What Can We Learn from Buyer Personas?

To find out more about learner personas, we’re turning to Jim Kraus, an expert on buyer personas used by sales and marketing professionals.  Listen in to hear how Jim’s team at the Buyer Persona Institute conducts research interviews, the target number of people you should speak to, and how to move beyond an avatar to […]

To find out more about learner personas, we’re turning to Jim Kraus, an expert on buyer personas used by sales and marketing professionals. 

Listen in to hear how Jim’s team at the Buyer Persona Institute conducts research interviews, the target number of people you should speak to, and how to move beyond an avatar to get a complex understanding of the psyche of your learner.

Transcript

[00:00] Tom Moriarty: Welcome. You made it to the Secret Society of Success. In this not-so-secret podcast, we interview L&D changemakers about how they approach the evolving corporate environment and cultivate their own careers. From their stories, we hope you find lessons and inspirations to make yourself, your people, and your organization successful. For our second season, we pulled you, our listeners, to find out what you wanted to hear about. You chose those learner personas. So now we're on a mission to find out from experts the answers to your questions, like what is a learner persona? How do you create an effective persona? And most importantly, why are personas a strategic investment for L&D teams? In this episode, we're changing it up. We're talking buyer personas, not learner personas. To do this, we brought in Jim Kraus. He leads a Buyer Persona Institute, where him and his organization spend all day, every day thinking about the best ways to research and communicate what a buyer persona is. In this episode, you'll hear how his team thinks about personas and complex layers and awesome tips about how to conduct more effective persona interviews. The reason we did this for this episode is we hope that by learning from experts who've been thinking about buyer personas for decades, it will give you inspiration of how you can take some of the same lessons and apply them to learner Personas. Let's jump into our conversation so you can see what I'm talking about. Why don't you introduce yourself and share a little bit about your background?

[01:38] Jim Kraus: Sure. So. Jim Kraus, president of Buyer Persona Institute. And Buyer Persona Institute is an organization where our sole focus is to really capture and understand the voice of the buyer in most circumstances, to really drive insights and what we can learn about prospective buyers and provide those to organizations so that they can really develop highly tailored marketing and sales strategy messaging content that is completely aligned to their prospective buyers and who they're selling to. My background is really deep in market research, so I've worked for a number of larger organizations in the tech and financial services space as well, on the supplier side, developing, running custom studies for a variety of different business needs. So Buyer Persona Institute is actually a great fit because it allows me to use some of my market research capabilities and experience and apply it in a very specific way to help organizations better market, better communicate to their respective buyers.

[02:46] Tom Moriarty: You touched on it in your introduction, really highlighting what the focus is for Buyer Persona Institute. Can you delve into that a little bit more?

[02:56] Jim Kraus: Yeah, sure. So really at the heart of what we do is buyer persona is a phraseology that's pretty well known, pretty common in the marketing and sales community, for that matter. It's almost become a mantra in the past decade about personas. We view persona buyer personas a little bit differently. Typically, when you hear buyer personas, if you ask the marketing community, a lot of people would talk about them as a kind of fictional representation of a particular role in the buying decision. So examples might be a title, a function, what the education of that particular individual is, their overall priorities, maybe the information sources that they use. And that information is useful and valuable to an extent. But we take buyer persona as a step further. And what we do is we explore not fictional, but very fact-based profiles of an actual buying decision. And the reason for that is that particularly for high consideration purchases, you really need to understand much more than just the profile of your buyer. As a marketer, you need to understand five critical things. We talk about these as the five rings of buying insights. The first one is what we call priority initiatives. And this is where we're really trying to understand what are the triggers that is causing a prospective buyer to have a need for a particular solution at this very moment in time. So this may be a challenge or an opportunity they've had for a while, but what is the thing that's triggering them right now so you can meet them where they are? The second thing that we look to uncover in our buyer personas is what we call success factors. You can think of these as outcomes or end benefits, right? These are all the things the buyers want to achieve as a result of making the investment. The third one is a really important one that is sometimes overlooked, is called perceived barriers. And what this is, this is all the fears and concerns that a buyer has about just making an investment in a particular solution or making it with you. The fourth one is decision criteria. And these are all the questions that you can expect a buyer to have when they are evaluating the different alternatives they're considering. You can almost look at this as the Frequently Asked Questions portion. And then the fifth final one is what we call buyers journey. And this is the one that is who are the different influencers involved in the decision? What are the different information sources they use and that they trust? What are the actual steps in the decision process? Things of that nature.

