WHAT DOES YOUR BUYER REALLY WANT?
Five Insights Reveal the True Story
THE MOST compelling way to understand people we don’ t know is through stories: stories about the challenges they face, the options they consider, and how they decide upon a particular course of action.
You probably know that historical figures such as Amelia Earhart and Ernest Shackleton were intrepid risk takers. But this label falls short of explaining their“ adventurer” persona. Indeed, as every biographer knows, we remember these people because we have heard stories about the circumstances they encountered and the choices they made. Spend more time with their stories and we begin to empathize with their unique circumstances and why they made such fascinating decisions. We can even see where exposure to other options would have led to a very different conclusion.
TELL AN ACTIONABLE STORY ABOUT YOUR BUYER PERSONA.
The biographer’ s credo is instructive for companies that want insight into strategies that will affect their persona’ s buying decision. Sadly, many buyer personas fall short. Most are built around buyer profiles, featuring descriptions about their buyer’ s personality, role, priorities or concerns. If these profiles tell any story at all, they tend to feature“ a-day-in-the-life” of the buyer, with a timeline that is unlikely to include the buying decision we want to influence. We get lots of context, but little connection; these profiles lack the essential links between circumstances and a buyer’ s motivation to invest in a service or product like ours.
The confusion about buyer personas evaporates when companies approach personas with a biographer’ s mindset, seeking to reveal a story about their buyers’ perceptions, attitudes and behavior as buyers confront the need to achieve a particular goal, research alternatives, assess the merits of various options and make a buying decision.
Your buyer persona’ s story will be actionable when it focuses on just five buying insights:
1. PRIORITY INITIATIVE INSIGHT.
This identifies the conditions that trigger your buyer’ s decision to search for a product, service or solution like yours. Not to be confused with pain points, your persona’ s story will tell you what is different about the buyer’ s environment or attitude at the moment when he or she decides that now is time to take action – investing time, budget or political capital in this type of purchase.
2. SUCCESS FACTORS INSIGHT.
You don’ t need personas to identify all of the benefits you can deliver, but it’ s difficult to know which of these benefits will have the most impact on your buyer’ s decision to do business with a company like yours. When you understand the emotional and practical outcomes that matter to your buyers, you eliminate the noise and emphasize those benefits that matter to your buyers. This insight makes it easy to develop simple, persuasive messaging and content.
3. PERCEIVED BARRIERS INSIGHT.
Otherwise known as the“ bad news” insight, this is the part of your buyers’ story where you learn why they might choose a competitor’ s solution or decide to stay with the status quo. Although many companies have heard that their solution is too expensive or missing a critical feature, this insight often reveals that buyers have false notions based on prior experiences or what they’ ve heard from their peers. Companies that know how and why buyers form these negative opinions can develop effective strategies to change them.
4. DECISION CRITERIA INSIGHT.
This part of your persona’ s story details the product or service and company attributes buyers investigate as they weigh
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