How to Sell Podcast: Make How You Sell, Why You Win

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:01]:
In this episode, you're gonna learn why you should build personas, the key elements that make up a buyer persona, and how to use your persona to create a buying journey. Welcome to another episode of the how to sell podcast. My name is Luigi Prestinenzi. And thank you again, if you're a longtime listener, for showing up. We value your input and support of our community. And if you're a new listener, welcome. We hope you take away some actionable insights that'll help you sell more. Now It's 2024.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:35]:
It's a new year. And what's great about the new year is Chelsea have been consistent, and they lost again this week, Dave. And now I wanna introduce my co host, Dave Fastuca. So how are you, Dave?

David Fastuca [00:00:49]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Yep. Another shit canning session. And, you know, it's a it's a lesson in resilience and, No. Trying to mindset solution when you're down.

David Fastuca [00:01:01]:
You can't buy your way out of this.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:03]:
Alright? Dave, if we take if

David Fastuca [00:01:05]:
that $1,000,000,000, which is already spent two. Luigi, stop. Stop.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:09]:
So if if Salesforce spent a $1,000,000,000 and they weren't performing, what would happen to their VP of sales, Dave?

David Fastuca [00:01:18]:
Well, probably 1st, the CMO would have got the sack by then. It's all the CMO first. Right? Everyone buys the marketer. No. But, you

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:25]:
know, you know, What it is I'll tell you what it is, Dave. The the key the key problem is that they're just they're just they just enjoy being mediocre. Anyway, on that note, It's not a football podcast, but we do have someone from the UK that is kind of a football fan. So all of a sudden, we were in I'm with him, and then when he said, yeah. But anyway, Mike, welcome to the How TO Sell podcast.

Mike Maynard [00:01:48]:
Thanks very much for having me on the podcast, Luigi. It's great to be on.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:53]:
And it it is it is great to have you, mate. And it's always great because whenever we have another guest, it's good because I hate talking to Dave on this podcast when It's just me and Dave, so it's great to have

David Fastuca [00:02:02]:
You can tell us a little bit about

Mike Maynard [00:02:03]:
what you I can't believe Dave said that being a Chelsea fan is an exercise in resilience. I I As you've kind of alluded to, I'm not a fan of a big club. I'm a fan of Ipswich. That's been an exercise in resilience for several years.

David Fastuca [00:02:18]:
Very true. We've only had a bad, last bit last run, but, you know, that that's it's good because we're resilience is a big thing in the world of sales and marketing. Right? So, Louis, you've been a master of this. Right?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:31]:
Yes. So but this is what this is what I'm really excited about this week's episode, Mike, because, you are you sit on the Forbes sort of business council. You're a PR and marketing expert, have ran your own business. You're involved with a number of other businesses as well. And I think this is quite timely, right? Because, if you think about The the last 12 months, especially from a a sales and marketing perspective, results haven't been where a lot of people would have liked them to be. And one of the key parts of this Forum sales and marketing perspective, the whole process is about really getting clear on your audience, who you serve, what motivates them, what drives them, etcetera. And this is what we are gonna be talking about today with you in, really, how do we build a persona, why should we build a persona, what are the things that we should add to a persona. So but just before we get started, Mike, tell us a bit about yourself and and how you fell into the world of PR.

Mike Maynard [00:03:32]:
Yeah. It Certainly wasn't planned. So, I actually started off as an electronics design engineer, and did all sorts of things from, you know, working with systems that use big lasers To, burn away printing rollers, through to making, mixing desks for recording studios, and then realized I Actually, wasn't a very good engineer, to be honest. But but I I realized I was very good at talking about engineering. So, what do you do if you're good at talking about something? Well, you you go into sales. And I actually went into technical sales, and spent a while, doing technical sales around semiconductors. So talking to the engineers that previously I worked with, and, selling some products into them. And then I got To the point where I was running the, what they call the applications engineering team, which is the technical support team for a semiconductor vendor, in Europe.

