Make Progress First, Then Address Complexities

The most interesting thing, work wise, about 2023 has been the rise in interest, real interest, in the use of rich (think beyond firmographic) ideal customer profiles (something we call "The Enterprise Persona"). I suspect this is largely driven by the economic climate driving the need for more focus, with a secondary possibility being that doing things differently just takes time.

But I still see people getting stuck. And that is usually driven by focusing on the potential complexity too soon. This is similar to what I call "The Scale Excuse ." We contemplate everything that would need to happen if we are wildly successful, before we even try it to see if we can be even somewhat successful.

The application of Enterprise Personas, done right, is complex:

• You need Ideal, Acceptable, and Unacceptable characteristics for every offering you bring to market.
• You should go back and analyze your customer base to see where they align and diverge with your Enterprise Personas.
• Enterprise Personas should be used to change the way you talk about offerings.
• Enterprise Personas should influence content strategy and sales processes and models.
• Enterprise Personas should inform product decisions.
• Enterprise Personas are critical to have more cross-sell success.

And I could go on and on. Wow, getting started feels almost oppressive.

But don't start with a vision of doing everything. Just do something. Focus on one offering, not all of them. Don't try to get every group to buy in. Find one. Don't look for a perfect profile, just add some elements and test it.

I was talking with a group in a very large software company. They knew they needed to improve their performance in generating demand and opportunities. They invested energy and resources in developing a rich ideal customer profile. The work revealed significant differences from what they had believed and expected. To fully capitalize, they would need marketing to change the message.

But that is not where they started. Instead, they used their learnings to refine the target lists of organizations that they would pursue. Savvy reps naturally shifted their talk tracks to address the concerns of these ideal customers (enabling growth) vs. the traditional message (control costs). They did not ask marketing to change. (Note: The same project could have started in marketing with the first step being to shift the message. One place. Prove Impact. Progress).

The impact was noticeable and measurable. The region applying this approach far exceeded their targets, significantly outperforming similar sized regions that stuck with the traditional firmographic approach.

The value is now proven. They are now expanding and addressing some of the complexity that goes with that.

Similarly, the development of Enterprise Persona's does not have to be super complex to start. Instead, just do some workshops with a collection of reps and ask them to describe their best customers and their worst ones. Dig deep into more unique attributes that capture behaviors or situations. Think about how to tweak your approach.

We live in a world of crazy complexity. Don't make it worse before you have to. In the area of Enterprise Personas I will make one statement with a high degree of conviction. If I were in a position to guarantee improved performance by doing just a little bit more, I would. I can't offer a true guarantee, but I stand by my conviction in this area.

Disclaimer: The articles in this newsletter do not follow Gartner's standard editorial review. All comments or opinions expressed here are mine and do not represent the views of Gartner, Inc. or its management.