4 things every startup would hate not to know about their customer.

Beyond your customers’ generic personal attributes, these four questions can unlock success.

The best way to empower your marketing and sales is to get under your customer's skin and figure out as much as you can about them. Without this knowledge, it makes it almost impossible to connect the dots between that unique value proposition you've worked so hard on and your customers.

One of the first things most experts will advise you to do is building personas. Of course, it makes perfect sense to get a real understanding of what your customer looks like and what matters to them to market powerfully to them. However, how you do this can have a significant impact on success.

Generic templates often tell you to imagine who they are, create an ideal picture of the person and in B2B, one of the people who hold a specific title. The challenge can be in your flight of fantasy. You can inadvertently quickly end up with a vision of someone who doesn't exist in the real world, ultimately leaving you running the risk of selling to no one.

If you can answer with as much detail as possible each of the following 4 questions you have a stronger opportunity for success:

What drives priority? Or in other words, what is the trigger?

You’ve identified a problem that is really painful for a select group of people and you’ve built a powerful solution and you know exactly what makes your answer to the problem different from others. Now you need to understand the circumstances that drive your buyer to take action. What drives them to want to fix that problem and resolve the pain.

What's the trigger that happens that makes your buyer step back from everything else that is going on in their lives or at work and decide that fixing this problem is their number one priority? There will be a moment where the customer stops and says enough, I need to focus on this or purchase this now. You need to figure out what this moment is.

What could be perceived barriers?

Understanding why someone might not buy your solution is just as important as knowing why they will. Addressing these blockers before they get in the way can save time and open up sales. Think outside of the box and from all angles. A blocker could be a person in the sales cycle who loves to get in the way or an inaccurate view of the problem, product or even your company.

For many startups, just being a startup can be a challenge to overcome. Or, for B2C customers, it could be something as challenging as fake news!

Understanding the blockers gives you insight into what sort of "why should I believe you" content or resources to build and understand more about what pitfalls you want them to try to avoid on their journey.

What is the journey your buyer most likely going to take?

What and who is involved? Where are they getting their insight to discover you? From there, how does the process unfold? What questions might they ask, and how do they evaluate options? Who might be influencing them? What do they need to know or understand to get to that final choice? As linked above, understanding the potential pitfalls on the route to success or hurdles that your customer must overcome will help you with your planning.

And finally, what is their decisions criteria?

Never forget that according to Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman, 95% of our purchase decision-making occurs subconsciously. Hopefully, your UVP point of radical differentiation is linked to the aspect of the competing offerings that your buyers perceive as most critical but don't underestimate how important it is to be as authentic and human as possible and consider the emotional part of the buying experience.

Don't fall into the trap of selling to the rational part of someone's brain and forgetting the intuitive side of people.

Understanding the decision criteria lets you determine which of the four marketing P's - product, place, price, promotion - are your best bets to leverage to drive better results. Just a reminder that for B2B customers, the four marketing P's switch to solution, access, value and education.

Dig as deep as you can using customer interviews, prospect interviews, surveys, research. While you’re doing this look for patterns. Look for opportunities. This insight will be critical in building your campaigns and supporting your sales teams.