Creating an authentic 色花堂 is pivotal in understanding your buyers’ decisions 鈥� their goals, concerns, decision criteria, and journey. It informs how to best influence them towards choosing your solution over competitors or the status quo. While various methods exist for gathering the necessary insights 鈥� from analyzing data to leveraging GenAI tools 鈥� none are as effective and insightful as conducting one-on-one interviews with recent buyers.

The Unmatched Value of One-on-One Interviews

In a one-on-one interview, two people engage in a conversation where one person (the interviewer) asks the other person (the interviewee) a series of questions to gain their perspective about a particular topic. These are open and free-flowing conversations鈥攖here are no right or wrong answers. The interviewer is simply trying to understand the interviewee鈥檚 鈥渢ruth鈥� in their own words.

Imagine a skilled journalist interviewing someone. They ask questions and probe deeply, not settling for surface answers. This is the essence of one-on-one interviews for 色花堂 development. Through these in-depth conversations, you uncover the interviewee’s genuine experiences and perspectives, gaining insights that are both rich and authentic.

To , one-on-one interviews work well because they give the interviewee time to talk about their entire journey鈥攆rom the moment they have an initial need for a solution that you offer until the time they make a final buying decision. Unlike focus groups, one-on-one interviews give you time to ask questions, probe more when needed, and listen attentively as a buyer tells you their thoughts and behaviors at each step in their buying decision. Only this depth of discussion yields real insight.

Interview Recent Buyers – They鈥檙e the Experts!

A recent buyer is someone who has made the exact same buying decision (ideally in the last 3-6 months) that you鈥檙e trying to influence. These are not just your current customers who have inherent biases鈥攇ood and bad. These are also buyers you would have wanted in your sales pipeline, but they chose either someone else or the status quo.

Why is interviewing recent buyers so important? There are several reasons:

• Recent buyers aren鈥檛 guessing about what they were thinking and doing throughout their buying journey. They鈥檝e been through it recently and will tell you everything you need to know with confidence and accuracy. As one marketing executive and advocate of this approach recently told us, 鈥淚t鈥檚 like getting the answers before the test!鈥�
• Recent buyers represent the full market you鈥檙e targeting. They include the opportunities you鈥檙e not seeing, or losing to a competitor, so you can be confident that the insights they reveal aren鈥檛 missing important perspectives.
• Interviewing recent buyers provides the buyer quotes you need for your persona. These quotes gives your organization a front row seat to learn what buyers are actually saying. These quotes add depth, richness, and another level of understanding that cannot be matched any other way. And it鈥檚 this depth of understanding that enables breakthrough strategies, content, and messaging.
• Interviewing recent buyers increase the authenticity of your 色花堂 and aligns your marketing, sales, and product teams around 鈥渙ne version of the truth鈥�. By combining buying insights with actual buyer quotes, the legitimacy of your 色花堂 will be self-evident to all.

We鈥檝e participated in hundreds of 色花堂 read-out meetings over the years and the discussions among the marketing, sales, and product teams are always engaging and unifying. Because the insights are developed from interviews with real buyers, there’s no dispute over the findings. Faced with the truth about what actual buyers are thinking and doing, these teams come together to focus on actions that boost a buyer鈥檚 confidence and positively influence their purchase behavior.

Don鈥檛 Be Afraid to Talk to Recent Buyers

We often hear that marketers get a little nervous interviewing buyers. You shouldn鈥檛 be! Here鈥檚 why:

• First, as the interviewer, you鈥檒l be amazed at how willing buyers are to talk about a recent buying experience that was important to them. As you continue to do interviews to complete your persona, you鈥檒l develop a sixth sense about what buyers really need to have confidence buying from you. The learning starts immediately, even before you aggregate findings from all the interviews to develop insights for your 色花堂. Enjoyment comes from facilitating an engaging conversation with someone you are trying to understand and the knowledge you鈥檒l gain to influence buyers just like them.
• Second, recent buyers enjoy the interviews because they get a chance to communicate something of real value to a highly interested party (you!). They don鈥檛 have to guess about their thinking and the steps they took in their buying journey. They鈥檝e already gone through it, so it鈥檚 enjoyable and even a bit cathartic to share the ups and downs of an important decision with someone else. In fact, across the thousands of interviews we鈥檝e conducted over the years, we consistently see that buyers will open up to us, revealing the trials, traumas, and triumphs of decisions that, had they gone awry, would have resulted in huge losses for their companies or personal reputations. We are amazed that the people we talk to don鈥檛 want the interview to end, and that when we finally conclude, they often thanked us profusely, as if we had done them a favor.

Where Other Approaches Fall Short

Of course, there are other methods of developing the buying insights you need for your 色花堂, but each has inherent disadvantages to be aware of:

Interviewing Current Customers

While it may be easier to secure interviews with your own customers, they don鈥檛 represent the full, viable market you鈥檙e targeting. They only represent the opportunities that you see (and have won). Current customers also have biases that can be difficult to detect, and they often shy away from revealing anything that might be perceived as negative towards your organization or your capabilities. To develop authentic 色花堂s, you need the full, unvarnished truth from your prospective buyer鈥檚 perspective.

Relying on Sales Team Feedback

Your sales representatives have first-hand experience with buyers and will likely have a viewpoint about your buyer鈥檚 concerns, needs, goals, and who the key decision influencers are. Gathering this information from your salespeople can kick-start your efforts to understand a buyer鈥檚 mindset. However, there are a number of reasons to cite caution:

• Salespeople are not in the habit of thinking about patterns in buyer behavior. Salespeople typically treat every account as unique, and any input they provide is likely to feature something about the few deals in which they are currently involved.
• Salespeople witness a small slice of time in the buyer鈥檚 journey, as buyers increasingly rely on their own sources to narrow their options before they are willing to meet with someone in sales. Therefore, your reps are unlikely to know anything about how the buyer navigated the earliest stages of the buying decision, a troubling limitation when this is the part of the buyer鈥檚 decision that marketing needs to influence the most.
• It鈥檚 unlikely that salespeople can provide usable intelligence about the buyer鈥檚 perceptions that negatively affects the outcome. The information conveyed to you from a sales representative who failed to close the deal provides a simplistic view of the situation; there are missing details that buyers won鈥檛 often reveal to sales.

