If you’ve been in business for at least a little while, you’ve probably heard the term “buyer persona” or “ideal client profile” (ICP) thrown around—by gurus, by marketers, by other business owners. And they’ll tell you that you need to have a good buyer persona if you wish to get anywhere in your business life.

But what does that actually mean? If that’s something you’ve been wondering, then read on.

In this edition of the Client Questions Series, we’ll tackle a big one: What makes a good buyer persona?

Setting the Stage—Why This Matters

If you haven’t ever wondered why you need a buyer persona or what makes a good one, here’s a little bit of context to set the stage for why this is such an important, if simple, question.

Pause for a moment and think about why you went into business. (I’m assuming here that you’re a for-profit business owner—if not, kindly move along and go play golf or something.)

Was it to solve a problem?

Yes, of course. No one goes into business unless they have a problem to solve. Just wanting to make money is not enough—no one will pay you unless you do something for them.

Okay, cool, so you’re solving a problem. But whose problem?

Think about that last question a little bit deeper.

You solve a specific problem. For a specific person—the person who has that problem right now and actually wants it resolved.

But if you had to characterize the person who has that specific problem without mentioning the problem itself, how would you do so?

What traits make up this person?

Take a moment to jot down (either mentally or physically) a few of the traits that you know this person has. Keep in mind that the person can be either an individual or a business.

Pro Tip:

When we consider traits, don’t fall into the common trap of thinking about hobbies, what movies they watch, their marital status, religion, and so on, unless these traits specifically impact the problem they have. Instead you want to think about traits that are directly tied to their problem. Same goes for businesses. It’s less about their company size and annual revenue and more about specific traits that matter to the problem you’re promising to solve.

For example, maybe you offer tailored financial management services for businesses in the finance industry. What traits might characterize the businesses that need the solution you provide? Perhaps you specialize in cash flow consistency, so businesses that suffer from inconsistent cash flow or cash flow gaps (like small investment banks or private equity firms) need you most.

What else can you say about this kind of business, besides the fact that they’re small? Maybe they work in an industry dominated by big firms, which makes the acquisition of new deals slow and painful, and therefore accurate cash flow management even more important.

Whatever your answer actually is, take a moment to look back at your notes and think about what you wrote down.

The traits you put down zero in on a person who is likely to want and need your services now. Knowing these traits allows you to figure out who you should sell to—both because they need your help, and because they’ll give you money for your help.

If you didn’t have clarity on who you should sell to, you might end up selling to the wrong person (who either doesn’t need you or isn’t willing to pay you), which would be a waste of time and effort for both you and the prospect.

What you wrote down was a crude form of a buyer persona, and it’s purpose is the all-important one of making sure you know who to sell to and can reach them in the most efficient way possible. Very important, isn’t it? (If you disagree, feel free to go play golf with the non-business owners.)

Founder’s Note

Let’s digress a little and understand why my team and I often insist on this unconventional approach to buyer persona creation. I’ve seen those pretty templates and free online softwares that brands like HubSpot give out to make you feel like you’re a big player. And while there’s nothing wrong with answering basic concepts around what kind of a person you want to sell to, approaching buyer personas this way is often very misleading for a startup that needs to move product fast.

We recently took on a client in the AI SaaS space who shared a very pretty and comprehensive buyer persona document. What did we see? A lot of nonsense on the page. Very little meaning or clarity on who would be willing to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in the shortest time possible. The result? Zero prospects. Zero cash flow.

You see, for a startup, a sales cycle that lasts 12 months is simply a losing battle, no matter how great things look on paper. This client assumed that since everyone needs their product, the bigger the organization, the better. And they had a documented persona that they felt should be the first target for our campaign.

If you know me even a little, you can guess my reaction. I threw that thing away and immediately shattered their delusion of trying to fish for a whale with a tiny fishing rod and a baby sardine as bait.

When all you have is a tiny fishing rod and a baby sardine and you don’t even have the means to access the deep waters, it’s important to have someone like me who will smack you into proper focus. Go after the fish that is most likely to fall for that bait. Catch something, then grow from there.

In this example, the problem wasn’t their desire to bag large organizations; it was the fact that they had a new product, untested funnels, and a need for immediate cash. In such a situation, the right buyer persona would be the business that is small enough to value their current solution (as is), and in high enough pain that they need to resolve their problem yesterday. These traits ensure that the prospect is primed to move through the sales cycle quickly, resulting in, you guessed it, cash flow.

Did you get it? I mean, really get it? Can you see how this applies to your current business now? Okay, enough from me. Back to what Jules is sharing with us today.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look at what makes a good buyer persona, or ideal client profile (ICP) as we call it.

The Short Answer: Detail

The two-cent version is that you need to have enough details about your ideal buyer so that you can be able to pick them out from a crowd. From their demographic characteristics to their psychological triggers to their habits, motivations, pain points, and desires, your ICP should be detailed enough to give you the confidence that if you were presented with 1,000 random people, you’d be able to tell if they were in that group or not.

The Longer Answer

Okay, but more specifically, what goes into such a detailed buyer persona? Here’s a breakdown of the five categories you need to include:

• Demographics (general information about them, such as where they live, their age, their gender, their background, etc.)
• Psychographics (their interests, values, and beliefs)
• Goals (their general long-term and short-term goals, as well as their motivating desires)
• Challenges (their internal and external challenges and problems)
• Emotional and Psychological Triggers (their professional and personal resentments, emotional resentments, primal and biological drivers, fears, etc.)

We wrote an article guiding you through how to create your own ideal buyer persona, with a checklist that you can download included. Read it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chapter-2-woman-geeky-blueberries-media-ghwyf/?trackingId=WUCs%2BY81QFiYe5bYLuaVtw%3D%3D

But remember that while your ICP needs to have detail, it shouldn’t include irrelevant details that don’t add to your understanding of what makes your ideal buyer tick. For example, noting that they like Skittles and not M&Ms is rather useless from a sales and marketing standpoint. Focus more on their deep, general drivers, and not any specific tastes. (Remember that your ICP represents a group of your ideal buyers, not each individual ideal buyer, so your detail does need to know some limits.)

The Takeaway

To summarize, a good ICP is one that gives you enough information to know with certainty who you’re selling to and what drives them, but that doesn’t get bogged down in unnecessary details. If you’re looking for a place to start, here’s our ICP template—answer the questions, and you’ll be good to go with a great working ICP:

• ClickUp version: https://doc.clickup.com/20517229/d/h/kj4bd-2695/c1137bba1dc8fcc 
• Google Docs version: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15241qSv_LtuR7KKYaYhkRmOdJ9IkR6gayAkLXr6_DvI/edit?tab=t.0 

There's Always More to Learn—Read More from Our Blog.