Learn to Speak the Language
Persona analysis is a great place to start in your go-to-market planning.
If you run an Australian company and you are thinking of expanding into the US market, you probably think you already know how to speak the language, but, most likely, you have some learning to do. By this I mean, learn to speak the language of your US-based target customer.
How do you start?
Before entering the US market, I am going to assume you have had some success in the Australian market for your products and services. To transition this success to the US market, the key is to develop buyer personas, then hone your message to the language they speak in the US market. Here are the steps:
1. Analyze the buyer journey for your top Australian success stories
2. Identify key buyer roles and characteristics
3. Translate into specific buyer personas
4. Research peer-persona profiles in the US market
5. Develop US-specific buyer personas that incorporate researched market differences
Analyze the buyer journey:
Analyze your client successes by looking carefully at the detailed buying journey of each successful Australian sale. What happened to achieve the success at each milestone?
Identify key buyer roles and characteristics:
Who were the people in each winning account to buy your value proposition and become internal promoters?
What are their titles and roles?
Is there a common pattern to who “got it” (understood the value proposition) the earliest?
What were the other attributes of these early sponsors?
Tenure? (How many years have they been in the role?)
Academic background?
Age?
History of being change-agents?
Then, in these same accounts, who had to buy into the proposal and finally sign off their approval?
What is their title and role?
Translate into specific buyer personas:
Once you have identified the patterns in your buyer profiles, translate this into clearly defined “personas” for key buying roles.
Research US market peer-persona profiles:
Next, look at the information you have about the US market you plan to approach.
Have you identified the vendors in the USA with whom you will be competing?
How large are they?
What is their market share in the markets where you wish to compete?
Prepare a SWOT for each of them as well as your own company.
Who are the personas they have sold to successfully?
What are the industry segments you want to target?
What are the differences in these segments in the US that will be important to understand?
Develop US-specific buyer personas:
Adapt your personas to incorporate the important US-specific details that will help you reach your target US market, while relating to the context that matters to them and speaking the language that is familiar to them.
Why the focus on personas and their language usage?
If you can be clear about the personas you want to reach, it helps to decide the messaging that is most meaningful to the real people who you want to buy your product or service. Speak their language. Be empathetic to their known challenges and opportunities. You can then become so much more focused in choosing target companies and the personas you want to reach.
Identifying personas tells you who to target with your networking efforts and other direct forms of communication. It also helps you with target-list building and gives you a road map for tailoring campaigns that communicate your brand and your unique value proposition. Most importantly, it helps you build trust and authority in your market and win early ‘beach-head” sales.