[05:40] Tom Moriarty: Yeah, that's really interesting. In this season thus far, when we're learning about the idea of learner personas, one of the common themes that keeps coming up is that need to do really qualitative research. Go speak to the person who you'll be delivering some sort of training to really get into those interactions. And through that, as you described, kind of journalistic type interview and discussion, you could really start to round out a much deeper, more valuable persona in the L&D space. What's that conversation like? What are some of the questions that you're asking in the context of your world? Obviously you guys are going to try to draw out some of those five key buying insights you just shared. But what are some of the questions? How do you facilitate that conversation?

[06:28] Jim Kraus: So the main thing that we look for, and quite honestly, the interviewers that we work with that are experts in doing these type of interviews is we like to find people that just have a really curious mind and just like to understand people and their story. So the only scripted question, so we identify somebody that has made, in our world a recent purchase decision for our client, has a particular offering that they're offering. We go interview them. And the only scripted question that we ask them is the first question in the interview. We literally ask them, take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed X, and X would be a particular solution. And from there, we literally go step by step in the process. So we'll ask them, what's the first thing that you did so that we understand what was the way that they identified even some companies that they may want to take a look at, or some alternatives they want to look at. They may tell us something about that. Then we'll start to dig into literally, how did they winnow down their choices? So we'll ask them at some point, we may ask them, well, how many companies did you look at or did you consider? And they could say, here's an initial six. And then we'll ask them, well, what happened after that? When you had the initial six? Why did that initial six make your list? And then what did you do? Did you window those down to a subset? How did you winnow that down? And they may say, well, it was based on based on the different features that they offered. And what we'll follow up with is, well, tell me about those features. What were the ones that were really important to you that really kind of were a factor, whether a company was stayed on your list or maybe you kind of eliminated from consideration. And we just get them talking because it's their story. They love telling it because these are decisions that mean a lot to them. Right. And these are things that they went through. They don't have to guess. That's the beauty of these. There's no guessing here. This is literally what they went through. They actually enjoy telling us their story sometimes. We usually do the interviews for 30 or 40 minutes. We could often go longer than that just because they like telling us their story quite honestly. So the best thing I could say is it's curiosity, it's active listening, good questioning skills that kind of get us there.

[08:38] Tom Moriarty: Yeah, that's great. The concept I think of a lot when you're sharing that is one that we talk about internally in our business a lot, is just like making sure that you, you know, the five why concept, just making sure. You know, in your example about features, okay, we we did feature parity, so we looked at all the features and we said, okay, these these are the ones that are the top three. Okay, well, which features, why were those features important? Right? Like, what was the actual business reason why you cared that you had a good data visual on your, on the piece of software? Right. There's something behind that. That ultimately is what really drove the why behind it.

[09:19] Jim Kraus: Those are the nuggets you're looking for, that you're mining for.

[09:22] Tom Moriarty: Yeah, that's great. I'm curious. Obviously, ten interviews is a lot that's a lot of data, but it's still only ten, and it's the opinions of ten people which are really important, but who just went through that decision process. I'm curious. Something that came up for a lot of the people we've spoken with thus far during the season is trying to manage whether it's your own or even the person that you're gathering qualitative data from, managing bias or managing stereotypes or perceptions that might be unique between people. How do you guys think about that when you're collecting your data through interviews?

[10:10] Jim Kraus: Yeah, so we always tell the organizations we work with, we're happy to do as many or as few interviews as you want. What we have found, having done this for over a decade, is that we tend to find after we get to ten interviews, focus on a specific buying decision, we tend not to learn anything terribly new. We have the story, and I'm a researcher at heart, so I'm a purist. So that took some convincing for me, just having conducted so many of these buyer persona studies to see that. Having said that, I'm always in favor of doing additional research in the form of quantitative survey research to validate and further segment findings. So that's something that's a very easy follow on. The nice thing about it so far is when we've done a quantitative phase, when we have an organization that wants us to help them with that as well, or they've done it on their own, is that 100% of the time. We have found that the elements or the factors we're identifying through the initial interviews really are really confirmed by the quantitative phase when we're interviewing many more potential buyers and getting that quote unquote statistical significance or at the very least, just more confidence in the results. So I would never discourage anybody from doing more research to validate it, particularly if there's some uneasiness about the results or they don't even want to base decisions on them because they're nervous about them, go ahead and do it. But the quality of those initial interviews will be the foundation of it because that's kind of what you want to base the quantitative survey research on afterwards.

