How to Craft Your Target Personas

This is a part of a series that was cre­at­ed to help you get the prac­tice of out­bound prospect­ing built into your com­pany. This series will walk through the process, nec­es­sary roles, in addi­tion to guides for each role to help your com­pany get started quickly.  In the next few posts, I’ll be releasing the contents of a quick start guide for the outbound prospecting manager to use to attain success during this process.

Never underestimate the need to understand the personas you are targeting during your outbound prospecting calls.

When your team is cold calling, they are calling individuals who are not expecting their call and are probably very busy. Ultimately, if the lead picks up your call, the cold caller has a very small window of time to convince this person that:

• You understand his/her role, responsibilities, and goals
• You understand his/her pain point(s)
• You have a solution that well make his/her life easier, and ultimately improve productivity.

Meet with your company’s VP of Marketing to gather data about target personas. It’s also important to have your business development reps relay information to you each week during your retrospective about the common personality traits, schedules, pains, etc., of the people they are connecting with each day. This will help you further understand and synthesize all data about the personas.

An Example of a Buyer Persona

Here is an example of a Buyer’s Persona, the Pain Points, and How a Company Solves the Pain. As the manager, you will need to work with your marketing department to generate this type of content for your business development reps:

• Title: CEO, CMO, VP of Marketing
• Influencers: Other franchise CEOs/franchise consultants/ad agencies
• Goal: Grow franchise quickly through building strong brand and expanding to new markets
• Relevant Areas of Concerns/Responsibilities
  • Brand development and management
  • Franchise marketing
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Affiliate marketing plan, customization, localization, demand generation, local marketing support team

Sample Pain Points:

• Inefficient local marketing which affects affiliates’ profits and growth, and affects franchisor’s bottom line
  • How it Manifests: Our affiliates are not marketing themselves locally as well as we want them to
  • How Company X Addresses: Company X offers better media buying rates, reduced production costs, and more effective local marketing
• Franchisor has difficulty replicating its original business model and attracting franchisees
  • How it Manifests: Marketing production costs are too high and they are hurting our affiliates’ business
  • How Company X Addresses: Company X offers a competitive edge to the franchisor’s business model and makes the franchise more attractive to potential franchisees
• Lack of experience and skill set for local marketing
  • How it Manifests: We only do tactical work for local marketing because we don’t have experienced, high level local marketing managers
  • How Company X Addresses: Company X offers fully managed local marketing for affiliates, combining our powerful platform and expertise in local marketing

Additional resources for crafting target personas

• 21 Tips for Creating Buyer Personas, Karen Goldfarb
• Defining Your Audience: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Buyer Personas, Ahmed Taleb