Buyer Persona Insights

Real Value of Buyer Personas Realized Through Scenarios

One of my favorite film characters of all time is Indiana Jones as portrayed by Harrison Ford in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Many of us will forget that he is actually Dr. Indiana Jones, the illustrious professor and expert in occult archeology.  No doubt that some of us can recall the Indiana Jones persona and can recall the images of his leather jacket and fedora styled hat. 

What most of us will remember is that the character of Indiana Jones was the focal point of an action packed story to find the Ark of the Covenant.  Steven Spielberg weaves a series of adventurous cliffhangers and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to tell the story of his quest to recover the Ark.

Through Spielberg's masterful storytelling, we saw how Indiana Jones reacted to overcoming confrontations with the Nazi's and the Egyptians.  We learned much about who he was and how he interacted with his enemies and love interest.  Much in the same way, this is how we learn about buyer personas.  If we were left with only a composite persona of Indiana Jones, all we may have known is that he was an illustrious professor.  The Indiana Jones persona itself though would not have revealed the story of the quest for the lost Ark of the Covenant and provided the many memorable scenes. 

Buyer personas, to have real value, must be put into buying scenarios whereby they are in action making usage and buying decisions on behalf of their organization.  The buyer persona becomes the main character who interacts with others to reveal the story of how and why buying decisions are made.  Buying Scenarios provide valuable insights into what criteria must be met and what obstacles must be overcome. 

The common pitfall of creating buyer personas based on stereotypes and without little research is also a problem with scenarios.  Without taking a TQM or Six Sigma approach to learning about usage and buying scenarios, the outcome can be a series of best-case scenarios that are created on the basis of desired results only.  However, done with the rigors of quantitative and qualitative study as well as TQM principles, the powerful combination of buyer personas in action within buying scenarios can reveal a story of opportunities that is as action filled as the story of Indiana Jones in the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The heart of the matter for buyer personas: B2B Complexity

One of the most pressing issues that have surfaced in the last few years with the evolution of personas and with buyer personas in particular is how to address the complexity often found in B2B markets.  In fact, I believe it is the underlying issue that has prevented buyer personas from being more widely adapted.  We've seen this issue raised in several of the organizations we've worked with to create user and buyer personas (Goal Centric) and accompanied by anxious questions related to how to actually use the personas.  In one Fortune 100 company we worked with, we saw "personas" that were created but had little value for they did not address the issue of B2B complexity.  Thus, the significant investment made was all for naught.  My partner, Angela Quail, and I helped to address the situation however it did leave us shaking our heads at how some persona efforts done without the rigors necessary can do more harm than good.  As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, this misunderstanding and common pitfall of attempting to create a "single" user or buyer persona can be costly and result in little value.  And unfortunately give personas and buyer personas a bad name.

Before I became involved with Alan Copper's efforts with personas in 1999, I spent the majority of my career in sales and marketing.  One thing that I am sure any person in the B2B markets will tell you is that there is never just one "buyer" in these markets.  Back in the day as they say, some of the most successful sales managers and sales reps I hired were able to not only grasped this notion but also were able to devise plans to speak to the many buyers that would exist in an enterprise account. 

Reading Saeed Khan's On Product Management recent entry on the value of personas for developing enterprise administration software joggled memories of what perplexed me when involved with the likes of SAP in the early days of personas.  Although more than one user persona of an enterprise application was being developed, my instincts were telling me that they were not addressing the multiple buyers and stakeholders in the process.  Thus, the seed was planted on thoughts about customer personas, as they were first called, before the term buyer personas became more common. 

An individual buyer persona in a complex B2B market can prove to be of only marginal value if it stands alone.  Of course, I advocate even one individual buyer persona over doing nothing at all to improve a company's understanding of their customers.  To fully realize the potential of buyer personas today, they need to be part of an overall effort to integrate them with buying process scenarios and a view of the "ecosystem" that is relevant to a specific B2B market.  These views are essential to understanding the many roles that participate in the buying cycle and how as well as why buying decisions are made. 