[11:49] Tom Moriarty: Okay, so it sounds like ten is a magic number, so maybe that's something that the audience could take away. So in terms of gathering your data points. But I really like that. I think the idea of using any additional quantitative data that you have to balance the qualitative insights and even using that as a tool to be a check figure for yourself, right. To make sure that you're staying within guardrails and that this persona is ultimately a valuable tool for yourself. Those five rings of buying insight probably translate really nicely to some new ways a learning and development person might be able to build out and develop a persona. Of those, let me ask you this question. Of those, which is the one that typically has the biggest impact for your customers or is the most AHA of the five rings that you have?

[12:43] Jim Kraus: There's two. There's no question it's perceived barriers and decision criteria because usually when we cover priority initiatives which are triggers and success factors which are outcomes that they want more times than not, that's not new news, right? It's confirming news. Maybe we end up emphasizing certain things a little bit more prominently than other things, but it's rare that we will get through those. And the organizations we work with are like completely unexpected. I couldn't believe that. Right? That's rare, but it is confirming, which is valuing. But the perceived barriers and decision criteria is so important because of two reasons really. For one, perceived barriers, it's a way of casting a spotlight on buyer fears and concerns that probably doesn't get enough attention among marketers and salespeople. Just as a mindset that their buyers do have fears and concerns and you want to be able to address them. So just putting it in that framework has value and how marketers think and sales folks think and then also receive buyers and decision criteria. The reason those two are so important is because that's where the rubber meets the road, right? That's when you're really getting down into the sales funnel. They're saying, okay, I've got five alternatives I'm looking at. They're all saying they can kind of get to the results that I want, okay, I'm willing to believe them enough. But now I've got some specific questions so that I can actually believe it, right? So I really believe that they're going to be able to deliver on this. So those are the ones that are really compelling, right? Because those are where you can really differentiate yourself in terms of what you're saying to the market, what you're demonstrating to the market in terms of if you're doing proof of concepts or trials and things of that nature depending on what you offer, that's where the gold really happens. Those two insights, that's great.

[14:31] Tom Moriarty: It's funny that you say that and that was going to be my guess. But the interesting overlap for me is it actually ties back to something that I think I've heard in every discussion I've had with learning and development professional about building personas thus far. And it's really that focus on the human motivation aspect of it. And I think that that's ultimately what I'm hearing as the clear takeaway there those perceived barriers or fears that your buyer has are going to be hugely important, right. And then the decision criteria, which is really the things that is going to mobilize them and get them moving forward and actually to drive a decision. So it's interesting that one A and one B in your rings of buying insight really center completely around what are the motivations for the person or persons in this actual buying decision itself. I think that that's ultimately really important. Right. At the end of the day, for our audience, they're trying to figure out how do I make something? In your case, it's about facilitating the buying process, right. In our audience’s case, it's about facilitating a really effective learning process. Right. And at the end of the day, I don't think you can do either thing without having a really clear understanding of what the motivations and fears and mobilizing factors are for the person that you're engaging with. Absolutely. So Jim, one other question I have for you. One of the things that becomes most valuable for the learning and development professional when building a persona is how that influences their delivery. So actually how they meet the learner, where they are, how they actually deliver the content. Is it going to be instructor led? Is it going to be an Elearning? Is it going to be some sort of blended approach where you're going to have a pre work quiz, then you're going to have an Elearning, and then you're going to show up in a classroom and discuss the results with a broader audience. I'm curious how often when you guys are putting together your buyer profile, does that influence how an organization actually facilitates the buying process? Right? Do you ever see that that has an impact or change the way that the buying or selling process is actually delivered for your customers after going through one of these projects?

[17:03] Jim Kraus: Yeah, absolutely. The most direct way is the buyer's journey when we learn all the different steps that they take in the process. So that's the one place that we answer that question directly. So we may find out in a particular study that trials or proof of concepts are critical in the buying decision. Right. That the ones that they were heavily influenced by, that when they got down to their finalists, they insisted on that. So that could be something as an example that all of a sudden an organization prioritizes those motions a bit more than they have in the past, as an example. But we also find other things. So another example would be decision criteria. Right. There may be a number of decision criteria and it's not something that if you find 15 to 20 things are basing decision on. That may not be a very easy thing to do in a sales professional meeting with somebody the first time or talking to them. So they may create different types of assets that are leaf behinds as an example, or as I mentioned, some do frequently ask questions on their website and they point them to those types of things. So they do come up with creative ways to try to figure out how do I give everything buyers want need in the most efficient way and also kind of thinking through stages in the process. So the other thing in the buyer's journey is we'll also understand the actual steps they took. So maybe early on in the buying cycle there is only a receptivity to certain amount of information or certain mechanisms. Whereas later when they're really digging in, there's more appetite for more considered things, things that take more time, more interactive. Right. It could be more interactive components. There's some back and forth. They absolutely influence. I could definitely see how they would influence the learning community as well. Just trying to understand how they digest learning how they prefer to things that work, things that didn't work, things of that nature.

