TRP 201: Leveraging Buyer Personas to Better Influence Buying Decisions with Jim Kraus

[00:00:01] You're listening to the Rainmaking Podcast, hosted by high-stakes headhunter, author and

[00:00:19] professional speaker, Scott Love.

[00:00:24] You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast and my name is Scott Love.

[00:00:27] Thanks for joining me on the show.

[00:00:28] We've got a really exciting guest for you today with some concrete substance that I

[00:00:33] think is going to help you to be more effective in selling your services.

[00:00:37] My guest today is Jim Krause and he's with the Bayer Persona Institute.

[00:00:42] And the topic of our conversation is leveraging Bayer Personas to better influence buying decisions.

[00:00:49] Now Jim comes from the field of research and market intelligence, and he brings that perspective

[00:00:55] to our conversation today.

[00:00:57] What I like about this conversation is that there are real concrete action steps you

[00:01:01] can take to gain an edge in selling your services to your prospects.

[00:01:06] As always, this show is sponsored by Leopard Solutions Legal Intelligence Suite of Products,

[00:01:11] FirmScape and Leopard BI.

[00:01:13] Push ahead of the pack with the power of Leopard.

[00:01:16] And now here's my conversation with my guest, Jim Krause.

[00:01:20] Thanks for listening.

[00:01:22] Hey, this is Scott Love with The Rainmaking Podcast.

[00:01:25] Our special guest today is Jim Krause and we're talking about leveraging Bayer Personas

[00:01:30] to better influence buying decisions.

[00:01:33] Jim, thanks for being on my show today.

[00:01:36] Great to be here.

[00:01:37] Thanks, Scott.

[00:01:38] So I'm excited about this.

[00:01:39] I'm excited to learn from you.

[00:01:41] Let me start with this.

[00:01:42] The buyer's journey.

[00:01:44] What does that mean exactly?

[00:01:46] What is the buying journey and why should we understand that with the people that

[00:01:50] we're trying to sell our services to?

[00:01:52] Yeah, a great way to think about the buyer's journey is we try to think about all facets

[00:01:56] of a buyer's journey.

[00:01:58] So if you are marketing and selling a particular service, the great way to think about the

[00:02:02] buyer's journey is if you have two endpoints, the first endpoint would be at the beginning.

[00:02:08] And this is the point where prospective buyers wake up one day and figuratively speaking

[00:02:14] and they literally say, hey, we need to do something different.

[00:02:18] We're doing something a certain way or we have a certain new need or new opportunity.

[00:02:23] And as a result of that, we need to look for some type of help, some type of product

[00:02:28] or service, really that initial trigger that really starts.

[00:02:32] That's a great way to start looking at your buyer's journey.

[00:02:36] Then all the way through the steps that a prospective buyer would take as they figure

[00:02:40] out who are they going to consider if they're looking at different options?

[00:02:44] How are they going to winnow down those choices?

[00:02:46] And how are they ultimately going to arrive at a buying decision?

[00:02:49] And there's a lot of things to do with their mindset and the behaviors throughout

[00:02:53] that journey.

[00:02:54] But it's good to think about the buyer's journey holistically in all those steps

[00:02:58] because if you're marketing products and services, you're going to want to educate

[00:03:01] an influenced buyer along that entire spectrum that they're on.

[00:03:05] Wow. I mean, this is pretty deep.

[00:03:07] We can go pretty deep in pretty much everything that you said.

[00:03:10] Let me start with this.

[00:03:11] I like the fact that it's a simple answer, but the beginning and the end.

[00:03:16] And with the beginning, something happened, something changed

[00:03:20] that caused them to say we need to make a buying decision to buy this type of service.

[00:03:26] Does it make sense to kind of study what are the trends associated with why

[00:03:31] that first step happens and maybe to kind of predict the future

[00:03:35] and to put us at that intersection of when that action takes place

[00:03:40] and when people are ready to start looking for a service provider?

[00:03:43] What do you think about that?

[00:03:44] Yeah, no, it's absolutely critical.

[00:03:46] And one of the things I always I always tell people when I'm talking

[00:03:49] to marketers and sellers or any business development type of role

[00:03:53] in professional services is that you've got buyers that are

[00:03:59] have a particular need that they're trying to fulfill.

