Go-Getter Gary: An MSP Buyer Persona

By Dean Ara

Selling Cloud services is a crowded space – but you can gain an edge and capture your target if you develop buyer personas. Doing this should be one of your first steps in creating an MSP marketing plan that breaks through the noise. If you haven’t done so already, read our earlier post on why MSPs should develop buyer personas and you’ll quickly learn why buyer personas matter. 

To help you out, we’ve documented three of the most common MSP buyer personas in our four-part blog series. This post explores Go-Getter Gary and explains how to use his persona insights to improve your sales effectiveness.

MSP Buyer Persona: Go-Getter Gary

Go-Getter Gary is a male in his mid 30s and he’s the Director of IT for a large financial software company. Gary has an undergraduate degree in computer science, has been in the workforce for just over a decade, and earns $125,000 a year. Gary lives in the city with his wife and one young child. He enjoys the finer things in life and isn’t afraid to splurge a little when he sees something he likes. Gary reads technical publications and relies on third-party information to stay up to date on current trends in IT.

When it comes to MSP purchasing decisions, Gary always searches for better marketplace options. As an older millennial, he’s not interested in the nitty-gritty details of technology and prefers to rely on hiring third-party expertise to offload the work. His company’s current infrastructure is outdated and the employees want a change. But, Gary’s working with a reduced IT budget. He’s interested in  a cost-effective solution that will deliver better results such as quicker support response times or improved security and monitoring from his service provider.

Go-Getter Gary Identifiers

Go-Getter Gary is the “returns guy,” always looking for for the best value for his money. But he wants things fast; he likes action and delights in making quick purchases. He is captivated by simple steps, new adventures, and anything that will save him time. Gary makes decisions quickly, primarily driven by his gut feelings and emotions. He is easily distracted and loses interest when faced with traditional processes. In short, he’s impatient and doesn’t like lots of options when making purchasing decisions.

Capturing Go-Getter Gary

To win Gary’s business, you need to answer his burning question: “Why should I choose you, and why now?” You already know he likes to move quickly and has a limited attention span, so you need to communicate the value of your offer quickly and clearly  – if you’re boring, he won’t stick around.

Gary is a sucker for a healthy dose of urgency. He responds well to sales, discounts, and time-sensitive offers, but you must be clear and concise in your calls to action; he’ll miss your intended offer if you try and cram in too much.

Putting Gary’s Persona to Work

You can use these insights to build better, stronger, and quickly-converting marketing messaging. Using Gary’s buyer persona insights, you can create a marketing plan and leverage tactics that will effectively capture his wants and needs.

For starters, use strong imagery of excited people, a tempting offer with urgency in the Call to action, and background information to appeal to the logic of the return on his investment in your services – BUT use details sparingly. If the details are not highly relevant, omit them as you will lose Gary’s interest.

Appeal to his sense of urgency by speaking his language. Use limited-time offers and metrics to demonstrate urgency and appeal to Gary’s spontaneity and desire to find a hot deal. Try phrases like:

Use the knowledge you now have about Gary to your advantage:

Finding Your Niche Personas

In this fiercely competitive industry, selling your basic managed services is no longer enough; you need to differentiate by employing combination uniqueness — find your company’s own story to express your niche to prospective clients. Identify the areas where you go the extra mile by offering exceptional service or expertise, and communicate your unique selling points to your target customers.  Go-Getter Gary is just one example of an MSP buyer persona. You can use him, and the others we’ll look at in this blog series, as a foundation when you start to develop your own buyer personas to tailor your own offering to your specific target. The more niche your service offering, the more successful you will be.

Want to learn more about building a niche marketing plan for your target audience? At Total Product Marketing, we specialize in marketing for Channel Partners and Cloud Service Providers. Contact us today. We can help you develop a persona-driven marketing strategy that will differentiate your services and improve your customer acquisition and retention.