This is the fourth episode in our series about Selling Without Being Fake. In this episode, we talk about how to create Customer Personas and why you should never build marketing or sales campaigns without them. Podcast Transcript: Joshua MacLeod: The customer doesn’t really care about you in terms of whether or not they’re going to buy your product or service. What the customer cares about always is, will this person help me solve my problem? Once I figure out the problem that the customer faces, then I want to ask the question, okay, what specifically does my target customer look like in this scenario? Podcast Announcer: Welcome to The Growability Podcast, teaching business and nonprofit leaders a more excellent way to run a business. Visit growability.com for your leadership, coaching, consultation, and business collaboration needs. This is the fourth episode in our series about selling without being fake. In this episode, we talk about how to create customer personas and why you should never build marketing or sales campaigns without them. Here are your hosts, Joshua MacLeod and Bernie Anderson. Bernie Anderson: We’re talking about how to sell without being fake. How do we know that we understand our customer? Joshua MacLeod: The whole point of business is to solve a problem. If you build a house, you’re solving the problem of no shelter. If you have a better looking car, you’re solving the problem of, how do I show off to the neighbors? The way that you know that you have really understood your customer is the point at which you can make a customer persona. A customer persona is like a name, typically we try to make it as catchy as we can, that really encapsulates what the customer values and who that target customer is. Joshua MacLeod: For example, I might have a customer persona with a name like Techno Tammy. Tammy is the one that’s going to buy the iPhone that day it comes out, or I might have customer persona of Healthy Harrison. Loves to work out, eat right, and run six miles a day. This is Healthy Harrison. At the point at which you can encapsulate your target customer with kind of like a customer brand or a customer persona, that’s the point at which I think you really understand your customer. Joshua MacLeod: If the answer to the question, “who’s your customer”?, Well, everyone’s my target customer, then it shows you haven’t really researched your customer. Bernie Anderson: I have a couple of clients that I work with where all of their businesses online. That is the tendency with a lot of people whose business is online is, “the world,” “the whole world is my customer.” Everybody is my customer. I think that you bring up a really good point and making sure that people understand they need a persona of who they’re targeting, even if their businesses online. The potential is the world. Sure. Let’s talk a little bit about how to do this. Joshua MacLeod: If you want to make a customer persona, the first question you ask is, okay, what is the specific problem of this customer type? Cost, speed, reliability, aesthetic. If a customer is purchasing a car, the first question is, okay, what is the specific problem that this customer is addressing when they purchase this car? For somebody that might be, “I need the cheapest transportation to get from A to B that I can get.” For a different person that might be, “I need to be able to represent the business that I run by the quality of my vehicle.” Bernie Anderson: My son just bought a car recently, and he’s a real estate agent. He needs a car where he can put signs in the back. He needs a car that’s going to have some image. He couldn’t just get like a beater. You don’t want your real estate agent showing up...