Why Buyer Personas Are Important in Sales

You’ve heard that segmenting your customers and leads is important. Segmentation helps you focus on the leads that are most likely to become paying customers.

But here’s something you may not know: merely segmenting your leads isn’t enough. You need to know how to market and sell differently to each segment.

That’s where buyer personas come in.

Buyer personas are descriptions of each buyer segment. They cover each segment’s needs, demographic information, and more.

As an example, imagine you have two different types of buyers:

• Millennial Max: Max just bought his first home and wants to improve it. He’s a savvy buyer and will compare his options online. Max doesn’t have a ton of cash or home equity, so he may need help financing the project.

• Experienced Erin: Erin has lived in a home for awhile, and has already completed a couple of home improvement projects. This time, she’s looking to patch up her roof. Erin likely found you from a referral from a friend.

Here’s how to make personas:

1. Think through how to divide your customers into groups with similar characteristics. By age? Marital status? Time living in a home? Project type (luxy, repair, etc.)?

2. For each group of customers, answer the following questions:

   1. What problem are they trying to solve with a project?

   2. How can you help?

   3. What objections does each persona have?

   4. What is the average project size for each persona?

   5. How long is the sales process for each persona?

   6. Demographic information such as age, gender, income, etc?

3. Name your personas! Creating semi-fictional characters for your personas helps you relate more to each.

Your personas will always get better as you learn more about your customers.

Once you have personas, you can use them to personalize your marketing and sales:

Categorize your leads

Tailoring your sale to your persona begins with knowing which type of lead you have. You can do this by including the following question on your lead sign up form: Which of the following do you most identify with? The options would correspond to a persona. For example, one option could be “I am a new homeowner looking for my first remodel.”

Personalize your marketing and sales pitch

After a lead signs up, you can send them a different email depending on their persona. For example, a new homeowner could get a note about their first project linking to a blog post; an experienced homeowner could a note acknowledging this isn’t their first project.

You can also make different flyers and sales pitches. For example, if you know someone is a new homeowner, they may have different questions than a long-time homeowner.

Buyer personas can be a great way to take your marketing and sales to the next level!