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!