GenAI Limitations

The hype train for these and applications has never been greater, and for good cause. The idea of artificial intelligence (or machine thinking) has been around since the early 1950s. However, it鈥檚 only been recently that a combination of forces have come together to make GenAI models possible at scale鈥攎ost notably advances in the areas of big data, computer processing, cloud computing, open-source software, and deep learning algorithms.

Unfortunately, GenAI has two significant limitations:

• Lack of Access to In-depth Buyer Insights: GenAI cannot directly access or interpret the nuanced, day-to-day experiences of buyers. Important details and quotes that bring a 色花堂 to life are best obtained through direct conversations, which GenAI tools are not equipped for due to the private nature of such data.
• Challenges with Data Verification: GenAI tools, including ChatGPT, cannot always guarantee the source or accuracy of their insights. 鈥淎I hallucinations鈥濃�攔esponses generated by AI that contains false or misleading information鈥攊s a big challenge that the AI community is still working through. Without the ability to directly source or verify information, the reliability of GenAI-generated insights can be questionable, underscoring the importance of direct interviews for accurate and trustworthy data.

The good news is interviewing recent buyers is doable, fun, and yields all the insights you need to develop actionable 色花堂s that takes all the guesswork out of your marketing and sales activities. Armed with these buying insights, you鈥檒l provide your prospective buyers with what they need to know and experience to have confidence buying from you!

Need Help Building Your 色花堂s? Let鈥檚 Talk!

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We are often asked about the value of conducting survey research to validate and enhance 色花堂 insights developed from one-on-one interviews with buyers. Based on the hundreds of studies we鈥檝e been involved in, there has never been an instance where survey research invalidated the buyer insights from the initial interviews. However, survey research can increase your confidence in the findings and enhance them in several important ways.

Conduct One-On-One Interviews to Build Your 色花堂

If you鈥檙e a marketer and have taken the time and effort to develop a 色花堂 based on , you鈥檙e in a terrific spot.

These 鈥渜ualitative鈥� interviews give your prospective buyers the time to talk about their entire journey鈥攆rom the moment they have an initial need for a solution that you offer until the time they make a final buying decision.

Fresh from the often-harrowing experience of days, weeks, months, or, perhaps, even years dominated by the search for a solution to their problem, buyers can articulate exactly what triggered them to begin, and with the right prompting, reveal incredible details about what transpired as they cast a wide net for all available options before they ultimately chose one.

By looking for patterns in the data across these interviews, they reveal exactly what your prospective buyers need to know and experience to have confidence buying your solution.

Based on the 5 Rings of Buying Insight^TM, these 色花堂 insights take all the guesswork out of your marketing, enabling you to develop strategies, content, and messaging that connects with buyers, breaks through the clutter, and drives more sales.

Read In-Depth Breakdown of the 5 Rings of Buying Insight^TM for 色花堂s here.

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Enhance Your 色花堂 with Survey Research

If these one-on-one interviews are the foundation of your 色花堂 house, think of survey research as the framing, drywall, plumbing, and electricity that make the house even more useful. Conducting a survey with a larger number of buyers will validate, refine, and extend your 色花堂 insights so you can make even better decisions about how to influence them.

Here’s four ways that survey research will enhance your 色花堂 insights:

1. Confirm the Accuracy and Validity of Your 色花堂

Surveying a larger number of buyers increases the statistical validity that the buyer expectations you identified from your initial interviews are accurate and representative of the markets you鈥檙e targeting. For some organizations, that increased level of comfort is worth the extra time and resources needed to complete this additional step, particularly when your 色花堂 is the foundation of your marketing strategies and messaging.

There are various ways to achieve this in a survey but asking buyers a mix of open-ended questions (free-form responses) and closed-ended questions (e.g., ratings, rankings, select from a list of choices, etc.) does the job well. You can do this for each of the 5 Rings of Buying Insight^TM or pick-and-choose if there are certain insights you鈥檙e more focused on than others.

For example, let鈥檚 say a healthcare MRI machine manufacturer interviews recent buyers of MRI machines and develops a 色花堂 for this buying decision. Here are two questions they can ask in a survey to confirm each Success Factor identified from the initial interviews.

Q1. 听听 In the space below, please indicate all the important outcomes or benefits you are expecting from this MRI machine purchase.

_______________________________

Q.2听听听 On a 10-point scale, where 鈥�1鈥� is 鈥渘ot at all important鈥� and 鈥�10鈥� is 鈥渧ery important鈥�, to what extent is each of the following an important outcome that you need from a new MRI machine? (Rate Each)

1. Improve image quality
2. Better retain existing patients
3. More easily acquire new patients
4. Improve staff productivity through faster scans
5. Improve patient comfort through a quieter and roomier machine
6. Expand our operations by performing additional procedures
7. Reduce expenses

Q1 is an open-ended question where buyers have the opportunity to speak (if a phone survey) or type in (if an online survey) their response. It eliminates the risk that buyers will be influenced by any of the Success Factors listed in Q2.

Q2 is a close-ended question where buyers rate each of the seven Success Factors on a 10-point scale. By asking Q2, you鈥檒l also get direct input on each of the seven Success Factors. Since these were identified from the one-on-interviews, there is a strong likelihood that all or most will be regarded as important to buyers, but this is the opportunity to validate that assumption.

