So much has been written about Buyer Personas, Empathy Maps, etc., I have resisted sharing how I create mine. I am not sure that I can add anything new, but a slightly different perspective may be worth something. I have found most Personas as an exercise that is seldom done in the sales and marketing arena outside of a workshop type atmosphere. Buyer Personas are usually the property of Service Designers and User Experience type people.
When, I first introduced Buyer Persona’s to my clients it was not an “aha” moment. It was like OK another exercise before we start doing something that matters. My template was based on Dave Gray’s Xplane model and pictured below.
There was one twist that I added to mine. I added the Pain and Gain Blocks at the bottom. It was my attempt to wrap some context around the subject. In the past year, as more and more work has become virtual, a Microsoft Excel sheet was used so that it was easier to transfer information and complete blocks while we are sharing screens. This resulted in adding a little more context.
Now instead of building a customer persona, we created a Mini-A3 to demonstrate how different segments or people within an organization fit into our persona. By doing this it made it much easier to transfer these Personas to different organizations and made it more usable between the sales people and marketing. The fields are easily defined if you understand an A3. The difficulty is viewing the A3 from the Buyer’s perspective. It causes some rather stimulating conversation.
Any Thoughts?