Once you've chosen your persona, prepare a fact sheet
about the persona based on the information you already have.
Include a visual picture, drawing,
diagram of the individual.
The more visual, the better.
I can't understand exactly why, but it does help.
You typically want to include general demographic information
about your persona.
When were they born?
Where were they raised?
Where did they go to school?
What kind of family did they have?
What age are they today?
How did they look?
What kind of places do they like to go?
You also want those things about the persona's job.
What company they work at?
How many years have they been there?
What kind of training did they go through?
What kind of managers did they have?
How often did they change?
What's their salary?
How do they get measured?
How did they get fired?
How did they get promoted?
All these things are very important to understand
their business environment.
If you have a fact sheet it might
seem evasive to use the real name.
It might make you uncomfortable, it
might make them uncomfortable.
So in that case you can use an alias.
But if you speak to them and tell them
why you're making them a persona,
often they're OK with that because it's actually
a complement to them and they know
they're going to get the product they want.
Most importantly, you want to list not just the persona's
qualities but they're purchasing criteria in prioritized order.
These are the priorities that will dictate the purchasing
decision for your product or a similar product.
Purchasing criteria are the things that they look for.
It may be price, it may be quality,
it may be the quality of service they have, it may be the brand,
it may be the general acceptance.
When I worked at IBM, it was many of
our customers brought the lowest cost alternative.
And the old saying was, nobody got fired for buying from IBM.
You have to understand what the purchasing criteria is
going to be from your persona.
And that shouldn't be too hard once you've
identified a persona.
By preparing a fact sheet, your team
will find out the relevant facts you have and you don't yet
have about your persona.
This will uncover holes in your primary market research, which
you then will go back and fill in and complete your persona,
at least for the time being.
Once you have the draft fact sheet,
interview the end-user-- who is your persona, again--
and fill in the gaps that you know.
Allow the conversation to be open-
ended and you will likely learn additional facts
that are relevant to your persona.
I encourage two people to go back now
that we have the persona.
They should also observe what's going on
and not just write down what's going on.
You now want to add what you've learned
to the fact sheet in another team meeting.
This will make sure that everyone is on the same page
and that there are no critical details that are missing.
Sharing this detail-- sharing the information
will allow you to reinforce how important the customer is
and how important it is that everybody understands
who the customer is.
Once you have finalized your fact sheet,
summarize a few key areas in the poster sheet
and then post the poster on the wall
so that nobody forgets who they are in business for.
Without that customer, there is no payroll,
there is no product, there is no company.
Do not underestimate the value of the persona and the persona
process.
The persona should become a key guiding light for you
in your decision making process.
What features do you prioritize?
What features do you drop?
How should you allocate your critical resources?
Who should you hire to sell your products?
Who should you hire to distribute your products?
What should your message be?
Where do you go to meet your customers?
Where should you advertise if you're going to advertise?
And as you can see, these are all questions
that Raffa is grappling with in the real world.
This is not academic.
These are real questions that will make or break
Raffa's new product, Cannonball.
Some successful companies actually
make a cardboard cut out of their persona
and they put it right in the middle of the office.
I've seen other companies that put an electronic version up
when they're about to make an important decision
and say, what would their persona say?
This helps make the company as customer centric as possible
in all dimensions.
Some successful start-ups also share the persona
with each new employee.
It's part of their onboarding process.
No doubt this enables the customer
to become effective faster, but it also
reemphasizes how customer-centric the company's
going to be and how disciplined they're
going to be in choosing this customer and not
another customer.
I should say that other companies like HubSpot
are very proud in the fact that they have personas
for the customers that they target
and they have personas for the customers
that they're going to de-select.
This is another useful way to take advantage of the persona
methodology.