Click here for buyer personas examples.

2. Determine Which Buyer Expectations are the Most Important

Not all buyer expectations are created equal鈥攖here are assuredly some that are more important than others. Through survey research, you have an opportunity to identify which buyer expectations are the most (and least important) in their buying decision. This is often referred to as 鈥渞elative importance鈥� since the importance of something is considered relative to something else.

For example, let鈥檚 say eleven Decision Criteria are identified in the MRI machine 色花堂. The MRI machine manufacturer should develop strategies to address each of these questions since buyers use them to evaluate the options, and each is likely to come up at some point in their buying journey. However, it鈥檚 also reasonable for them to ask which of the eleven Decision Criteria are the most important to buyers to prioritize their marketing activities, messages, and resources.

Here are four different ways to determine the relative importance of the eleven Decision Criteria:

• Select Top One or Two: Have buyers select the top one or two Decision Criteria that are the most important in their buying decision out of the eleven. It鈥檚 also useful to ask buyers which one or two are the least important and report on those results as well.
• Rankings: Have buyers rank the eleven MRI machine Decision Criteria from one (most important) to eleven (least important).
• Chip Allocation: Have buyers allocate 100 鈥渃hips鈥� (or points) across the eleven Decision Criteria. The more chips a buyer allocates to a Decision Criteria, the more important it is. You can allocate as many or as few chips as you want to each of the eleven Decision Criteria.
• Choice-Based Exercise (such as Maximum Difference Scaling): Have buyers go through a series of questions, like the one below, where they indicate which Decision Criteria is the MOST important in their buying decision and which is the LEAST important. Using this approach, buyers answer a series of questions where four of the eleven Decision Criteria randomly appear on the screen (in the case of an online survey). The survey will continue to ask and collect which is the MOST and LEAST important. You can typically gather all the survey data you need by having buyers answer four to six questions just like this (one after another) where the four options vary randomly from question to question.

Example of a Choice-Based Survey Question

The Chip Allocation and Choice-Based approach, require a bit more analytical sophistication to use, but have the advantage of revealing the importance of buyer expectations both hierarchically and by order of magnitude (how much more important one Decision Criteria is versus another).

3. Test Value Proposition and Market Messaging Concepts

One of the first things that organizations do after developing a 色花堂 is refresh their market messaging or develop entirely new messaging altogether. Once you develop the messages, survey research provides a great opportunity to test them with prospective buyers before you start using them in the market. By doing so, you will identify which messages influence buyers the most and gain additional insights to fine tune them for success.

Let鈥檚 stick with the MRI machine example. Based on the 色花堂, an MRI machine manufacturer might develop the following four message concepts focused on reducing scan times:

1. In an independent study, our MRI machine produced images that are at least two times faster than any other machine on the market
2. By reducing scan times, you will improve patient satisfaction and increase the number of appointments you can handle on a daily basis
3. Our 3.0 Tesla magnet, intuitive user interface, and efficient workflows enables you to get patients in-and-out of appointments more quickly
4. Faster imaging sequences will improve the productivity of your clinicians and image technicians

Here are four different ways to test these messages in a survey:

• Ratings: Have buyers rate each message on a 10-point scale for things such as:
  • Clarity鈥攈ow clear and well understood the message is
  • Relevance鈥攈ow well the message aligns with buyer needs
  • Differentiation鈥攈ow different or unique the message is
  • Compelling鈥攖o what extent the message sparks a buyer鈥檚 interest in your solution

• Select the Top Message: From a set of messages, have buyers select the one that is the most important (or influential) in their buying decision.
• Ranking: From a set of messages, have buyers rank each of them from most to least important in their buying decision.
• Choice-Based Exercise: Described earlier, this approach is perfectly suited to test message concepts because buyers select which is the MOST important and the LEAST important in their buying decision.

Learn more about using survey research to enhance your 色花堂s here.

4. Identify and Understand Buyer Segments

When it comes to high consideration buying decisions, it鈥檚 important to understand buyer expectations across the entire buying committee. This is the core of your 色花堂 and what the 5 Rings of Buying Insight reveal.

However, there are times when important differences in buyer expectations may exist across different 鈥渟egments鈥� of the market鈥攕uch as by company size, industry, geography or a buyer鈥檚 role.

For example, if an MRI machine manufacturer targets both large hospitals and smaller independent imaging practices, it鈥檚 conceivable that some of the needs, expectations, and aspects of the buying journey could vary across these two cohorts. If they suspect that this is the case, it’s appropriate to do a deeper exploration of each of these segments in a survey. Doing so will confirm or refute their suspicions and provide the buying insights needed to tailor their marketing approach if they decide to do so.

As with most things related to survey research, there are different approaches to achieving a particular objective鈥攊n this case, identifying any meaningful differences in buyer expectations across different segments of the market. Fortunately, the approach we recommend is straightforward and can be achieved in three steps:

• First, complete enough survey interviews in each segment so a reliable evaluation can be made between them. If you鈥檙e working with your in-house market research team or a third-party research firm, they can help you determine how many survey completes are enough, but the important thing is to design the study so you have a sufficient number in each segment to analyze the results within them.
• Second, complete a thorough side-by-side comparison of results between the segments in your study. This should be done across buyer expectations for each of the 5 Rings of Buying Insight.
• Third, based on this comparison, and your own capabilities, decide whether or not it鈥檚 worthwhile to tailor your marketing and sales approach within certain market segments.
  • If there are meaningful differences between the segments that your company has unique capabilities to address, take a more tailored marketing approach to each segment accordingly.
  • If there are no significant differences between segments, or your company doesn鈥檛 have unique capabilities to address any of the identified variances, then take one, consistent approach to both segments.