Consider briefly the product development and buying cycle of an enterprise software application.  The likelihood that there will not only be many types of users but there will also be many types of buyers and stakeholders affecting the purchase and adoption on an enterprise level is quite high.  Thus, the degree of complexity is significantly greater than that of creating a user persona for a B2C product or that of a buyer persona for a small business. 

David Meerman Scott, who has a really neat blog called Web Ink Now, talks extensively through his new book The New Rules of Marketing & PR and speaking engagements about the new rules for B2B marketers.  A couple of rules do apply here.  One, that your audiences are no longer prospects but buyer personas.  Second, is that the old rule of sales cycles must give way to buying cycles.  Understanding not only who your buyer personas are but also how they engage in the buying cycle (and how the buying process is defined) is a "new rule" for the creation of buyer personas.  This deeper level of understanding will ultimately help an organization to address the B2B complexity they are confronted with and to realize the full value of buyer personas. 

Buying Scenarios are crucial to Buyer Personas

Adele Revella in her engaging Buyer Persona Blog points to a recent number of controversial comments made about the value of personas in general.  In many ways, what bloggers such as the Cranky PM, Saeed Khan's On Product Management, and Kristin Zhivago are saying is - "so what" about personas.  In their various ways, there is some degree of truth in what each is saying.  A persona alone can cause misunderstanding and can cause a "so what" reaction if they are not properly researched and more importantly, if they are not tied to specific scenarios.  My business partner, Angela Quail, and I have been involved with personas since 1999 where we were privileged to be in on the early days of personas at Alan Cooper's interaction design firm.  What always struck me as powerful were not the personas themselves but the scenarios.  Since 2002, Angela and I have focused on bringing personas and scenario development to sales and marketing through our firm Goal Centric. 

In our experience, we've seen this common pitfall of where people believe that the creation of the persona alone is the end means.  This is not the case.  Sadly to say, there are personas being crafted without the rigorous research and study required.  Thus, you are bound to get a “so what” reaction on poorly researched and designed personas.  We've also seen the "one size" fits all mentality brought to personas.  The notion that a “single” persona can be used by all departments is usually not ideal.  For instance, there are substantial differences in how you create user personas compared with buyer personas.  Usage scenarios also differ greatly from buying scenarios.  Another consideration is that of channels.  Forrester, through the gracious sharing of information and content from the likes of firms such as Cooper, has entirely focused their analyst attention on what I call the "web-based" persona.  How you create buyer personas for certain channels and situational diverse buying scenarios is a difference maker in terms of personas having real value.  Although not always a hard rule, a buyer persona you may have crafted for your web channel may not translate very well to a buyer persona who may deal exclusively with your direct sales channel.

Angela and I liken our efforts with clients to putting “personas in action”.  This means to take the researched-based buyer personas and put them in action through buying process scenarios.  Without the buying process scenario, you cannot know how a buyer persona will engage with an organization’s marketing and sales efforts.  Conversely, you will not have the insight necessary to design your sales and marketing efforts to map back to the behaviors and motivations that are uncovered in scenario development.  In a product usage scenario, what come out of scenarios are the essential product requirements.  In a buying process scenario, what are defined are the critical buying criteria and values that must be met. 

The resulting actionable insight is that sales and marketing can understand buyer goals and motivations and also know how they play out in the buying process.  Anticipating and meeting buyer goals helps an organization provide customers with rewarding buying and customer experiences.

It is exciting to see how far user and buyer persona development has come in the last decade.  That being said, there is still tremendous room for improvement in ensuring that high quality research-based creation of personas is maintained and professionally developed.  The value of personas continues to be recognized as the means of getting to know customers at a deeper level.  When crafted with rigorous quality research and synchronized with the equally skilled craft of scenario development, user and buyer personas can align not only sales, marketing, and product management but align the organization tightly with its customers.