Manager's Minute:
What's Your Persona?

email article | print article

By David Skinner

Sounding more like a bad pick up line than an important sales tool, personas are the imaginary representations of similar types of customer groups you encounter in your sales room. Each persona differs in their life stage and their readiness to buy. Download Holiday’s Persona Matrix as a PDF here.

Knowing your customer and what his needs and interests are is the path to building rapport and making the sale. Each persona group has similar needs, but exhibit different interests, knowledge and financial ability. Recognizing their similarities and probing for their differences will further hone your presentation skills. Since each persona is different, your approach to presenting the product benefits should be as well.

Sales Manager’s, use the Persona Matrix in your next training. By crossing each row with the corresponding column will result in twenty unique personas. Assign the squares to individuals or groups and ask them to write descriptions for the corresponding persona type. They should draw upon their imaginations as well as past experiences with just such type people. Include family relations, ages, income, and needs. Then give the personas you’ve described actual names as if they were real customers and introduce them to the rest of the group. If time is a factor, reduce the number of assigned personas to just those most often in your sales room. Here’s an example to get you started. We’ll describe a “Mingle”-“Curious” from the Persona Matrix:

Rudy is on vacation with his girl friend. He’s in his late thirties, active and wanting to impress his companion. Sports, all types are his passion. Skiing, anything on the water, you name it, he’s there. He’s employed in auto sales and boasts he specializes in only high end vehicles. Says he doesn’t believe in timeshare, but admits to knowing little about them.

Get the discussions going with questions like, “What are Rudy’s hot buttons? What benefits would he be most interested in? The least?”

If you haven’t got the idea yet, it’s time to throw your cookie cutter approach out. It’s like a broken clock that only occasionally gets the time right. Top Guns adjust their sales approaches to the customer and sells them all.

Remember Managers, adult education is not teaching, but sharing. Engage your sales people in dialogue and build on the wealth of experience and talent you have in your room. We suggest each month you create a group learning experience by introducing new concepts like Personas or others provided by Front to Back. See you next month!

Click Here to Learn More >> Visit Our Archived Article Library!