Why Won’t They Buy?

Rick Gregg July 18,2024 What do you think?

Startup entrepreneurs are taught that personas are fictional characters, which are created based upon research that represents the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way. Creating personas helps the startup entrepreneur to understand users’ needs, experiences, behaviors and goals. Renowned Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung defines “persona” as the “social face an individual presents to the world. A kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual.” It’s the concealed behavior that must become part of the persona and customer profile to properly discover and validate your customer, otherwise you will have a much more difficult time finding the repeatable business model that you are searching for.

Uncovering Extreme Customer Pain

The pains and gains identified in your persona and customer profile are mostly based on a deep assumption. It’s a view of the world so deeply ingrained in our thinking that we rarely see its influence or question its value. It is the belief that the best (and perhaps only) way to convince people to embrace a new idea is to heighten the appeal of the idea itself. We instinctively believe that if we add enough value, people will say “yes.” This reflex leads us down a path of adding gain creators and pain relievers to the idea or increasing the sizzle of the messaging – all in the hope of propelling people to get on board.

7 out of 10 new product or service innovations fail because entrepreneurs don’t uncover the extreme pains a customer faces. In this series on the Customer Profile, I’m going to do a deep dive into identifying the extreme psychological pains that keep your customer from engaging with your innovative SaaS offering. I’ll discuss the techniques I have used to develop gain creators that eliminate the extreme pain your customer suffers but won’t reveal to you.

The saasmvp Project is dedicated to helping SaaS Entrepreneurs who want to create a repeatable business model that generates revenue with minimal financial risk. We’re excited to help you discover your ideal SaaS customer profile. Let me know your thoughts and experiences on this journey together.