You will be able to describe the two or three people involved in a purchase and what each one cares about.
You have a great first meeting. The owner of a small cafe group nods along, agrees the problem is real, and says it all makes sense. Then the follow-up message comes back: "Let me check with my partner first." A week later it is a polite no, from someone you never met and whose question you never got to answer.
Nobody lied to you in that meeting. You were simply talking to one person in a decision that belonged to several. This lesson is about seeing those other people before they quietly vote you out.
In lesson 1.1, Your best customers tell you who to look for next, you wrote an ideal customer profile. A profile describes the account or the household: a food and beverage business with two to five outlets, a couple in their early thirties with a new baby. It tells you where to look.
A persona describes one person inside that account or household, with their own job, their own worries and their own way of talking about the problem. Two people in the same business can want opposite things from you. The founder wants to stop worrying about the books. The operations manager wants nobody to change the way receipts get entered, because she is the one who enters them.
When you only know the profile, you write one message for "the business". When you know the personas, you can write to the person who will actually read it, and you can prepare for the person who will read it next.
Most business purchases involve three roles, even in small firms where one person wears two hats.
The user is the person whose day changes after the purchase. In the cafe group that is the operations manager, or the outlet manager who closes the till each night. Users care about effort: how much extra work this creates, and whether it will break something that already works.
The decision maker chooses between the options. Usually the founder or a department head. They care about the problem being solved and about not looking foolish if the choice goes wrong.
Then there is the person who signs off the money. In a small company that may be the founder's spouse, a co-founder or an outside accountant. They care about price, contract terms and whether this is the best use of the budget this quarter. They often never meet the seller at all, which is why their objections arrive by message after the meeting.
Let's give the bookkeeper from lesson 1.1 a name: Mei. When Mei looks back at the deals she lost, almost every one died with the person who signs off the money. The founders liked her. Their co-founders, who held the cheque book, had never heard of her and saw only a new monthly cost.
Household decisions work the same way, with fewer job titles. The person who books the meeting is rarely the only person who decides.
Take Darren, the new financial adviser from lesson 1.1. His best clients are young parents. In most of those households, one partner reaches out first and the other partner never comes to the first coffee. Sometimes a parent is involved too, because they have opinions about insurance or because they once bought a policy they regret. That absent person has a vote. If Darren knows that, he can ask early, "Who else would want a say in this?", and offer to meet both partners together the second time.
The absent decision maker is the most common reason a household deal stalls after a good first meeting. You cannot always meet them, but you can help the person in front of you explain the decision to them.
A persona does not need a stock photo and a made-up hobby. It needs four things you can use when writing a message or preparing a call.
Role: their job or their place in the household, such as founder, operations manager, or the partner who handles the family's bills. Problem: what they actually feel, in plain terms, such as month-end taking three evenings. Words: the exact phrases they use for that problem, taken from real conversations, reviews or posts. Fear: what they worry will go wrong if they say yes, such as being locked into something that does not work.
The words line matters more than it looks. Sellers describe problems in their own vocabulary. Mei used to talk about "cash flow visibility". Her clients said "I never know if we actually made money this month." The second phrase is the one that gets a reply, because the reader recognises themselves in it. Collect these phrases from your notes, from what customers wrote to you, and from what people in your profile say in public forums and reviews.
The fear line is what tells you what to address before anyone asks. If the operations manager fears more work, your first message to her should say how little changes in her week. If the co-founder fears wasted money, give the founder something short and concrete to forward.
You do not need to invent these people. You have met them. Think about your last few deals, won and lost, and ask who was in the room, who was mentioned but absent, and whose question arrived after the meeting. The patterns show up fast.
In the activity below you will write a half-page persona for the two people who come up most often when someone buys what you sell. Use real phrases you have heard, not ones you think they should say.
Write a half-page persona for each of the two people most often involved in buying what you sell, including the exact words they use for the problem.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).