Buyer Persona Insights

Bridging the Gap Between Marketing & Sales with Buyer Personas

The issue of sales and marketing alignment has been floating in the corporate hallways for several years now.  What I am finding most interesting is that the definitions surrounding the "sales & marketing alignment" conundrum are, to use the proverbial expression, all over the map.  What prompted me to think about this was Dave Stein's post, Marketing's Knowledge of Salespeople, on his Commentary on Sales Leadership blog.  The main tenet of his post is best said by Dave:

"What’s going on is that many CEOs, COOs, GMs, and other executives haven’t figured out that sales and marketing alignment is more about culture, philosophy and business orientation than it is about marketing providing sales with leads, marketing messages and sexy product brochures and sales selling enough so everyone, especially those in marketing, gets to keep their jobs."

I am sure some will find this to be quite a provocative statement.  One thing I can say is that there have been many undertones in recent webinars, blog posting, and articles about this gap in culture.  I use undertone because most of the discussions seems to be around marketing "placating" sales with leads and getting them to make more money - without really addressing what lies underneath the gap.  Yes, sales wants these things and marketing is more than happy to oblige because they need to see successes in their product marketing strategies. 

Dave's point that the gap is best defined through culture, philosophy, and business orientation gets to another crucial point.  That is, that these three variables create different prisms or lenses by which marketing and sales views the customer.  Marketing and sales, through their divergent cultures, can wind up with vastly different views of the customer.  The next time you are in a meeting with marketing and sales representation, perk up your ears and listen to the conversational tennis match of "what I think the customer wants" literally bouncing off the walls of the conference room.  Like Dave, I served as a VP in both sales and marketing.  The adjustment to the "culture" of each was pronounced.  What is unfortunate is that the gap has created an environment whereby each area doesn't garner a high opinion of each.  And both claim that the "other side" just doesn't "get it."   

How do we get sales and marketing to see through the same lenses and have a common view of the customer?  Buyer Personas offers the opportunity to create this common view and become the bridge that soars over the raging cultural waters running below.  Buyer Personas are archetypal or fictional representations of a company's buyer.  They are grounded in qualitative field work that helps to create a common view of goals, issues, motivators, needs, and insight.  More importantly, once they are created, they introduce the much needed objectivity into the discussions about customers. 

By creating and using buyer personas, organizations can begin to see real gains in the effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies.  Why?  Buyer personas can achieve alignment around a common view of the buyer.  One of the most influential books I have ever read was The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.  In it, the author has a chapter about how to place a hotly contested issue in the middle of the conference room and create objectivity.  Buyer Personas offers a very tangible and literal way to make this happen.  Placing the buyer persona(s) in the middle of the conference room is an effective way to introduce objectivity and to have the focal point be about the common view of the customer.  This elevates the cultural and business orientation strengths of each area to a complementary level. 

Creating buyer personas is not as easy as it may sound and I cannot certainly give it the full treatment in this post.  Today, we are seeing smart thinking organizations that are now training and staffing buyer persona experts in their marketing and sales groups who can steer each department towards this common view of the customer.  These buyer persona experts truly offer the potential to bring to life the voice of the customer in a way that has not been achieved before. 

Three Challenges That Market Research Faces Today

Market research today finds itself in somewhat of a quandary.  Mostly, it is a field that is trying to remain relevant amidst the sea of changes taking place in marketing and sales today.  As the gatherer of market and customer data, market research is struggling to prove its value to senior management.  The AMA (American Marketing Association) has voiced this concern in several of its conferences over the past year or two.  This topic was an especially notable theme at the AMA's Annual Market Research Conference last year and no doubt is a hot topic this year. 

What are the some of the challenges that face market research?