Conclusion

Surveys are one of the most popular forms of market research and a great way to validate and enhance 色花堂 insights. None of the four areas above are a must; you have the flexibility to focus a survey on whatever buying insights you think would be the most worthwhile. However, in our experience, these are the areas that provide the most useful learnings because they bolster stakeholder confidence in your 色花堂 and provide additional buying insights that enable you to market and sell to buyers even more effectively.

Need Help Building Your 色花堂s? Let鈥檚 Talk!

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I am fascinated by a recent Gartner study about the journey of 700 enterprise buyers across the U.S., EMEA, Brazil, India and China. According to a recent with Hank Barnes, Research Vice President at Gartner, the study focused on four areas:

• During the buying process, what types of activities and information do you use, independent of the firm you are evaluating?
• What type of content do you use from the provider itself?
• What marketing activities get your attention?
• What are you expecting from sales interactions?

The findings? Buyers spend only 32% of their journey interacting with supplier-side content or sales people. Two thirds of the buyer鈥檚 journey is devoted to internal assessments, peer networking, and the recommendations of external experts.

According to Barnes, buyers 鈥渉ave access to all this stuff from vendors, but making sense of it, interpreting it, understanding that they have the right stuff is where they鈥檙e really struggling.鈥�

This data quantifies exactly what we hear every day in our buyer persona interviews. And as a career sales and marketing professional, I am amazed that every company hasn’t realized that filling this void could be the best way to gain a competitive advantage.

In a few months ago, I related our experience interviewing buyers who say that marketing materials do nothing to help them make a decision, as competing solutions relate the same obvious benefits rather than useful information. The buyers鈥� experience with sales people is mostly a continuation of this theme, as sales arrives with the same marketing message rather than the critical details that help buyers gain confidence in their decision.

We know that many marketers are trying to explain the value of interviewing buyers to understand their needs and expectations. Maybe now that we have a report stating that vendors are privy to only 1/3 of the buyer鈥檚 journey, we can make it clear that it doesn鈥檛 work to build buyer personas by culling information from salespeople and marketing automation solutions. We’re seeing a very small part of the decision we need to influence.

The post Gartner says: Sales and marketing influences just 32% of B2B buyer鈥檚 journey appeared first on 色花堂 Institute.

I was saddened by recent bankruptcy filing. Its convenient stores and helpful staff are easy to find in any city I鈥檓 visiting. There is even a store in the tiny community where I live.

Radio Shack鈥檚 60-year rise and fall is a case study in what happens when a company鈥檚 vision isn鈥檛 balanced by insight into its customer’s expectations.

When Charles Tandy bought a small-time chain of nine stores in 1963, advances in technology and automation pointed to a future where we would all enjoy lives of leisure, freed of the need to spend eight hours a day at the office. Radio Shack would become a place for tinkerers and hobbyists with lots of free time and a desire to explore the brave new world of technology.

Radio Shack employees were drawn from the same pool of hobbyists, so they were ideally suited to engage shoppers with enthusiasm and knowledge. By the mid-1970s, the citizens band radio craze had made the company incredibly profitable. At it’s peak, the company had 7,000 stores.

But as we all know, technology didn鈥檛 give us more free time. In fact, in 1979 the average American worker was on the job for 1687 hours a year. By 2007, that number had ballooned to 1868 hours 鈥� adding more than a month of extra work hours every year.

We can only speculate about what might have happened had Radio Shack focused on its origins when it jumped into the personal computer market in 1977 with the TRS-80. This was a time when computers were often assembled from kits, but Tandy chose to sell his pre-assembled in one box. Radio Shack had found success marketing to 鈥渄o-it-yourselfers,鈥� so why would they not continue to do so with their computers? It鈥檚 hard to say, but the TRS-80 is now barely a footnote in computing history, and marked the beginning of the decline for the corporation.

Over the next few decades, the company flailed about, expanding their product selections to focus more on consumer electronics and launching a mail-order catalog business. Their ability to solve a unique problem for their buyers continued to deteriorate, as there were plenty of other players in the consumer electronics space, and the Internet quickly made mail-order catalogs obsolete. Attempts to launch a 鈥渂ig box鈥� electronics chain failed, and the company sold off the electronics manufacturers that made their house brands to focus on third-party products, with disastrous results.

By 2011, stock prices had fallen from $24.33 to $2.53 a share, and in January the company announced they were filing for bankruptcy.

Radio Shack is only one of many market leaders who lost their way as their vision came face-to-face with customer expectations. Similar failures to understand their target buyer and deliver on their specific needs have defeated behemoth companies like Unisys, Digital Equipment Corporation and countless others.

The changes that cause large, successful companies to fail are rarely sudden, which is why they are so easy to dismiss and also why they are so disturbing. Like Radio Shack, most companies have many opportunities to adjust their strategies to align with their buyers鈥� needs. Radio Shack might well have survived had they maintained their focus on their audience of electronics hobbyists and adjusted their strategies accordingly. Instead, they pursued a 鈥渕e too鈥� strategy that stripped them of their purpose, steadily reducing their unique product offerings to sell mobile phones and consumer gear that could be purchased anywhere. The hobbyists went elsewhere, and in the end, Radio Shack couldn鈥檛 serve any buyer better than some other store could.

It鈥檚 too late for Radio Shack, but it doesn鈥檛 have to be too late for your company. If you鈥檙e developing strategies without understanding your customer鈥檚 expectations, consider the possibility that you might be missing facts that will be retold in a story like this.

And beware of the online tools that help you build buyer personas without interviewing real buyers. As the people at Radio Shack can attest, it is incredibly dangerous to recycle your internal mis-perceptions into a new template and rely on your own hopes and vision.

P.S. My new book 鈥溕ㄌ胹: How to Gain Insights into your Customer鈥檚 Expectations, Align your Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business鈥� (Wiley) is now shipping.

