The value of an effective customer profile should not be underestimated. In the same way that a brand can build a marketing persona, a customer profile can perform an essential function in the sales process. If you don't understand your target customer – really understand what makes them tick and why they care about what they care about – your sales process will be totally hit and miss. But good profiles are not only about your own sales efficiency, they generate the detail you need to offer that target customer more value. Here, as in all things, you can't win if your customer doesn't.
Here’s a simple but comprehensive template that works well for us.
Firstly, fill out the basic details:
Next provide some background to build up a picture of this person and their circumstances at work:
Think about what specific outcomes this person is focussed on:
Identifiers concern how they like to go about things. Two people might have the same goal but have wildly different ideas about how it should be achieved.
Consider the generic challenges that this person would encounter on a day-to-day:
Also consider any problems which are more specific to their role or their industry. If they’re a marketer, are they struggling to engage with a particular demographic?
This needs to be a neat encapsulation of your product, ideally no longer than a sentence.
Lastly, the old elevator pitch. What would your short, sharp sales pitch to this person be?
This template is the first step towards developing a customer profile that can drive efficiency and build loyalty through product value.
Your customers hold the key to greater success, so why not unlock that potential?
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