Mike Maynard [00:04:25]:
There wasn't really much place to go other than to move to the Sales. Obviously, you know, Silicon Valley, particularly at the time, was really the the epicenter of the industry. And And so I decided what I was gonna do was move into marketing. No real logic behind mindset, just felt like it was a good move. It was something different, gave me a chance to, you know, actually try something different, and I loved it. So I spent 5 years, marketing semiconductors on client side. And then my company, rather rashly, sent me on a management course. Yeah.

Mike Maynard [00:04:59]:
And and like all of these management courses, you know, you're out for a week. You know, the last night comes. Everybody's going out having a drink. We had some some great wine. I remember that, just. And somebody said to me, You should run your own business, Mike. And I think they were actually really nice. And then what they were actually saying was, my god.

Mike Maynard [00:05:18]:
I'd hate to be your boss, It's Mike. I mean, just put it in a nice way. But but but I heard you should run your own business. So, as it happened about 2 or 3 months later, the agency that, I worked with and have been working with for 5 years, was up for sale. The 2 founders wanted to retire. And and I thought, Hey, how hard can it be to run an agency? So, I decided to buy a technology agency 1 month before the .com crash in 2001 Oh. And found out It was quite hard.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:48]:
Well, there is a that's a great lesson in resilience, Mike. So, And look. It's 2024, and you've built a very, very successful career out of it. Right?

Mike Maynard [00:06:02]:
Yeah. I mean, we've done okay. I've I've mainly focused on hiring really, really smart people, and hiding my lack of smartness if I can.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:06:11]:
Well, that's good. Well, Dave would never be able to get a job in your agency then. So

David Fastuca [00:06:17]:
Oh, that's 1. Yeah. Alright.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:06:20]:
So may maybe, Mike, you can tell us. I mean, when you think about personas, I mean, I know that the words kind of thrown around a lot. Right? Customers personas, buyer personas, but I don't think a lot of people talk a bit about the importance of why should we be building personas in the 1st place?

Mike Maynard [00:06:39]:
Yeah. And I think that's that's a really important thing to look at. And it's really simple that Everyone's busy. Everyone's trying to, you know, reach more people than they really have time for.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:06:51]:
Yeah.

Mike Maynard [00:06:51]:
And that's whether you're, you know, in sales or whether you're like me in marketing, you're trying to run campaigns. You're trying to reach people. And what you need to do is you need to have a way to be able to scale up, and be more effective, at getting to more people. Because, you know, we all know that there is an element of sales being a number game. Yep. But equally, there there's a real problem, and that is as soon as you start scaling up, most people find that their results, you know, really drop off a cliff. And it's because they stop being personal, and they start sending generic stuff that's really boring. You know, the the best Explanation of this I, you know, I I've ever seen was, and I wish I could remember which book because, you know, I could've got an affiliate link and made a Forum out of recommendations for this.

Mike Maynard [00:07:39]:
But there was a book where someone's talking about running an agency, and they were pitching and pitching and pitching. They weren't winning anything. And they They had this meeting, and and somebody said, you know, we're we're trying really pretty hard on all of these stuff, and we're just not winning. We don't know why. And somebody said, well, on a, like, 0 to a 100%, how hard you're trying. And these guys went, well, you know, I mean, we've got a lot of pitches. So, you know, if I'm gonna be honest, maybe 98%. Yeah.

Mike Maynard [00:08:04]:
And the smart person in the room just went, there's always someone doing a 100%. And there's always someone doing a really good job. And if you're not that person doing that Standout job. You're gonna lose. So I think what personas do is they let you scale up, but they let you still be very personal, very relevant To the people you're talking to. And so that means you can still deliver that kind of 100% effort, but you can do it across more people. And, Mike,

David Fastuca [00:08:31]:
what do you think Are the key elements of a great buyer persona. Right? So, like, you see all these templates floating around from HubSpot here, there. What would you suggest will be the key elements that make a great buyer buyer persona?