The post How Radio Shack lost their buyer focus and their business appeared first on 色花堂 Institute.

This post is contributed by Gordana Stok, a Certified Practitioner of the 色花堂 Institute methodology.

Last year I decided to learn how to develop buyer personas so that I could become a better content marketer. Having practiced the craft of content marketing for over a decade, I was no stranger at producing content that helps buyers to make a more informed and educated purchasing decision. And, until a year ago, I honestly thought that I was communicating value from the buyer鈥檚 perspective.

But when the value proposition that I had helped to create for one of my B2B clients was canned by their new VP of Sales and Marketing, I started to question the very process marketers use and the people who get involved. It wasn鈥檛 until I came across an ebook from 色花堂 Institute that I truly understood the problem.

Like many marketing teams, we had reverse-engineered the product鈥檚 value based on its top features and unique selling points 鈥� not necessarily on what鈥檚 most important to buyers.听 So when the new VP challenged our value proposition, we couldn鈥檛 back up any of our claims with hard data. It became one person鈥檚 opinion versus another鈥檚. And guess whose opinion won?

With the term 鈥渞everse-engineering鈥� ringing loudly in my ears, I signed up for the 色花堂 Institute Masterclass and became a Certified Practitioner of the 5 Rings of Buying Insight methodology. Having now worked on buyer personas for several companies and interviewed dozens of decision-makers, here are the six most important and surprising things that I have learned so far.

1. You need to win both the hearts and minds of buyers 鈥� even in a complex B2B sale.

The first thing that surprised me is just how willing and eager buyers are to reveal details about their buying journey around a specific product 鈥� especially when there was a lot at stake for them and their organization. When asked the right questions, buyers will share both the cold hard facts and requirements that shaped their purchasing decision, as well as the doubts, fears, relief, confidence and joy they experienced as they went from status quo to successful implementation. When you hear senior business executives at multi-billion dollar organizations express such strong emotion, you realize you need to do more than just appeal to their intellect. You need to win both their hearts and minds.

2. You can capture a wealth of actionable insights conducting 30-minutes interviews with just 10 buyers.

I鈥檓 always amazed when I review the transcripts from the recorded interviews with buyers and I first bring all the quotes into Excel to analyze the data. Conducting 30-minute interviews with just 10 buyers can easily generate over 350 revealing quotes! The key, of course, is to carefully interpret each one, identify the most significant trends and select the strongest quotes to include in the final buyer persona. An art unto itself!听 The quotes that make the cut are those that provide new or thought provoking insights as well as enough details so that a clear plan of action can be taken. So unlike the 鈥渂uyer personas鈥� that are created based on generic, demographic data, the insights from interview-based personas provide a real competitive advantage.

3. Only a fraction of what鈥檚 important to buyers is typically addressed on a company鈥檚 website.
It goes without saying that when you hear buyers express their pain points and needs in their own words, along with the criteria they use to evaluate solution options and make their final purchasing decision, it becomes crystal clear what information they need and how to message them. What I鈥檓 repeatedly surprised by, however, is just how far off-course a company鈥檚 content can be without these insights. In my experience, only 20% to 40% of what buyers consider to be important is actually addressed on a company鈥檚 website. The good news for marketers is that buyer quotes can easily be turned into benefit statements and inspire topics for numerous content marketing pieces. As the President of 色花堂 Institute, Adele Revella, likes to say, 鈥淭he content practically writes itself鈥�.

4. Buyers want more in-depth product information so the length of content isn鈥檛 as important as relevance and clarity.

Being a content marketer at heart who loves to build understanding and influence people鈥檚 views, this is one of my favorite findings from interviewing buyers. When researching solution options, buyers quickly scan a company鈥檚 website to determine whether it has a solution worth investigating, so content needs to be brief. But when buyers are seriously considering a solution, they want in-depth case studies, white papers and technical briefs that enable them to assess whether the solution will work in their environment and generate the expected results. Length of content during this phase in the buying journey is not as important as relevance and clarity. What鈥檚 more, you can鈥檛 possibly create a persuasive argument for purchasing your solution if your argument has holes or isn鈥檛 backed by credible data. So go ahead and increase the word count to make sure you鈥檙e not disqualified due to insufficient information or a weak argument.

5. Buyers want companies to make it easier for them to evaluate and compare competitive solution options and demonstrate ROI.

One of the questions that I love to ask buyers during interviews is 鈥淗ow could the companies that you considered have made the buying experience easier for you?鈥� The top two responses from buyers, regardless of the product category, industry, size of the buyer鈥檚 organization or the buyer鈥檚 title, are 鈥淢ake it easier for me to evaluate and compare competitive solution options鈥� and 鈥淗elp me to demonstrate the ROI to my executive team鈥�.

The most common complaint buyers have is that it鈥檚 difficult to compare solution options because every company uses a different marketing term to mean the same thing. It鈥檚 like comparing apples to oranges. Buyers want a company鈥檚 website to include a chart that compares their solution鈥檚 features with the competition鈥檚 using more neutral terms. Buyers realize that the chart will be skewed in favor of the company鈥檚 solution, but they still feel it鈥檚 a good starting point for evaluating solutions.

Furthermore, buyers need to demonstrate return on investment to their executive team in order to get final sign-off, so any information or tools that a company can provide is extremely helpful. This includes industry research reports that demonstrate the impact the solution category has on an organization鈥檚 business and ROI figures tailored specifically for their organization.

6. After experiencing the power of interview-based, buyer personas first-hand, I can鈥檛 imagine doing content marketing without it.

This may sound like an exaggeration, but I honestly don鈥檛 know how I managed to do content marketing effectively without buyer personas. My perspective has completely changed and I hope to never have to go back to guessing what messages will resonate with buyers or relying solely on the opinions of internal stakeholders. 听I realize that not all companies may be ready or willing to embark on a buyer persona project for a variety of reasons. But when I work with clients nowadays, my advice to them is this:听 You can鈥檛 know with absolute certainty what鈥檚 important to buyers and what information you need to persuade them to purchase your solution until you ask them.

