As you pick out some of your less - than - ideal leads and customers and learn more about them, you'll identify common characteristics and habits that will help you shape
your exclusionary personas.
If you're using closed - loop analytics, you can also reach out to those leads and customers who exhibit the behaviors we outlined in the second section of this blog post — «Why Should You Create
Exclusionary Personas?»
This is how your sales team will know when they've hooked a Lenny — or
your exclusionary persona equivalent — so they don't invest copious amounts of time trying to close the deal.
You create
an exclusionary persona to do, essentially, the exact opposite; that is to say that exclusionary personas are archetypes of who you don't want as a customer that will help you identify who you should not spend time marketing and selling to.
You may have heard the term «negative buyer persona» or «
exclusionary persona.»
Let's make up a fake company — we'll go with HR Solutions Galore — and a fake
exclusionary persona to show you how to create one for your company.
Our fake
exclusionary persona, Legalese Leonard!
If any of these scenarios sound familiar, you might need
an exclusionary persona for your company.
So while you can still engage with those who fall into
your exclusionary persona bucket (and absolutely should — they could still be influencers, after all), you don't want to spend significant sales and marketing budget converting them into leads and customers.
To explain what
an exclusionary persona is — sometimes also called a «negative» persona — let's first briefly revisit the definition of a buyer persona.
Instead of giving you the brief summary like we did above, let's break down exactly what kind of information
your exclusionary persona would include by showing you how you'd fill in the persona template.
Even if you're not selling directly to
your exclusionary persona, they may still work within your buyer persona's organization.
Not exact matches
Whereas a buyer
persona is a representation of your ideal customer, a negative — or «
exclusionary» —
persona is a representation of who you don't want as a customer.