Hearts then Charts

HEARTS THEN CHARTS
We’re looking to identify ‘Nancy’ — and to ensure that one group’s Nancy is largely analogous
to another’s.
Before you begin:
• You’ll need to assemble a cross-functional team of between 8 and 20 individuals, each
with a stake in the performance of their teams and departments.
• You’ll want a comfortable working space in which the team can work without distraction
for a full eight-hour day
• Ideally, you’ll have the capacity to schedule recurring monthly check-ins with the same
group for at least a six month period 10 .
Getting to Nancy: a step-by-step approach
1. Charge this team with identifying and
describing 2–3 of your most important
customers.
2. Begin with data. Use existing customer
data to inform basic decisions about
the kinds of people you’re describing.
If you’re actively looking to acquire a
customer base that skews heavily female,
focus on describing her. If your existing
commercial buyers are clustered in East
Coast metro areas, describe a customer
who lives in Boston or New York City.
3. If you have existing personas or
segmentations used by some internal
teams, find ways to incorporate elements
from them. The challenge is not to replace
these, but to extend their value to other
corners of the enterprise.
4. If you have a recent hire from a direct
competitor who’s done similar work, use
their experience as a starting
point. Competitors within the same
category not only share customer types,
but generally share them in the same
proportion 11 .
5. Add texture to these people with
anecdotes and existing qualitative
research. If it’s possible to use primary
research or customer service verbatims,
take full advantage of this information.
6. At every turn, check your work. Ensure
that the picture you’re painting describes
a person, not a customer (that’s a
segmentation). Remember: you’re
working to understand what people need
from the world (some of which you can
meet), not what you need from them.
7. Give names to these people. Some
organizations employ given names
(‘Nancy’), others more functional titles
(‘DIY Dad’). Be sure that the names
you’ve chosen (and details you’ve
outlined) describe the person, not their
relationship to your organization. There’s
nothing less customer-centric than
describing people who are focused
primarily on you 12 .
8. Evaluate the utility of what the team
creates. Are the descriptions crisp, or
have you smashed together a handful
of segments into the ‘core customer’
described above? Are you using language
that is memorable? Will the names
you use help people internalize them?
Some organizations use photos and
illustrations to help employees build
visual representations of customers. At
this point, being memorable and useful is
more important than being precise.
10
You’ll find that it’s particularly helpful to schedule these recurring check-ins prior to kicking off the initiative, as it creates a sense of accountability from the outset, and binds members of the team to one another.
These check-ins can be as short as 30 minutes, but they should be in-person meetings if at all possible.
11
Hammond, K, Ehrenberg, A & Goodhardt, G 1996, ‘Market segmentation for competitive brands’, European Journal of Marketing, vol. 30, pp. 39-49 | I came across this article via Byron Sharp’s wonderful book How
Brands Grow (Oxford University Press, 2010), which I can’t recommend enough.
12
Also: no such person exists
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