The post Practitioner Perspective: The 6 Most Important (Surprising) Things I鈥檝e Learned From Doing B2B 色花堂s appeared first on 色花堂 Institute.

It’s been seven years since I started The 色花堂 Blog, and I am pleased to publish our very first guest post. I hope you enjoy these recommendations from Irakli Beselidze, CEO of Premier SV in Russia, presenter of Marketing Guru TV show, and now a Certified Practitioner of 色花堂 Institute.

It鈥檚 rash to conclude that the concept of target audience is a meaningful tool for building a marketing strategy. Just because someone is a member of a socio-demographic group doesn鈥檛 mean they鈥檒l buy your products. People buy because they want to improve something about their lives, or their business, with the help of your solution, and you need to know how they think about that.

Have you ever woken up with the idea that you belong to a particular target audience, and must consume marketing messages no less than three times a week in order to decide which product to purchase? Absolutely not! People focus on how to solve their current problems, and they don鈥檛 want to be distracted by anything that doesn’t help them make a good decision.

While developing a marketing strategy, it鈥檚 crucially important to understand what problems people think they will solve by using your product and what communication context unites them during their decision-making process. To identify and provide a structured description of the context a person delves into during the buying process, Premier SV conducts qualitative research on buyers. The result is a detailed description: a buyer persona. It鈥檚 these personas that should serve as the basis for developing a communication strategy.

Here are six situations where buyer personas are a much better tool than a target audience that is determined by socio-demographic characteristics.

1.听听听 Your products aren鈥檛 spontaneously purchased within 10 minutes of discovery. Your buyers prefer to evaluate all possible options because the consequences of making the wrong decision are costly.

If we are dealing with a high-consideration purchase, branding based on knowledge of your target audience and spontaneous brand awareness are no guarantee buyers will choose you. Often, these consumers will ignore your slogans and advertising messages to rely on objective reviews from your former clients, their friends and coworkers.

2.听听听 Your target audience includes a lot of people who are not a potential customer.

If only 1 out of 10 people in your target audience needs your solution, while the other 9 aren鈥檛 prospects, it means you simply waste 90% of your efforts and resources. Though you may increase your brand awareness among your target audience and eventually increase sales, it鈥檒l be impossible to identify if this is the direct result of your marketing campaign.

3.听听听 Your marketing activities are repetitive and very similar to your competitors.

Since companies in direct competition have the same target audience, it鈥檚 unlikely that they鈥檒l have distinctive strategies for marketing campaigns. The result can be intense competition of creative ideas which aren鈥檛 relevant to the buyers鈥� context, but are just focused on framing the solution in new and exciting ways. This might not seem bad, but the further you are from the buyer鈥檚 context, the less likely the buyer will understand you and your messaging. Your marketing should be specific, clear and concise, and focus on how you鈥檒l solve your buyers鈥� real problem.

4.听听听 You鈥檙e not exactly sure what people need to hear to choose you.

Messaging for target audience and buyer personas are different as in the first case you鈥檙e talking about the product while in the second case 鈥� about solving a problem. For example, a well-known slogan created by Premier SV for Herschi-Cola鈥檚 target audience of 10-20 year olds was 鈥�Herschi-Cola 鈥� the taste of victory.鈥� While clever, it doesn鈥檛 reveal any particular reason for buyers to choose it. The same goes for the slogan 鈥淎lways Coca-Cola鈥� 鈥� it is just a way to show the value of the product, without paying attention to the context of its purchase. That鈥檚 why the winner in these messages鈥� battle will be the one with a bigger media budget.

Premier SV has decided not to participate in these competitions anymore. After analyzing 翱苍诲耻濒颈苍别鈥檚 buyer persona, we鈥檝e transformed the slogan for their roofing materials and male target audience of 30-55 year olds from 鈥淒oesn鈥檛 rust, doesn鈥檛 leak, doesn鈥檛 make noise鈥� to 鈥淥nduline 鈥� easy roof repair鈥�. We鈥檝e stressed the core value for buyers 鈥� the simplicity of solving the problem of a leaky roof as it stacks up to other options.

5.听听听 You鈥檙e not sure if you鈥檝e chosen the right communication channels.

It’s difficult to find a brand that鈥檚 100% sure their chosen media plan is the best, even if their marketing campaign is already in place. The reason why we鈥檙e unsure can be connected to an inability to understand how communication channels affect a consumer鈥檚 decision to buy a product. Traditional effectiveness metrics only reveal the number of contacts within your target audience, but no one understands how these contacts transform into an interest in a product or sales.

You won鈥檛 have these problems with buyer personas, because they uncover the sources of buyers鈥� decisions at each stage of the buying cycle, and identify the particular sources of information that influenced the decision.

6.听听听 Your target audience is mixed, or decisions are made by a group of people belonging to different socio-demographic groups.

The classic example of this situation appeared in Premier SV when we were researching buyers for the latest model of Toyota RAV4.听 We found that in most cases, both men and women contributed to the final decision to purchase the car. Additionally, in most cases both parties had equal weight in the buying process, but opposite evaluation criteria. What should be done in cases like these? Since Toyota is focused on traditional marketing methods, they decided to concentrate on male buyers. Typically, men and women use different sources of information and perceive the RAV4鈥檚 merits differently, so they decided to ignore the section of their target audience which wasn鈥檛 perceived as important.

B2B brands can also encounter the need to target 5-6 people with varying job titles, who work in different departments and all influence the decision-making process. Curious how to solve this problem?