[00:04:02] Right? And they are going to have things that they want.

[00:04:04] Key outcomes that are really important to them, and they're going to have reservations.

[00:04:08] They're going to have fears and concerns about will this work?

[00:04:10] Am I going to quote unquote pick the right provider, etc., etc.

[00:04:14] So one of the things fundamentally that you're competing on price aside

[00:04:19] is trust, right?

[00:04:21] It's the the provider that usually comes out on top is a provider

[00:04:25] that instills the most trust in prospective buyers.

[00:04:28] And one great way to start to build that trust

[00:04:31] is that when buyers first start looking for options,

[00:04:35] if you know why they're there, you know, maybe there's five or six

[00:04:39] kind of key reasons that your prospective buyers tend to start searching for things.

[00:04:43] If you can write away when you're starting to interact and communicate with them,

[00:04:47] demonstrate right up front, like, hey, we get you.

[00:04:50] We kind of know why you're here type of thing that will make them trust you.

[00:04:54] But it will start that process.

[00:04:56] They'll start to say, hey, maybe I'm in the right place here.

[00:04:58] So it's a really a great place to start and establish

[00:05:01] that initial foothold in buyer trust.

[00:05:04] OK, that's great.

[00:05:04] So if we were to look at our steps in terms of, OK,

[00:05:10] I've made contact with this prospect.

[00:05:12] The next thing for me to do is to find out what their needs are.

[00:05:16] Is it to close them on the deal?

[00:05:18] Is it to earn trust?

[00:05:19] What do you think that next thing is that we need to do?

[00:05:21] Yeah, so the other things that you really want to understand in the buyer's journey

[00:05:25] is in terms of steps.

[00:05:27] Stepwise is the second one kind of at the top of the funnel type of thing.

[00:05:31] Just to think about it that way is we call it success factors.

[00:05:35] The way to think about this is or what are the outcomes

[00:05:37] that buyers are really trying to achieve?

[00:05:39] Right. So if you understand the triggers

[00:05:43] in terms of why they even start looking and you understand

[00:05:45] what are the key outcomes they're trying to achieve

[00:05:48] and you're able to articulate that in your marketing efforts,

[00:05:52] your messaging, what your sales teams and your business

[00:05:55] development teams are really talking about in case studies showing

[00:05:59] like hey, we can demonstrate how we've achieved this result

[00:06:01] and overcome this challenge for other providers.

[00:06:03] Interesting. That's a great way to start using those early insights

[00:06:07] when buyers first start looking.

[00:06:09] That's the first step getting that initial part right.

[00:06:12] Yeah, what are examples that you've seen with people that you've coached

[00:06:15] in this particular aspect of it?

[00:06:18] So triggers and it can come from a lot of different places.

[00:06:22] Oftentimes, it comes from it could be an organizational change.

[00:06:26] It could be new leadership that comes in or a new role

[00:06:30] that's appointed where they need to start looking for something

[00:06:33] or improve on something.

[00:06:34] It could be a challenge that's just become too painful.

[00:06:37] A lot of times it's associated with some type of growth

[00:06:40] or change in the market for that particular client

[00:06:42] where they're doing something and it's kind of worked OK.

[00:06:46] But now they've reached a point where there's been a significant

[00:06:49] enough change in their business or growth in their business

[00:06:52] where they need to do something a bit more efficient and more effective.

[00:06:56] Maybe quality is slipping because they're not doing it.

[00:06:58] Maybe the way they probably should do it.

[00:07:00] So those are all common things that we see, right?

[00:07:03] And it can vary, of course, by the product or service.

[00:07:05] But those are some common ones.

[00:07:07] OK, great. Great.

[00:07:08] So what are the other steps in the funnel?

[00:07:10] Is that what you call it, a funnel when you describe the buyer's journey?

[00:07:14] Yeah. So the buyer's journey really there's really five things

[00:07:17] that you really need to understand, right?

[00:07:19] Like if you're trying to really nail your marketing and sales,

[00:07:22] there's five fundamental things that you want to understand

[00:07:24] about the buying decision or the buyer's journey, however you want to look at.

[00:07:28] So we talked about the first two.

[00:07:31] We call triggers priority initiatives is what we call it

[00:07:34] and success factors are the outcomes they want.