Mike Maynard [00:08:45]:
So other than the fact of which football club they support. That's right. Exactly. Yeah. You can know a lot

David Fastuca [00:08:51]:
of them for that. Yeah.

Mike Maynard [00:08:52]:
And and I'm being facetious, but a lot of people do get, You know, they do put in this very personal information. And sometimes that makes sense, and sometimes it's completely stupid. And I think what makes sense in a buyer persona are things that are actually gonna impact what you do. Yeah. It's it's really simple. So, if you're a salesperson, you know, and and you happen to love football and you got a lot of, you know, customers or or prospects that like football, Hell, yeah. Put in the the team they support. You know? Take them out to the game.

Mike Maynard [00:09:26]:
Mhmm. You know, my my my brother, does some work in sales. You know, he basically, I think, only sells to people who like cricket because he spends all his time watching cricket. It seems like taking taking people out on corporate entertainment. But But, you know, for him, it's really important to understand who likes cricket because that's one of the main ways he, you know, builds relationships with, with customers and prospects. So if that's what you do, Put the sports team in. But if that's not what you do, then don't feel you have to do it. Don't feel you have to say they have children or don't have children if you're never gonna refer to their family.

Mike Maynard [00:09:57]:
It's pointless. So I think what you've gotta think about is what you're trying to get out of that persona. And what you're trying to get out of the persona are the things you need to say to feel really personal and really connected with that particular person.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:10:11]:
Yeah. I mean, this is resonating for me because often I look at these personas and there's some demographic Ethic information, like where they studied or their level of education, etcetera. Geography, income. And sometimes I look at them and think to myself, you know what, that's kind of irrelevant to what I'm trying to talk to them about because, For me, the key element that I think helps start the conversation is thinking about what does a day in the life of a persona look like? What are their key challenges that they're tackling in their role, but more importantly, what are the actual outcomes that they're trying to achieve in their role. Because I if I if I can't create a messaging framework around those 3 things, creating a messaging framework around their demographic isn't gonna get them to think, you know what, I wanna talk to this guy because what does my education level have to do with the fact that I'm trying to fix this particular problem, and you could potentially help me with that problem. So could you just talk us through why or the element of understanding key objectives is sort of more important from a sales perspective than understanding some of the demographic information.

Mike Maynard [00:11:25]:
Yeah. I mean, that's a great point, Luigi. I think you've really hit the nail on the head of of what's important. I mean, we talk about it slightly differently. So we look at What causes them pain? You know, what leads them to have sleepless nights or get up in the morning and hate going to work? Because those are the things they wanna fix. So you've gotta look at what they wanna fix. So it's it's those negative things are definitely, items you've gotta have on the persona And you've gotta be talking to them about because those are the problems they've got to overcome, and those are the things that that really they're focusing a lot of their mental energy on.

David Fastuca [00:12:03]:
Yeah.

Mike Maynard [00:12:03]:
But there's another side to it as well. And and we're really simple. And when we talk to clients about building personas, we literally ask them, so What would get this person promoted? Yeah. And that is super, super important because if you can work out What will get, a prospect or a client promoted or recognition at work or a pay rise or whatever, And and make them feel good. And they feel you've helped them develop their career. That's massively important. Now, obviously, it depends on what you're selling. So, you know, we're selling professional services.

Mike Maynard [00:12:37]:
It's quite high involvement. It's one of the few things that typically our clients buy because they're marketing managers. They they Buy agencies and that's pretty much it. We can actually have a pretty big impact because, ultimately, you know, we recognize our clients are judged on our work. And that may not be fair for the client, but that's the reality. If we deliver a great campaign, the client, you know, gets promoted, gets a bonus, whatever. Mhmm. If we deliver a terrible campaign, the client has a really horrible conversation with their boss.