• The first is what I call the "how and why" complex.  Conventionally, market research has focused on getting to the "who and what" of potential markets and customers.  Gathering some good demographic information as well as finding voluminous reports on what is being purchased.  With the hope of understanding trends and purchasing patterns.  What is missing in many of the strategic meetings for senior executives is insight into understanding customer behaviors and attitudes.  Some may argue that psychographics provides this but psychographics focuses more on lifestyles as oppose to insightful and deep understanding into how and why customers buy.  The kind of insight that reveals competitive advantages and innovative breakthroughs.
• The second challenge can be termed "proliferation" in the sense that market research has become big business.  Thus, gaining insight must come from distilling volumes of reports, quantitative data, surveys, focus groups, and every imaginable new way to look at a customer that has been created in the past 20 years.  There appears to be a built-in inertia related to how many reports are bought each year, how many new ways to cut and slice data, and discovering new ways to perform statistical modeling each year.  I do not propose that this is entirely a bad thing but it is very easy to see today that the proliferation of choices for market research has increased substantially in the pursuit of insight.
• The third challenge is one we can call "relevancy."  That is, how does market research communicate relevant and real customer insight?  I know I have and some of you have sat through presentations with beautiful slides and graphics of graphs but leave with that sinking feeling in your stomach that you really did not gain any new insight that is going to help to drive strategy.  It is a challenge that senior executives today are seeking to fix for the "go-to-market" windows continue to shrink and what is needed is relevant and real insight today and not tomorrow.

Market research is faced with many more challenges but these three appear to be the most prevalent.  What can market research do?  One solution is to use personas, whether they are user or buyer personas, to serve as the interface for the voluminous data and insight gained.  This allows market research to not only distill meaningful insight but it also allows for communicating relevant persona-centric insight that truly drives strategy. 

By blending the power of quantitative research with advanced qualitative tools (such as the use of buyer personas) to create a powerful story that can be told to senior management, personnel, and to customers - market research can become a major contributor to the formation of strategy.    

"Accidental Branding" - a not so accidental book review

Do you ever get the feeling that most good things happen by accident?  Somewhere in your career, I am sure that after long weeks and long hours, it all seemed hopeless that this "breakthrough" you were working on just wasn't going to happen.  And, of course, you pick up the paper and read of this marvelous success story of a company that has grown astronomically in the past two or three years and find that it all happened by "accident."  No business plan, no major marketing plan and strategy, no thought given to branding, and etc.  In your head you scream: "what luck!"

If you relate to this, you should check out David Vinjamuri's new book Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands. In David's book, he covers such entrepreneurs as:

• Craig Newmark of Craig's List;
• John Peterman of J.Peterman Company;
• Gary Erickson of Cliff Bar;
• Gert Boyle of Columbia Sportswear;
• Roxanne Quimby of Burt's Bees;
• Julie Aigner-Clark of Baby Einstein;
• and Myrian Zaoui and Erik Malka of The Art of Shaving

All of these people were entrepreneurs who David points out enjoyed "accidental branding" success and were not minted MBA types who succeeded.  Some were downright eccentric in their personalities and beliefs also.  So, was all of their success truly an accident?  If you judge by virtue of conventional wisdom, as David says, you could say this all was accidental.  However, if you look at what traits do these entrepreneurs possess in their pursuits, you can see a different picture.  In fact, you can see a picture of extraordinary traits that led to their success.

What types of "persona insights" might we pick up from David's book about these people?  David highlights a few:

• Yes, there was lots and lots of luck involved - so let's get that out of the way first
• They each experienced the problem they were trying to solve
• They knew how to be their own customer
• They were perfectionists and "do sweat the small details"
• They had faith and persisted
• They were very good storytellers

David points out that they were very good at "listening to customers and breaking the rules." 

It brought to mind for me my own remembrance of visiting Jeff Skoll at eBay when they only had 20 employees.  Jeff and I worked together at Knight-Ridder for two years and had become frequent lunch buddies.  Jeff was the first President of eBay and I remembering seeing a "war room" they had, with helmets and fake guns, to go after their competitors.  And, I remember hearing him tell me how Pierre Omidyar started this company trying to help his fiance' find PEZ dispensers and PEZ collectors to trade with her own PEZ collection.  The plan was still quite casual and they were "experiencing" it and making it up along the way.  Well, I think they did pretty well!  And core to their success was a basic principled belief that they shared.  That was, that humans were fundamentally good and honest and that given a medium to auction and trade, they would be good to each other.

This is a fun yet insightful read and David has an engaging style of writing that will keep you turning the page.