[00:07:37] So those are the first two things you really want to understand.

[00:07:39] The third thing that you want to understand and this thing,

[00:07:41] this is one that's often overlooked and it's really powerful

[00:07:45] is what we call perceived barriers.

[00:07:47] And these are simply the reservations, the concerns, the fears

[00:07:51] that prospective buyers have making this buying decision, right?

[00:07:54] They don't want to mess up.

[00:07:56] They don't want to make a bad decision, right?

[00:07:58] They want to achieve the outcomes.

[00:07:59] So they're looking for a provider that they trust.

[00:08:02] So these are things that could potentially be concerns.

[00:08:05] Examples of a perceived barrier might be

[00:08:08] this provider, we're not sure they really understand our industry

[00:08:11] or we're not really sure that their particular serve,

[00:08:15] their culture really aligns with our culture.

[00:08:17] So we're a little worried about is that going to work out in the long run?

[00:08:20] Right? I'm just giving you examples.

[00:08:22] But the reason perceived barriers or concerns are so important

[00:08:26] is because if you are able to address those,

[00:08:29] you're able to check some of those boxes.

[00:08:31] That is really powerful differentiator in terms of your value proposition.

[00:08:36] The fourth key area, again, as we work our way down in terms of buyers or now,

[00:08:41] they're probably looking at some different alternatives.

[00:08:44] They're starting to really dig in and understand the service that they're looking for.

[00:08:48] They're getting more educated about it.

[00:08:50] The fourth thing we call as decision criteria.

[00:08:53] And this is simple.

[00:08:53] It's just what are the questions that your prospective buyers will be asking

[00:08:57] to evaluate their options?

[00:08:59] Right? And this is when they're getting a little smarter about what's out there,

[00:09:02] a little smarter about making comparisons to different alternatives they're looking at.

[00:09:06] You want to know what those questions are ahead of time, ideally, right?

[00:09:10] So you can address those proactively.

[00:09:12] And then the fifth and final thing that you want to understand is the buyer's journey itself.

[00:09:17] And all that is simply is in Europe, thinking about the service that you offer.

[00:09:21] What are the key steps that your prospective buyers typically take?

[00:09:25] What do they actually do?

[00:09:26] What are their behaviors?

[00:09:27] So they look online to figure out, you know, who's out there?

[00:09:30] Do they talk to their network?

[00:09:32] Do they talk to their internal colleagues to get recommendations, etc.

[00:09:35] So what are those steps?

[00:09:36] Then who are the influencers in the decision and then what information resources do they use?

[00:09:42] If you know those five things that I just articulated about your prospective buyers,

[00:09:47] you're way ahead of the game.

[00:09:49] Right? Because now you can really start tailoring your marketing and sales to those things.

[00:09:54] And when you said who are the influencers in the decision, what does that mean exactly?

[00:09:59] Yeah. So it means like within your prospective buyer's organization,

[00:10:03] what roles and individual types are actually involved in that decision.

[00:10:07] Right? So when it comes to professional services,

[00:10:09] it's often not just one person that's involved.

[00:10:11] It can be, of course, but it's often a buying committee or a buying center.

[00:10:15] Some people call it where you've got different roles and individuals

[00:10:18] that have coming from different opinions.

[00:10:20] They may have slightly different needs.

[00:10:23] They may have different concerns, for example, like, you know,

[00:10:26] the IT folks might be more concerned about security than, you know,

[00:10:30] the line of business people as an example.

[00:10:32] So it's you want to know what all those influencers are because it helps you think

[00:10:36] about who are all the people that we really need to educate and convince,

[00:10:40] right, that we are the right firm for the job.

[00:10:44] That's great.

[00:10:45] I like the fact that you've given a really good framework or playbook.

[00:10:49] This is exciting to me because I'm in sales just like everybody else listening

[00:10:54] and I'm trying to figure out, OK, what are the triggers for my clients?

[00:10:57] What are the success factors?

[00:10:59] What are perceived barriers?

[00:11:00] What are the decision criteria and what's the buyer's journey itself?

[00:11:03] So it sounds like there's a lot of planning we can do in terms of before

[00:11:08] we go to market, we can spend time in the war room and kind of plan all this out.

