The first step in creating a Buyer Persona is to gather pertinent information from your customers and leads. With this information, you will have the data you need to create a persona.
What Information Do You Need?
-
Demographic information (age, education level, gender, etc.)
- Job title and level of seniority
-
What a typical day looks like for them, both personal and professional
-
The challenges and pain points they deal with each day. Part of this is identifying what your product or service will help solve for them.
-
What they value most
-
What are their goals
-
Where they get their information
-
Who do they trust to give that information
-
The experience they want when looking for your products and services
-
Their objections or reservations about your products and services
The following represents a typical list of categories and relevant questions that will help you put that information together:
Buyer’s role
-
What is your job role?
-
What is your job title?
-
How does your company measure your job performance?
-
What is your typical day like?
-
What skills do you need to do your job?
-
What knowledge do you use routinely in the course of your work?
-
What tools do you use in your work?
-
To whom do you report?
-
Who reports to you?
Buyer’s company
-
In which industries does your company typically work?
-
How much revenue did your company bring in last year?
-
How many employees does your company have?
Buyer’s goals
-
What are you responsible for?
-
How do you define success in your current role?
Buyer’s challenges
-
What are your biggest challenges?
Buyer’s information gathering preferences
-
How do you learn about new job-related information?
-
What blogs, magazines, and other publications do you routinely read?
-
What associations and social networks do you belong to?
Buyer’s personal information
-
Age
-
Marital situation
-
Whether they have children or not
-
How old their children are?
-
Education level
-
Hobbies
Buyer’s shopping preferences
-
How do you like to interact with vendors? By email? By phone? In person?
-
Do you use the Internet to research products, services, or particular vendors?
-
If so, how do you search?
You may want to take some questions out and add a few others, depending on your industry.
Who Do You Need to Ask the Questions Of?
Current customers are your first line of information. They are the ones currently purchasing from you.
-
Set-up in person one-on-one meetings. This is the best choice.
-
Set-up focus groups filled with customers
-
Use an electronic meeting forum like GoToMeeting or JoinMe for conferencing
-
Do telephone interviews.
-
Send surveys out to customers and ask them to respond.
Another way to gather pertinent information is using lead intelligence. This allows you to segment contacts, leads, and customers by their interests. You can also create groups based on their buying stages.
You can use data gathered from online forms you ask people to fill out.
Another source of valuable information is LinkedIn at linkedin.com. If you know your Buyers, you can look up their LinkedIn profile and see how they describe themselves. This information can be worth its weight in gold when it comes to information gathering.
Talk with your sales force and ask some critical questions:
-
What are the biggest objections raised by customers and leads?
-
What are the common goals these people share?
-
Do they have common problems they are trying to solve?
-
What is the most effective communication form: phone, email, in person?
-
Does a particular demographic seem to be better or happier customers.
If you can think of any other method to extract information from your customers and leads, think about how you can use it. Information gathering is the first step to creating well-defined Buyer Personas.
To read about the next step, which is about creating those personas and learning how to use them, stay tuned for next week’s blog. Or download ROI’s free Buyer Persona eBook right now!
