has faced this scenario. Well there are only 3 reasons Mark can’t figure out what to write.
I already know that I am going to get backlash on #2. This poor guy is up at 2:30 in the morning, he is burning the midnight oil to provide for his family and build up his business for his employees, you don’t know what you are talking about, etc.
Look, “Mark” is a standup guy, at least in my head he is when I thought him up, but “Mark” is just the persona I mocked up for small business owners, who are very real people.
And that’s the point. Personas are the theoretical mock ups that merge the commonalities of real people so that businesses can communicate with them, not to them.
Please understand that last sentence. Real communication isn’t talking to someone, it involves participation from another person to actually be considered communication.
So how do you communicate with someone? It comes down to knowing something about this person. In terms of business, you need to know what type of problems they face, what they deal with day in and day out, what kind of tools they use to accomplish their business, etc. Meaning you have to have some reality of what their life is like.
When you have this reality, it is easy to think of what to write for your blog or what type of content to produce for your business.
Let me put this in a real life example – Two people are on a date. Let’s say it is a blind date. These two people have never met before. In the beginning it’s a bit awkward. Neither person knows what to say. Finally after some timid questions back and forth these two people find a subject they both have reality for like “Music”. Suddenly they are not so timid, the conversation becomes more animated and they find they like some of the same artists. Now they find even more things they have in common or have reality with and communication is not a problem.
Lastly you will find through communicating with people about something they have reality with, you will see an increase in engagement. Why?
Because they are warming up to your Brand. Communicating with someone about a subject they have reality with, increases affinity.
Because I really want to make sure I get my point across, here’s a great example of this in action:
Joe runs a small insurance firm. He only has 4 staff and they mainly handle the clients. Joe is pretty much left to handle everything else, while overseeing the High End clients that make up 50% of his revenue. “Mark” has a software platform that he knows with 100% certainty that can improve Joe’s business.
Mark has been trying to get Joe’s attention for 6 months with discounts on his product, or tickets to a sports event, or whatever he can think of. This is basically what a hundred plus other companies are doing as well.
Mark finally does some research on small business owners and finds out some of the problems they face, and what they run into on a daily basis.
Mark finally writes his blog post about how integrating software can save business owners 4 hours a day.
Joe who is looking for solutions to help organize his life a bit better runs across this article on the internet. Because this is something he has reality with and is trying to handle in his own life.
Joe wholeheartedly agrees with everything Mark wrote and ends up calling Mark and they have a conversation about the problem and Mark can present him with a solution.
I’ll stress this again – understanding your buyer personas will help not only your sales team, but it will help everyone inside your company.
Try it…you might be amazed by the results.
If you found this article helpful, please follow us on any of our social media accounts so that you can get more articles like this one.
