Peter Mullen - Customer Development - Who Will Buy My Product and Why?

1. Customer Development
Who Will Buy My Product and Why? -
The Role of Buyer Personas

2. Terms
• Customer Discovery
• Customer Development
• User Persona
• Buyer Persona
• Buyer’s Journey
• Product/Market Fit
• Use Cases
• Sustainable Business Model

3. Terms
• Customer Discovery
• Customer Development
• User Persona
• Buyer Persona
• Product/Market Fit
• Use Cases
• Sustainable Business Model

4. Customer Development
• Answers the basic questions: Who will buy my
product and why?
• Will help determine whether product can
actually scale to becoming a sustainable
business
• Process: Discrete, Can be Learned, Follow the
Steps
• Use Cases, Competence, Credibility (Your
secret sauce)

5. Customer Development (cont.)
• Make sure the (each) use case addresses the most
pressing customer pain, and shows quantifiable
benefit via specific features or architectural elements
• Is the startup competent in the areas that are
important to the customer?
• Can the startup claims be validated by third parties,
influencers, press, references? (proven ability to
deliver)
• Bottom line: Ability to engender and maintain trust;
will you continually come through?
• It’s not just a transaction, it’s a foundation for LTR/LTV

6. Steve Blank’s Customer Development

7. User and Buyer Personas
• Buyer and User Personas are typical profiles of
your customers. Strategic uses of these two
personas can strengthen your product
development as well as your sales and
marketing efforts.
• The key to using personas in your business
effectively is to share them across the
organization so that everyone thinks of these
personas in their everyday jobs.

8. User vs Buyer Persona
• User Persona guides how your product is
used, developed
• Buyer Persona helps understand the buying
process
• Consumer vs Business Use Cases
• Focus on benefits/value vs features
• What guides or influences the buying process?
• Who is going to buy my product and why?

9. Who Benefits User/Buyer Personas?
• Product Development Team
• Marketing Team
• Sales Reps
• Customer Success
• Customer Support
• But most of all the Customer!

10. What Goes Into the Buyer Persona?
• Demographics / Background
• Work life / Personal Life
• Key Characteristics – Personal and Business
• Motivations, Goals, Challenges
• Likes, Dislikes, Affiliations
• What they consume, how they do research
• What social media they use, brands they like
• How, where they may spend their free time –
Online, Events, Activities, Social

11. What is the Purpose?
• Validate Assumptions on Your Target Buyers
• Gain New Insight
• Patterns
• Iterate Until Product – Market Fit has been
achieved
• GTFO! (get out of the building)
• Always be listening

12. Customer Types
• B2B, B2C, Double Sided (Marketplace)
• Each has its own characteristics, complexities,
business drivers, motivations
• Buying process is different for each type
• How you market/sell and how you scale will
depend on how well you understand how
people buy for each type.

13. Customer Types – B2B

14. Buyer Persona – B2B

15. Buyer Persona – B2C

16. Buyer’s Journey
• The buyer’s journey is the process a buyer
goes through to become aware of, evaluate
and eventually purchase a product or service
• In simplest terms involves three stages,
Awareness, Consideration, Decision
• This will drive your sales strategy, messaging,
outreach, communications, and actions during
each stage of the buyer’s journey

17. Buyer’s Journey

18. Buyer’s Journey

19. Mapping
• Mapping your interaction activities to buyer
persona, buyer’s journey
• Align every interaction (appropriately tailored)
to their persona, point in the buying cycle
• Less is more; brevity is best
• Incentivize to stimulate action?
• Always leave a positive impression, even when
or especially when you lose (you will win!)

20. The Criticality of Customer Experience
• The buyer’s journey will be heavily influenced
by the experience at every point in the
process
• Consistency is critical from initial inquiry to
implementation and support (Customer
Success)
• Expectations – Manage Carefully; always try to
under promise and over deliver
• Much more than UI/Design

21. Conducting Research

22. Conducting Interviews
• Plan your line of questioning in advance
• Target carefully: location and participants
• Focus on key insights first, demographic
details at the end
• Ask more open-ended questions, encourage
them to share openly (but keep it short)
• Be conversational, respectful, authentic
• Rule of three; L-M-H

23. Conducting Interviews

24. How Many Interviews?
• Ideal: Until You Start to See Patterns in Your
Responses
• Less Than Ideal: Is it our questions? Wrong
buyer persona? Will the idea not truly scale?
• Iterate until you find the right mix of
‘customers’ (actually prospects) to properly
validate your product/solution fit

25. Then What?
• Regroup; incorporate interview feedback into
your product, GTM strategy/plans
• Update buyer personas?
• Review/update product
development/prototype plans
• Start development of marketing plans
– What messages will we emphasize
– What channels (SEO, PPC, Content Mktg, Events)
– Map mktg methods to buyer journey

26. Events as Primary Sources
• Themed Events are the Best Source for
Multiple Reasons: Learning, Leads, Insight
• Fertile Ground for Finding Key Target
Prospects, Customers, Partners, Influencers
• Everyone is a Potential Target!
• Practice the Art of Networking:
– Fully meshed vs Hub & Spoke
– The Front Row
– Give vs Take

27. Final Thoughts
• Somewhere out there are thousands of your
best customers – your challenge and your
opportunity is to find them as quickly as
possible before your competition does
• These steps, this process gives you the
shortest path to find and delight them!
• There is no magic, no shortcuts, never easy
• ABL – Always be learning
• Most importantly, have fun!

28. Acknowledgements/Sources
• MaRS Discovery District: https://www.marsdd.com/mars-library/using-
buyer-and-user-personas-in-your-business/
• HubSpot:
https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33491/everything-
marketers-need-to-research-create-detailed-buyer-personas-
template.aspx
• Referral saasquatch: https://www.referralsaasquatch.com/b2b-buyer-
personas/
• Market By Numbers / Brant Cooper: http://market-by-numbers.com/
• Steve Blank: https://steveblank.com/
• Tons more!

29. Thank you!
Peter Mullen
pemullen@gmail.com
https://about.me/pemullen
https://innovationdisrupted.com/