Your revenue and Buyer Personas, Buyer Journeys, the Buying Process, and Buyer Scenario

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Buyer Personas have become standard website design tools. Good. Creating them helps everyone in the company understand better who buyers are and what they want. Of course, the personas must be created by interviewing real customers, or they will not be accurate - which will defeat the whole purpose. Guessing or assuming is a big mistake.

On top of that, Buyer Personas can also get in the way. I don't need some seller to tell me who I am or force me to "select myself" before I can access their product or service. If I walked into a store and was forced to answer questions about the "category" I fall into before I was allowed to shop, I would turn on a heel and leave.

That's what happens when someone like Dell forces you to select "Home," Small and Medium Business," "Public Sector," or "Large Enterprise." What if I am a home-based business? Which category do I pick?

Or Verizon, which also forces you to decide if you are "Wireless," "Residential," or "Business." What if I use my cell phone as my office phone for my home-based business? I'd fall into all three categories!

These classifications are all based on the way these companies are organized - and the way they want to sell, rather than the way I want to buy. This is the Buyer Persona concept taking over and messing everything up. Ironically, above these three categories, Verizon asks: "Welcome. What can we help you with today?" Duh. How about "Buying a cell phone"? Or, "Signing up for data service," (which I'll use for both business and personal communication)? How do I do that from this screen?

Because Buyer Personas are relatively easy to create, they are used improperly. If you look at what's really happening when someone is trying to buy something, they are looking for something that you provide. They know what they want, and are hoping you have it. They simply want to see that thing, as quickly as possible. It's your job to get the heck out of the way and serve it up. They don't want your excitement about categorizing your customers impeding their progress.

I think Buyer Personas are great for creating and organizing content you make available to prospects (such as a white paper aimed at top management), but not for organizing the website.

The Buyer Journey is the current catch phrase for what I refer to as the Buying Process in Roadmap to Revenue.

I've been calling it the Buying Process for years, because that's what customers call it. "Buyer Journey" is just plain stupid. It's just another one of those pretentious, "I'm so smart" phrases that goo-roos come up with to sound important. It reminds me of relationship marketing, which was one of the biggest lies ever foisted on CEOs and entrepreneurs. Consultants found it easy to sell business owners on having a "relationship" with buyers. Buyers hated the idea!

Buyers do not go on "journeys." The last thing you want is a "journey" when you set out to buy something. You just want to find it, like it, buy it, and go on with your life.

Howard Gossage once said (paraphrasing), if people talked to each other like they do in commercials, someone would get their lights punched out. Ditto for this phrase. I've interviewed thousands of buyers, and never once has anyone said, "When I started on my buyer journey," or even, "When I started my journey."

The Buying Process is even more important than the Buyer Persona, because it is more closely tied to what the customer actually wants to do when they come to your site. It's the key to understanding how they buy, and then making it easy for them to carry out that process.

The customer's Buying Process starts with the initial need, and continues all the way through to purchase, use, and feedback on the product or service. It's the buyer's "funnel," if you will, where they start out searching, narrow down their choices, try to get all their questions answered, make a selection, buy and experience the product or service, and then share that experience with other potential customers.

All of this involves interaction with your sites, your content, and your people. That's why the Persona concept can't take you to the bank. What you do - or don't do - is more important to your success than who your buyers are. Which brings us to the pinnacle of these concepts, the Buyer Scenario.

The Buyer Scenario is a term I coined to describe the experience that the buyer is hoping to have when looking for, evaluating, purchasing, and then using your product or service.

For example, when we start to buy a new car, in spite of our experience to the contrary, we imagine narrowing our choices online, going to several car dealers to test drive the finalists, then ordering or driving away with just the car we want. We imagine the car dealer answering all of our questions, honestly and efficiently. We imagine the test drive unspoiled by a chattering, boring dealer. We hope against hope that the dealer won't play silly negotiating games when it's time to sign the contract. This is the desired Buyer Scenario.

Another example: Buying software. We want to enter a term into a search engine, see the software that meets those requirements, see a bunch of screen shots so we can pick the one that looks best to us, download a fully functional trial, and find that the software is intuitive and straightforward. We want to buy without a hassle, clicking on a "buy now" button up in the Help drop-down, go to a site where we buy and get a receipt, on screen, that we can copy and paste into a registration box. This is what we hope will happen.

The reality, of course, seldom, if ever, meets these high - but not unreasonable - expectations. I won't even talk about what happens at the car dealer; we've all been through those disgusting experiences and would rather not think about them.

As for software, just recently I tried to buy a program and ran into all kinds of problems as I tried to live out my Buyer Scenario. After I paid, using PayPal, I wasn't taken back to the site so I could finalize the purchase - nor was I given a way to do that on the PayPal screen. And the registration number wasn't included in the PayPal receipt or the emailed receipt. Long story short, I ended up having to contact the company via a hard-to-find email web form to finalize the registration process - and, given that I was trying to buy the product on a Saturday, I had to wait two days before I could finish.

This sort of fiasco is far too common, especially when there are wonderful examples out there of "how to do it right." SproutSocial, a fantastic social media dashboard program, is one such example. Everything is crystal clear. It was a pleasure to sign up and it has been a real pleasure to use.

 
Whaddya know! There's a screen shot on their home page! And a Big Orange Start my Free Trial button. Plus, I see they handle multiple social media channels. So many questions answered, in a very small space, and I can do everything and anything I came here to do, quickly.

Click on Start My Free Trial, and this is what you see. Yes, there are two categories here. But these are product categories, not "buyer persona" categories. I can spend $9 a month and get the basics, or $48 a month and get all these extras. I can quickly decide which way I want to go. My questions are answered. Fast.

Signing up is ridiculously easy, and I love that friendly little message at the top of the sign-in form. Note that they are not asking for more information than they need.

Have you interviewed your current customers to find out what their desired Buyer Scenario looks like? Have you made sure that your website and marketing/selling process makes that Buyer Scenario come true - every single time?

There is a competitive advantage available to you, if you do this better than your competition.