Mike Maynard [00:13:05]:
Yes. Now if you're selling a commodity product, that's a bit harder. But there are still things you can do that, you know, at bare minimum, don't cause a person problems. Don't cause their their career to Stagnate. Don't sell them a terrible product. You know, don't sell them a product that they don't need, don't want, or isn't right for them, Unless you're very happy to keep churning customers. Yeah. And I think, you know, today, more and more salespeople are are all about long term relationships.

Mike Maynard [00:13:36]:
And it's all about developing those relationships. And and that's always been the case Forum marketing. Yeah. And I think it's interesting. You know, marketing and sales are getting closer together. And so I think it's about building that relationship and building that relationship through helping your customers.

David Fastuca [00:13:50]:
That's a great point there, And it's all about, like, helping building those relationships. And then, look, the buyer persona is such, I believe anyway, an overlooked thing within business. They think it's just something that Marketing does or sales team do to tick a box and then just go out there and and win more deals. But you talk a lot about, you know, understanding their customer journey. So how would you apply or how would you leverage a buyer persona to then understand the journey of a potential customer?

Mike Maynard [00:14:18]:
Yeah. So Buyer personas and customer journeys, I think, are are 2 very different things. And and the important thing to know is they're linked because each persona will have a different journey. So one of the the mistakes we do see people making is they'll build their personas and they'll build 1 journey. And and the answer is, you know, if you're selling a I mean, we have clients who sell silicon chips to engineers. That customer journey is completely different From the journey that the guy in purchasing who finally signs off the PO is gonna make. So you've gotta build journeys for each persona. And you've really gotta go and understand the people you're working with, and understand each of those personas to then work out how to build that journey.

Mike Maynard [00:15:01]:
And you can go talk to them. You can go, you know, talk to other salespeople who are used to working with with those mindset customers. And, frankly, sometimes you go and guess. You know, and and this is something a lot of people don't like to admit. You know, people like to imagine that when you create a persona, you create a journey. Like, that's the answer. Well, quite often, it's not the answer. And even if it's the answer today, in a year's time, it probably isn't the case.

Mike Maynard [00:15:23]:
It's probably gonna be different. So Sometimes, I think you do have to take an educated guess, and you have to go, I reckon it's this. Let's try it, and then try it and see what happens. And, you know, if you think that a customer, a particular point, you know, really needs information on, you know, for example, competitive performance against, You know, your competitors, try it. Send the information out. See if it works. If it doesn't work, you were wrong. But at least you know you were wrong.

Mike Maynard [00:15:49]:
You can fix it.

David Fastuca [00:15:50]:
I'm I'm gonna jump in before you do, Louis. I'm gonna jump in because I just wanna pull the string on something you said there. Because you said just try it. So that leads me to believe that then, you know, businesses need to be looking at their buyer persona much more regularly than just Create it, and then go and do the work. They need to be reviewing it, editing it based on the feedback that they're getting, the success that they're getting. If that's true, how regular would you be looking to make changes to the buyer persona or be reviewing it as a team?

Mike Maynard [00:16:19]:
So that's a great question. I think, You know, that depends on a a lot of things. So, one of the things that depend on the sales cycle. Mhmm. So we we have clients who sell products. And, you know, the sales cycle is online purchase. So pretty much, you know, you can send an email, get a purchase, very short sales cycle. You can very quickly see changes in what's happening to those buyers, and it's very easy to to update, you know, on a frequent basis.

Mike Maynard [00:16:46]:
You know, at the other extreme, we've worked with, People who make baggage handling systems for airports. That's a 20 year sales cycle.

David Fastuca [00:16:52]:
Yeah.

Mike Maynard [00:16:52]:
If you're if you're updating your customer journey every month On a 20 year sales cycle, there is something wrong. So I think it's much more about the fact that the the persona and the journey, They're they're kind of, you know, frameworks that you can test against. And we all know in sales particularly, but also marketing. Everyone's testing all the time. Everyone's trying stuff to see if it works. But I think a lot of us, you know, if we're if we're to be honest, if we don't use personas and and journeys, we're we're kinda guessing, and we're not really tracking what happens. And Sometimes we remember, oh, for this particular situation, this works and this doesn't. But it's all a bit ad hoc.