[00:11:13] Where do you think people should start where they're really trying

[00:11:16] to put a plan together based on this model?

[00:11:18] Yeah.

[00:11:18] So one of the important things that you really want to do is that a lot

[00:11:22] of services firms don't do enough of is interview your recent buyers.

[00:11:27] And what I mean by recent buyers is I'll put a definition on this

[00:11:31] because it's an important one is you want to go out and talk to people

[00:11:35] that have made the exact same buying decision that you're trying to influence,

[00:11:38] right? So let's say, for example, that you offer your law firm

[00:11:42] that offers legal services, you want to go out and talk to buyers

[00:11:45] that have recently purchased legal services.

[00:11:48] Ideally, these are not just your current customers.

[00:11:51] It's fine to talk to your current customers.

[00:11:53] They can tell you a lot, but you want to talk to buyers that potentially

[00:11:57] looked at you, but didn't select you.

[00:11:59] You want to look at buyers that never even considered you.

[00:12:02] The reason that's important is because now you've got a full market

[00:12:05] view of all the prospective buyers that you may run into.

[00:12:10] And talking to read by what I mean by recent is buyers

[00:12:13] that have made this type of buying decision in the last six to 12 months.

[00:12:17] And to talk to those folks, do in-depth interviews with those folks,

[00:12:21] 30, 40 minutes, really get in and understand everything,

[00:12:24] the mindset and behaviors and everything that went into that decision

[00:12:27] and what happened behind the scenes will basically give you all the five

[00:12:32] areas that I told you about.

[00:12:33] Right? I mean, there should be when you're

[00:12:36] developing marketing sales is hard enough, right?

[00:12:37] You don't want to be guessing at what's important to buyers.

[00:12:40] You want to be guessing on how they're evaluating you.

[00:12:43] You want to be guessing about what their fears and concerns are.

[00:12:45] If you talk to recent buyers, they'll tell you they're the experts.

[00:12:48] They just went through it.

[00:12:49] And I like the fact that you have a background in market intelligence,

[00:12:54] market research.

[00:12:56] You come from the research side.

[00:12:58] Is that right in your career?

[00:12:59] Yep. 30 years.

[00:13:01] Yeah. So that's interesting.

[00:13:02] And I like the fact that it all is towards selling the service,

[00:13:07] coming from a position of factual data and not just guesswork.

[00:13:12] So let me ask you this.

[00:13:12] When you've worked with organizations,

[00:13:15] what do you think are some of the pitfalls that they're trying to adopt this model?

[00:13:18] They're doing the work.

[00:13:19] Where do you think they run into trouble?

[00:13:22] I think one of the problems or one of the challenges that we see in it,

[00:13:25] problems, one of the challenges we see is there is a lot of time that's spent

[00:13:29] on when you say like buyer personas, for example, and that's what we do.

[00:13:33] A lot of people think about, OK, I'm going to figure out who are the

[00:13:37] different influencers in my perspective buyers organization.

[00:13:41] And I'm going to profile each one of those influencers.

[00:13:44] And I'm going to understand some of their demographics,

[00:13:48] their overall attitudes, some of their key priorities and challenges.

[00:13:52] And I'm going to have these different profiles, if you will,

[00:13:55] of different individuals.

[00:13:57] The challenge with that is it doesn't give you a lot of insight

[00:14:00] into what's going to actually move the needle

[00:14:03] when you're trying to influence them around a particular service that you're

[00:14:07] selling.

[00:14:08] Right?

[00:14:08] Because as an example, one of the examples I give a lot of people is that,

[00:14:12] let's say CIO, head of IT, somebody in the IT organization is one of your

[00:14:18] key influencers.

[00:14:20] What they're going to want and need and what their concerns are

[00:14:23] are going to be very different if they're buying a enterprise software solution

[00:14:27] like CRM versus if they're buying some servers for their data center.

[00:14:34] Their needs are going to be vastly different and what they're worried

[00:14:36] about and what they're trying to achieve and what that buyer's journey might look like.

[00:14:40] So one of the challenges that we see is when folks are really trying to understand

[00:14:43] their buyers, is they spend too much time understanding the roles and individuals

[00:14:48] rather than understanding the buying decision they're trying to influence

[00:14:52] because that's what you're trying to influence.

