The Customer Information That is Essential

Marketers talk a lot about buyer and user “personas.” A persona is an example or archetype of a real person who buys or might buy specific offerings. Personas can significantly improve focus and decision-making because they provide marketing and new product development teams with a concrete focus. However, not all personas are created equal! How a persona is built and what information it includes is critical for success.

Marketing research departments often spend an enormous amount of time and money to “understand the customer,” e.g., their buying habits, what sources of information they trust, where they get their information, how they view work, life, love, etc. But the key to success in creating value for customers does not come from understanding the customer. It comes from understanding the task that customers are trying to accomplish with your offering. Customers do not buy products and services because of their characteristics, background, or generation. They buy products and services to accomplish functional, emotional and social ends. The critical information every marketer must know is “What are people trying to accomplish with your offering?” This information can be obtained through skillful interviewing.

Theodore Levitt famously told his students that “People don’t want to buy a ¼ inch drill. They want a ¼ inch hole!” This illustrates that a customer need is separate and distinct from the solutions people use to address those needs. The drill is just a solution. The reason people buy drills is to make holes. This thinking can be applied to any industry with great benefit.

Procter and Gamble understood that “people don’t want to buy a mop; they want to clean the floor,” and they invented Swiffer, a billion dollar new product that many of us use in our homes.

Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.com, understood that “people don’t want to buy customer relationship management (CRM) software; they want to be more productive managing their business relationships,” and he created Salesforce.com, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that now dominates its market by eliminating the hassles of managing and maintaining software.

People don’t want to buy your offering or mine. They want to accomplish some functional, emotional and/or social ends. What are your customers trying to accomplish with your offerings?

The old belief that customers cannot tell us what they want is simple false when we focus on what customers are trying to accomplish rather than on solution requirements. Ask your customers questions such as:

1. What are you trying to accomplish with (the offering)? Why is that important to you?
2. How do you want to feel when using (the offering)?
3. How do you want to be perceived when using (the offering)?
4. What do you want to experience with (the offering)?

These types of questions reveal why people buy your products and services. They provide predictive theory about what you must do to create value for customers. Once these questions are answered and the segments revealed, then personas can be developed to help the marketing and new product development teams generate solutions that you know in advance customers will value.