Give up the idea of using your target audience as a tool for identifying decision makers, and start studying buyer personas. This will help you identify their roles in the decision-making process, evaluation criteria and many other factors that help buyers differentiate you from others and assure them that your product will make their life better.

Each year consumers become more savvy and sophisticated in making purchase decisions. To continue influencing them efficiently, you need to better study their behavior in the process of buying your product. Buyer personas are a step forward in this direction. When you research your buyer鈥檚 decisions, you鈥檒l understand your buyers and create more effective marketing communications.

Has your company already interviewed buyers to build buyer personas? What was the most challenging part? Please share your ideas with us.

The post 6 Reasons to Start Using 色花堂s Now appeared first on 色花堂 Institute.

Some believe that buyer personas, which are helping to shift the B2B industry鈥檚 attention to the people who make corporate buying decisions, will have the additional benefit of blurring the distinctions that have locked so many marketers into their original career path.

If this attitude helps marketers expand their job options, this is probably a good thing. However, I believe the logic is faulty.

That鈥檚 because a marketer鈥檚 role and contribution is not distinguished by the company鈥檚 focus on B2B or B2C solutions, but by the degree of 鈥渃onsideration鈥� a buyer gives to the decision the marketer wants to influence.听 For the most part, B2C products are 鈥渓ow-consideration鈥� decisions, where branding plays a major role in the buyer鈥檚 choice, while B2B products tend to be 鈥渉igh-consideration鈥� decisions where buyers need specific information before they commit.

The fact that levels of buyer consideration so frequently align with industries might explain the longstanding divide between B2B and B2C marketing. But there are exceptions, and the interest in buyer personas is amplifying the need for a more nuanced view.

A simple example of a low-consideration decision is the B2C buyer鈥檚 impulsive purchase of a new type of magazine or candy at the checkout counter. 听On the opposite end of the consideration scale, however, B2C buyers make relatively high-consideration decisions when they invest in a home, major appliance, retirement plan, or private school for their children.听 A mid-range B2C buying decision might involve planning for an upcoming vacation.

Note that this same person may have a job where she invests weeks, months, or even years on a team that is evaluating a new technology solution for her company. She also makes relatively low-consideration B2B decisions about sending members of her team to an industry conference.

I鈥檓 not saying that brand is irrelevant to buyers of high-consideration solutions, or that information is unimportant to buyers of low-consideration products. Instead, I am suggesting that there is an enormous difference in the weight that buyers give to these factors, and that this has a huge impact on expectations and investments in marketing.

By thinking about the following two factors, it is fairly easy to understand where your product, service or solution fits on your buyer鈥檚 continuum of 鈥渃onsideration.鈥� Think about:

• Your buyers’ investment in weighing alternative approaches and making a choice
• Your buyers’ opinion about the financial, operational and/or personal consequences of making the wrong decision

This distinction is important for buyer personas because marketers of low-consideration products can improve their marketing and branding decisions by identifying 鈥減ersonal鈥� buyer attributes such as gender, age, hobbies, marital status, income levels, commuting patterns, and so forth.

However, marketers of high-consideration products, services, and solutions are justifiably perplexed about how to use buyer personas that focus only on the buyer’s personal or demographic details. These marketers, whether B2B or B2C, need insight into the information needs of a targeted group of buyers as they make the decision to purchase their product, a competitor鈥檚, or to do nothing at all.听 That鈥檚 where the Five Rings of Insight are essential to the marketer鈥檚 success.

Levels of buyer consideration also impact the marketer鈥檚 options for building buyer personas. Because we know that buyers of low-consideration products cannot reliably explain their own choices, these marketers will need to invest in sophisticated research by third-party professionals.

On the other hand, buyers of high-consideration products can and will tell you exactly how and why they made a recent decision. Marketers who learn how to conduct a uniquely structured but unscripted conversation with these buyers can uncover critical details that the buyer has not yet shared with anyone.听 These invaluable insights are the foundation of competitive and effective messaging, content marketing, segmentation and sales enablement for high consideration solutions.

I鈥檒l give a brief overview of the buyer insights that are essential for marketing high-consideration solutions at an upcoming free webinar, , with Janet Driscoll Miller, President and CEO of Search Mojo, on November 15, 2012 at 2:00 p.m. ET.

The post What’s Different About B2B vs. B2C Marketing? appeared first on 色花堂 Institute.

A: What color did you choose?

B: How did you choose the color?

C:There are great apartments for rent right now. Have you thought about moving?

Answers vary on this selection (more on that later). But it’s clear that the question needs to follow the woman鈥檚 lead, that we would never script our conversation in advance of the social interaction. Imagine the confused, annoyed or bored response from this woman if we asked 鈥渟o what do you think about that new play that just opened?鈥�

Most people are perplexed when I ask them to conduct unscripted buyer persona interviews. These are the same people who will happily show up in any social situation, listen for threads of topics that others find engaging, and guide the conversation to mutually relevant topics.

Why not take this same approach with buyer interviews?

While it is definitely more taxing to develop questions in real time, the pressure to do so keeps us listening intently. And each time we base a question on a point that the buyer has recently made, our rapport with the other person builds. The buyer might even tell me, a perfect stranger, something he hasn鈥檛 told anyone else.

Pre-defined questions can only address topics that we found interesting before we started listening to the buyer. Worse yet, we are unlikely to learn anything new, having missed the opportunity to probe deeply on an interesting point..

This approach is especially critical for win/loss interviews. We need to get buyers talking at length about their decision criteria and process. We aren’t going to discover any actionable insights by writing down the buyer鈥檚 short answer — that we lost the deal on price and features, or won it because our sales rep is such a great guy. We need much deeper insights into how and why the company made this decision.

For instance, if the buyer told us that one of the triggers for this decision was that our solution was easiest to use, we might follow up by asking the buyer to describe what, specifically, they found to be easy. Or we might ask what level of user would find it easy to use, and what training they expected that user to need. Another line of questioning might reveal details about how they assessed the solution’s ease-of-use.