Mike Maynard [00:17:30]:
Once you start formalizing things. And it doesn't take long to write out a persona in a journey. It then becomes really easy to say, well, actually, I think if this happens, it means that that this particular persona, Whoever it is, you know, your your engineering persona or your purchaser is thinking this. And so we need to send this. So let's try it, find out, see if it works. And because you've got something you've mapped out, it then becomes very easy to go, that was right, that was wrong, that was right. And and you change the things that didn't work. And you become much more efficient much more quickly than kind of the ad hoc testing that we do.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:18:01]:
This is really I'm finding this quite insightful, right, because I think the the learning that I've I'm taking away from this, Mike, is not just, you know, building the persona is one part, but then looking at their their buying journey and thinking about the different audience you're engaging with and creating different journeys. Because I think That's often a mistake I see with sales teams, especially in modern selling when there's multiple people involved in the buying journey. They're using the same brush across every person, but each person has different needs. They've got different social styles, you know, one's more of an analytical buyer, one's more of a people focused buyer, and therefore, the information that they need to gather is quite different. But we not enough consideration is given around that journey. Can you just just step out if you're listening to this podcast going, yep. That's my mistake. I created the persona, but I've got no journeys.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:19:05]:
What sort of 2 or 3 things that, you know, our listeners could do to start mapping out that journey?

Mike Maynard [00:19:11]:
That's a great question. I think, you know, the first thing is to get the buyer persona. Yep. So it's really important to understand who you're mapping. Mhmm. And then once you start mapping it out, just give it a go. And and, I mean, there's really 2 ways you can do it. 1 is a top down approach, which is, you know, you start off with a never heard of us and go to, you know, our best customer, and then you work out how you join the 2 dots.

Mike Maynard [00:19:35]:
And the other is to start with, you know, a segment of the journey you know and you understand. And, typically, you know, in sales, you're looking more towards the end of that journey. In marketing, you're looking more at the start of the journey. And just go, well, I know this bit. So what would be before? What would be after? And start building it out from what you know. And and, personally, I've seen people do both ways. I've seen both ways work really well. I don't think it's necessary To have a really hard formula.

Mike Maynard [00:20:04]:
I think it's about use what you've got and then build on it. And be honest with yourself when you go, Do you know what? I just don't know what this person's thinking here. Yeah. You know, and and typically, you know, at each stage of the journey, you're trying to think Where that that person is. So what they're thinking about, you know, maybe what their concerns are, what their problem is, what what whatever whatever it is, And then what you wanna tell them to move them on to the next stage. Yeah. Awesome. And and just build up those stages.

Mike Maynard [00:20:32]:
And if you don't have the whole journey, Doesn't matter from day 1. You know, you've got something. It's better than nothing.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:20:38]:
Yeah. I love this. I mean, look. For me, this is Mike, whenever I take notes from one of these episodes, it means it's good quality content. So this has been great from from my perspective. So I know our listeners and our audience will be taking many notes. And as always, for our audience, remember, any content that you listen to, without application is simply entertainment. And, yes, Dave and I would love to be a podcast where we entertain, but look.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:21:06]:
Dave's the most boring guy in the world, and we're not entertainers. So

David Fastuca [00:21:11]:
Pardon the interruption, but is your sales team not performing? You have leads, but your team struggles to close them. Well, we'll train you or your team on how to fill their own sales pipeline with ready to buy opportunities in under 60 days guaranteed. Now you're probably Thinking, how does this work? Well, Luigi and I own a business called Growth Forum growing sales and coaching and training company in the b to b space. We work with b to b businesses that sell products or services, for example, Stripe, HubSpot, Grant Thornton, and BlueRock are just a few of our clients. We work with your team, train them to self generate their own qualified deals, and keep them accountable with weekly sales coaching. Then we help you systemize your sales management so it runs on Any autopilot. Keep in mind, we're not one of those expensive outsourced sales agencies. We're helping your team in your business so that you have total control.