[00:14:53] You're trying to influence that specific buying decision.

[00:14:55] Got it.

[00:14:56] And so tell me a story then of somebody that you've worked with

[00:15:00] where you consulted to their company, you worked with them

[00:15:04] and you helped them go through all of these points.

[00:15:06] What were some of the major inflection points where they really started seeing

[00:15:12] things take off and what was the end result?

[00:15:15] Yeah, the funny thing is it's often in what we do, we develop buyer personas for organizations,

[00:15:22] the insights are great.

[00:15:23] They're really compelling.

[00:15:24] They take all the guesswork out of your marketing and sales.

[00:15:27] But a lot of times the actual actions are very simple and subtle.

[00:15:30] That's subtle but simple and they make big impact.

[00:15:33] So one example of a client is a client a few years ago, I'm just thinking of one example

[00:15:37] where they sold endpoint security solutions.

[00:15:41] So that's a security software you might put on your laptop or your tablet or a device

[00:15:46] just to help you from malware and things of that nature.

[00:15:50] And they were selling their soft.

[00:15:52] They have enterprise security software and they had a really great footprint

[00:15:56] with large enterprise at large global companies and they started to go

[00:16:00] down market the sell to mid small and they thought, hey, you know what?

[00:16:04] This is going to be great.

[00:16:05] The smaller companies are really going to want this enterprise grade security.

[00:16:10] So all their messaging on their website, on the actual box where they,

[00:16:15] you could buy the software really drummed up this enterprise security solution.

[00:16:20] And what they found by interviewing recent buyers of these smaller companies was,

[00:16:24] hey, that's terrific.

[00:16:25] But what we really care about is we don't want this security solution to slow us down.

[00:16:30] We're worried we're going to put this thing on our computers.

[00:16:33] It's going to eat up memory.

[00:16:35] It's going to slow all our processes down.

[00:16:37] It's going to slow transactions.

[00:16:38] We're going to get less revenue as a result.

[00:16:41] So they made a really simple change of their messaging where rather than just

[00:16:45] focusing on this enterprise level security, they talked about how you can get,

[00:16:49] you know, robust security without slowing you down, right?

[00:16:52] It was all about how and just that simple, simple change.

[00:16:56] I think they had like a 40% increase in sales over a year just making in that market,

[00:17:00] just by making that simple change.

[00:17:02] So how did they get that information?

[00:17:03] How do they know to make that change?

[00:17:05] Where did they get that data?

[00:17:06] So they talked to recent buyers.

[00:17:08] So what they did was they went out and they found the small mid-market firms

[00:17:12] that had recently bought this type of software for their organization.

[00:17:15] And they went through the interview them for about 30 to 40 minutes to understand

[00:17:20] their entire buyer's journey from that trigger, that initial trigger,

[00:17:24] all the way until when they made a final decision.

[00:17:26] And they found out all of the five things that we talked about earlier.

[00:17:29] There were prior initiatives, success factors, perceived barriers, decision criteria,

[00:17:33] and buyer's journey.

[00:17:34] And by understanding more of the key things that these small mid-sized firms

[00:17:39] made their decision on, now they felt, you know, really confident that,

[00:17:44] hey, this was a shift that they needed to make in their positioning and their messaging.

[00:17:48] Wow.

[00:17:49] Wow, that's great.

[00:17:50] So as we kind of bring things to a close here, Jim, if you could give our listeners

[00:17:55] three action steps so they can really get started taking action on making these changes,

[00:17:59] what would those three action steps be?

[00:18:01] Yeah.

[00:18:02] So, you know, really kind of just echoing what we talked about, right?

[00:18:05] One is talk to recent buyers, right?

[00:18:07] Talk to folks that have made the exact same buying decision that you're trying to influence.

[00:18:11] You can talk to your current customers, but you should talk to more than

[00:18:14] just your current customers.

[00:18:16] Two is when you interview them, talk to them.

[00:18:18] It shouldn't be like a survey where they're rating and ranking things or anything of that

[00:18:22] nature. What you want to understand is their entire buyer's journey from that initial trigger

[00:18:26] to the final decision.