[19:09] Tom Moriarty: Yeah, I think that's a really valuable piece that I think maybe even in building a learning and development persona that can be overlooked, like what are the steps that this person is going to take through their career? Right. Like at the end of the day, when you're building persona, in your case the outcome is a decision. In their case, hopefully the outcome is this person accomplished the skill to get this goal to achieve something for whatever reason that they might have it. I really like using the idea and that principle of let's understand the steps that they're going to take over time. Let's understand the process that they're going to go through because hopefully it will arm you, as in your customers case, a seller, or in our audience case, instructional designer, to just better meet your customer where they are, meet them in the place that they're at right now. One quick sort of, I guess, funny question I'll have for you. In my last discussion, there was an emphasis placed on the image associated with the persona. How do you guys think about that? Is that important to you? Do you care for your thoughts there?

[20:26] Jim Kraus: From one standpoint, it doesn't mean all that much because again, we're not trying to create a fictional avatar. That's not what a buyer persona is to us. Our buyer persona is what we're trying to do is take all the fiction out of it or all the guessing out of it. Right. So maybe it's not fiction, but or all the hypothesizing. We're trying to make this as stack based as we possibly can. So in that way, it's kind of hard to create something that's going to be necessarily representative because we're trying to represent a buying decision, not an actual.

[20:57] Tom Moriarty: Person or a role, not a human. Right?

[20:59] Jim Kraus: Yeah, correct. So on the other hand, for example, we may do a study where it's a study where we're doing smaller enterprises and larger enterprises, and we do a buyer persona for each enterprise size because an organization thinks there's pretty significant differences in the buying decision. The large organization, we might give that a persona, a name that starts with L, whether it's a woman or a guy or what have you, just so it's a little bit easier to remember it in that way, but nothing that we would do to try to relay any specific information about the persona itself. I would say that, yeah.

[21:42] Tom Moriarty: So it sounds like for you guys, it's a tool, really, to just better help your customer remember and associate the details versus a tool to maybe bring that to life. Because I think from what you got from your approach, it's really more about digging into the fact-based details, and it's a little bit more comprehensive. So it's really about an association to all of your details and not as much about trying to personify them, if that makes sense. Yeah.

[22:14] Jim Kraus: I mean, if anything, we'd rather personify the buying decision rather than any type of role or person. Right. So if it's a supply chain solution, for example, I would rather create something that was more imagery or represented supply chain than I would a role. Quite a bit. That's what the persona is based on.

[22:32] Tom Moriarty: Right. So maybe just some sort of visual component isn't necessarily even a human, but again, it just brings that association back for your customer.

[22:42] Jim Kraus: Right?

[22:42] Tom Moriarty: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I like the idea of actually thinking about not always just making it a person. Right. I think that at the end of the day, the visual association is just a memory tool. So that's a good takeaway. Jim, this has been really insightful. If the audience is looking to learn a little bit more about you or about the Buyer Persona Institute, where can they find you? On the old Googles. Yeah.

[23:09] Jim Kraus: So we're buyerpersona.com. And we're Buyer Persona Institute. You'll find we have a lot of available free resources there. We do a masterclass workshop, which is a nominal fee if you're a do it yourself and you want to try to do one of these on your own. We also offer Buyer Persona templates. There's different we have a pendulum of blogs just to get a little bit smarter and give different points of view about it. And then the other resource I can point you to is we just started a LinkedIn newsletter. We call it the Buyer Persona. Buzz which I put out. So if you look for me on LinkedIn, Jim Kraus, you can either follow me or you can just sign up for that newsletter, and we get a newsletter out every two to four weeks. Just keeping talking about buyers personas methodologies best practices, we try to put in some buyer insights that could be useful for you so those are two definitely resources that you could look to.

[24:08] Tom Moriarty: That's awesome. Thanks. I'm and I hope you have an awesome rest of your day. The Secret Society of Success is hosted by Mimeo. The better way to print. Check out our sister podcast, Talk of a Trade for tips and tricks for sales and marketing leaders, visit www.mimeo.com for more information.

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