David Fastuca [00:22:13]:
Visit growthform.o0forward/apply and schedule Your free sales strategy review with us today. Now back to the show.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:22:23]:
Take action. Take down some of the things that Mike said. And, also, another action that you can take from this episode is go and listen to the marketing I think your podcast, the Marketing B2B Technology podcast, is where you can find more about Mike and more about his content and dive deeper into this journey. So Mike, I just wanna say thank you for showing up on the How to Sell podcast. I know it's hard to, to sit with David, but I know you came for me. So thank you very much. Mike, we really appreciate your insight.

David Fastuca [00:22:55]:
People wonder how we're still friends. I don't and I'll wonder that too many times. Very good. Thank you, Mike.

Mike Maynard [00:23:00]:
Well, it's great to be on the podcast Forum you, Luigi. And and David, You're not as bad as Luigi makes out. So so thank you both for for being on the podcast.

David Fastuca [00:23:09]:
Well, Louie, Apart from you giving me crap like you usually do, that was a really good episode. Right? The buyer persona things, it's something Look. I've been I've been guilty of this. Right? So I'll put my hand up. Well, made the buyer persona, leave them there, show the sales team when when they come on board, and I know they don't look at it After that 1st time that, you know, they they they look at it and they start doing their outreach, how do you apply this? From your from your wonderful experience, how would you, you know, leverage things to to master the journey in messaging as well.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:23:40]:
And remember, like, the the the premise for this persona is not just about outbound. It's also for inbound. Right? If you're running if you've got inbound leads coming in, the persona is gonna work for both. So if you think about what Mike shared, The persona is about understanding what's driving and and and some of the things that he mentioned was really really key. Right? So what would help them get a promotion, the risk and reward associated with what you sell. And these are some things to think about. And so the very first thing that I would do, either use something like a workflow tool like Lucid, get a whiteboard, do it in Excel. There's many ways that you can do this.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:24:20]:
Is just step out what are the actions that your buyer needs to take to go from that point of precontemplation or contemplation, right, to that point of decision. Yeah? And literally step it out. So, you know, in sales process land, it's, You know, they fill out a lead form or they book a meeting, and then you have a discovery. But I wanna I I want our audience will think a bit differently now and go, well, what what's the information that they need to confidently go from step 1 to step 2? Yeah? Because that's what the journey needs to look like. And if you step that out and think about and it's not just about pushing out a proposal with pricing or a capability deck. It's what education, what insight do they need to confidently progress through that journey. And this is where a lot of journeys actually go wrong because they're they're they're pushing feature benefit information. It's a lot of feature information about our product.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:25:20]:
Our product, our product, our product, our product. Right? But they're not buying your product. They're buying the outcome your product or service enables them to achieve. So we need to be thinking about that. We need to be thinking about what what stops them from progressing in the journey, right, and what information will help them through that journey. So, you know, I've just come off a build of doing something like this similar, Dave, as you know, with p 3. And it's taken months but we finally got that journey really, really humming. And now, it's all the information gaps have been filled.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:25:53]:
Yeah. And people are actually saying they're responding by saying we're actually comparing, you know, looking at other systems like yours, But this journey, this process is is is far more the education we're getting is is is is a lot better, right? And we're feeling more confident with you. So that's an indicator that the persona and the journeys are working. So the key action from this episode for our audience, Go away. Grab your persona out. If you've got demographic information, Fastuca. But look at the things that matter. Right? What's a day in your life? Like what Mike David, what are the pain? What what are the things that really stress your persona out? Right? What causes them to get up during the night and think about stuff for work and I don't wanna go into that today because of x issue.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:26:43]:
And then think about the outcomes that are important to your buyers. Right? They are the key things that you should do first. Then second, map out what are the steps that your buyers need to take to go from that point of contemplation or pre contemplation to contemplation right through to action, and then think about what is the information that they need to confidently progress through that journey.