Understand your buyers & close the gaps between marketing and sales. Use these tips for structuring your buyer persona interview. Based on The New Rules of Sales and Service by David Meerman Scott. More info: http://bit.ly/1tKWVWg

1. UNDERSTAND
YOUR BUYERS.
STRUCTURING YOUR BUYER PERSONA INTERVIEW.

2. To close the gaps between marketing
and sales: marketing staff needs to
be the buyer expert, not just the
product expert. They need to focus
on buyer personas.

3. It’s not about posters or pretty
slides. It’s about having deep and
factual clarity about how markets
full of buyers think about doing
business with the company.

4. How exactly do we interview
buyers to develop buyer persona
profi les?

5. Persona interviews are best conducted
by marketing because they learn much by
having conversations with real buyers.
You want candid feedback about what
worked and what didn’t when the
buyers evaluated their options – buyers
won’t open up when the salesperson is
present.

6. Record the interview or have a
colleague take notes. You want your
undivided attention focused on the
conversation and you want verbatim
quotes for the fi nal document.

7. I suggest only the first interview
question is scripted, and after that
it’s completely unscripted.
—Adele Revella
FOUNDER AND CEO OF BUYER PERSONA INSTITUTE
Example: “Take me back to the day when you
first decided to evaluate [category of solution]
and tell me what happened.”

8. Buyers will give an obvious answer
about the pain point they wanted
to solve.

9. Ask follow
up questions!

10. Example:“You probably always
wanted to achieve [benefit] or
eliminate [problem]. What actually
happened to make you decide
that this was the right time to
invest in a solution?”

11. Next, go structured but unscripted.
Walk buyers through every step in the
buying decision, from the fi rst day all
the way to the point when they made
their decision.

12. Keep asking follow
up questions!

13. When marketers have deep and factual
clarity about how markets full of buyers
think about doing business with the
company, that’s when marketing is ready
to deliver tremendous value to the sales
process.

14. GET UP TO SPEED
WITH THE NEW RULES OF SALES AND SERVICE.
Available now wherever books and e-books are sold.
LEARN MORE: www.wiley.com/buy/9781118827857
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