Returning to your interaction at the party, if you selected question A (what color will she paint her apartment), you have just learned that your new acquaintance likes light yellow, which might be interesting if you are selecting colors of paint to carry in your store, or what colors to feature in a marketing campaign for paint.

Question B (how did she choose the color?) is a great follow-up question, or likely your best first question, as this should trigger a story about the way this person thinks and makes decisions. This question will probably get you the answer to the color too.

Question C (did you know there are some great apartments for rent?) is changing the subject, a terrible technique when you need to build rapport, and one of the major reasons that interviews should never be scripted.

Unless you鈥檙e marketing home improvement products, you shouldn’t care about anyone鈥檚 choice of paint 鈥� buyer鈥檚 decision processes vary dramatically based on the products, services and solutions they’re considering.听 But we want to have an agenda, perhaps three-to-five topics that we hope to explore, and not a structured questionnaire, if we want buyers to tell us what really persuades them to make decisions about our category of solutions.

The post Ask interesting questions to hear how buyers think appeared first on 色花堂 Institute.

I didn鈥檛 know the story I鈥檓 about to share with you when I reviewed Kristine's work. As none of the people assigned to the project had any previous experience developing personas, I imagined that Kristine might have had previous work experience as an IT Architect, the buyer persona she was assigned to develop. Or maybe she was married to someone in this position, or had a close friend or colleague who gave her an advantage over her colleagues.

All these assumptions were wrong. Kristine simply did better work than her colleagues. When we sat down with the team to review Kristine鈥檚 persona, here鈥檚 what she told us about her approach:

• Her first step was to search online job boards for companies looking to hire IT Architects. This gave her a bit of insight into the experience and other expectations that hiring managers had for this role.
• That led her to a few technical requirements — she learned that hiring companies were focusing on the IT Architect's experience with SOA and ITIL, technologies she had heard of but didn鈥檛 know well. So she did web searches to learn more about those technologies. Note that Kristine is not a a very technical person, but that didn't stop her from taking an interest in a topic that was critically important to her buyer persona.
• The web searches led to some interesting papers, plus several conferences that were targeting the IT Architect. So Kristine reviewed the conference agendas to learn about the aspects of those technologies that were most interesting to her buyer persona

Only now did Kristine feel like she was ready to talk to some IT Architects. When I talked to Kristine鈥檚 colleagues, they had skipped these preliminary online research steps. Many had also found it difficult to secure interviews. But Kristine easily found people by:

• Using her LinkedIn network to get introduced to a few people
• Sorting through her stack of business cards to find people who could introduce her to someone in that role
• Posting a request on two of the online forums that she participates in

These steps led to interviews with five people who were willing to talk to Kristine about their priorities, goals and frustrations. She asked a lot of probing questions, typing as she listened, capturing quotes and key thoughts. Most people would be better off taping the call or having someone else take notes, but Kristine鈥檚 background as a journalist prepared her to simultaneously think about interesting areas to pursue with her questions, listen for the most relevant data, and take good notes.

Finally, Kristine organized her notes from the five interviews by subject, scanning for patterns in the responses. When she wrote up her persona document her findings were communicated through short, pithy, colorful statements, each summarized with a heading that made it easy to identify the focus of that section. She included quotes that turned statements that might otherwise be meaningless — like 鈥渓eads key business initiatives鈥� — come alive with examples and references to specific issues that frustrate the IT Architect鈥檚 attempts to succeed on those initiatives.

Based solely on reading the buyer persona Kristine wrote up, I had already decided to present her with an iPad for the best buyer persona on the team. Now that I know how she produced that result, I鈥檓 wondering how to get other people to take the steps that came so naturally to her.

The post How Kristine developed a great buyer persona appeared first on 色花堂 Institute.

If you鈥檝e spent much time on planes you will be as surprised as I was about what happened when I ran into Jeff, who occupied the seat across the aisle from me on the last leg of my trip. We talked until one of the other passengers complained, and then set up a time to talk again later. I’ve traveled hundreds of thousands of miles with thousands of other passengers since then, but that conversation still stands apart.

Jeff runs product management for a well-known product line at one of the largest technology companies in the world, but I meet people in similar roles almost every week. What makes Jeff so compelling is that he tells his product managers that their job is to manage problems, not products. His point is simple 鈥� if you give a guy a product to manage, he鈥檒l find capabilities to add to the product, whether the market needs them or not. Jeff doesn鈥檛 want to hear his product managers talking about solutions; he wants to hear, in detail, about the problems that potential buyers are facing.

Even though this focus on market problems is embedded in all of the work we do at Pragmatic Marketing, Jeff made me realize how thoroughly we鈥檝e been trained to think about the answer, and how hard it is to shift our focus to the question. When was the last time someone in your company told you to bring them problems, not solutions? Jeff has turned a basic cultural norm inside-out, and has leveraged this philosophy to achieve a series of rapid promotions.

Jeff told me that his idea has had a significant impact on internal meetings. He interrupts any debate about the merits of various decisions and asks participants (even significantly more senior executives) to present as much detail as possible about the problem. He says that it is relatively easy to get people with different
agendas to agree on the nature of a problem, and that the solution is then obvious and more readily accepted.

Although it鈥檚 been years since I met Jeff, I regularly think of him when I鈥檓 working with marketers who are struggling to gain internal support for a strategic, market-driven process. How many times do product managers argue for investment in a new product capability without thoroughly understanding and communicating the unsolved problem it will address? How much time and money is spent on a go-to-market initiative without first defining the problems that matter most to the buyers, and what attitudes have prevented them from doing business with us?

The post Bring me problems, not solutions appeared first on 色花堂 Institute.