My 2nd Jill Konrath article for the day:
Selling to Big Companies Blog |
What does "Joe the Plumber" have to do with sales?
Posted: 22 Oct 2008 09:38 AM CDT
The McCain camp had clearly identified their target market: uncommitted blue collar male voters who could still be swayed with the right message - big government taking their hard-earned money.
McCain's PR machine jumped on the "real Joe" after seeing him talk with Obama during a campaign stop. With a stroke of genius, Joe the Plumber became the new working-class poster boy.
And the conversation changed. Suddenly we were evaluating the candidate's proposals based on how they impacted Joe. McCain & Obama started talking to one person, not an amorphous group of nondescript citizens.
We need to do the same as marketers & sellers.
That's right. We need to create customer personas in order for us to fine-tune our messaging and ensure it's effective. Perhaps you sell to multiple decision makers. If so, then you need multiple personas.
Whenever I'm doing training for a sales organization, this is one area I cover almost every time. It makes that much difference. For example, if my client sells to Marketing, we may create personas on these positions:
- Chief Marketing Officer
- Vice President, Corporate Communications
- Product Marketing Manager
- Public Relations
If all these people are involved in the decision process, we need to know how they think in order to be effective. Specifically we need to know their:
- Roles & responsibilities
- Goals, objectives
- Strategic initiatives
- Impediments to success
- Reasons for considering a change.
Until & unless we really know Marnie the Marketer, we will struggle in our ability to ensure that our message hits home.
So that's why Joe the Plumber is important to us!
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