[00:18:27] Talk to them like a journalist would, say, hey, look, we're just trying to understand

[00:18:31] how you made this decision three months ago.

[00:18:32] Can you tell me a little bit about what did you first do?

[00:18:35] How did you figure out you were even going to look at?

[00:18:37] Tell me, oh, I would say you looked at five people.

[00:18:39] Tell me a little bit about how you got information about each one

[00:18:43] and how you went down your choices, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:18:46] And then the third thing is once you talk to them and get these insights,

[00:18:51] if you can map them into those five buckets that we talked about earlier,

[00:18:54] another great thing to do is take all these buyer wants and needs that you found out,

[00:19:00] that you discovered, and map them to your organization's capabilities.

[00:19:05] So let's say you find out 30 things about your buyers, right?

[00:19:08] They want and need these things to feel confident in you.

[00:19:11] Go one by one and map them to what can your company do or not do well.

[00:19:17] Where can you differentiate yourself?

[00:19:19] And what will happen is at the intersection of those two things,

[00:19:23] you will find themes that you can really focus your value proposition,

[00:19:28] your messaging, what you're talking about in sales.

[00:19:31] Focus on those things because now you know they want it

[00:19:35] because you went out and did the work to talk to them.

[00:19:37] You've done the homework to figure out, hey, where can we really excel

[00:19:40] and deliver value?

[00:19:41] We have capabilities here.

[00:19:43] Now your business development teams will be really confident

[00:19:45] because they know that buyers care about this stuff

[00:19:48] and that you can deliver on it.

[00:19:49] So those are three really great things to firm up

[00:19:53] just how you're positioning yourself in the marketplace.

[00:19:55] Well, Jim, this is great.

[00:19:57] You've done such a great job in explaining an important concept

[00:20:00] in a simple way and a concept that's going to make a big change

[00:20:04] to how people sell their services.

[00:20:06] So I've learned a lot.

[00:20:08] So tell us about your offerings that your company has.

[00:20:11] What do you do?

[00:20:12] What would be the things that you offer

[00:20:13] that you'd like our listeners to know about?

[00:20:15] Yeah, so if anybody has any interest

[00:20:17] in what we've been talking about and this approach,

[00:20:20] if you will, makes sense.

[00:20:21] It's very pragmatic.

[00:20:22] It's very doable.

[00:20:24] If you want to learn more about it,

[00:20:25] you can go to our or buyer persona institute.

[00:20:28] You can go to our website.

[00:20:29] It's buyerpersonas.com.

[00:20:32] So pretty easy to remember that.

[00:20:33] We have a lot of information out there

[00:20:35] in terms of articles that we put out there,

[00:20:38] buyer persona templates, et cetera.

[00:20:41] The other thing that you can do is we have

[00:20:44] buyer personas.

[00:20:45] A second edition of our book is coming out

[00:20:47] at the end of July, July 30th.

[00:20:49] It's buyer personas revised and expanded

[00:20:52] and it's available on Amazon right now

[00:20:54] in Barnes & Noble presale.

[00:20:57] Myself Jim Kraus and Adele Rivella,

[00:20:59] who is the founder of buyer persona institute

[00:21:01] or the co-authors.

[00:21:02] And in that book, it describes everything

[00:21:04] that we talked about today in a lot of detail

[00:21:06] in terms of exactly how to do this.

[00:21:09] Right?

[00:21:09] So we made this book a step by step.

[00:21:11] We put a ton of examples in there

[00:21:13] so you can see like here's how you actually

[00:21:15] can do this and construct this

[00:21:17] and you can actually see what the output looks like.

[00:21:19] So if anybody has an interest, that's a great,

[00:21:21] that's another great resource

[00:21:22] that we're pretty excited about.

[00:21:23] That's great.

[00:21:24] We'll definitely put your company

[00:21:26] and even your LinkedIn link on the show notes.

[00:21:28] So for everybody listening,

[00:21:30] if you want to get in contact with Jim

[00:21:31] or learn more,

[00:21:32] just go to the show notes

[00:21:34] wherever you listen to your podcast.

[00:21:37] Jim, great job today.

[00:21:38] Thanks so much for sharing some great insights

[00:21:41] and I'd love to have you back on the show in the future.

[00:21:43] Great, Scott. I appreciate it.