I've heard mixed opinions on sharing customer personas with Sales. Some say it's useless information that Sales tends to ignore. Have you found that Sales appreciates customers personas? What's your approach there?

Question

Charles Tsang · Accepted Answer

* The answer depends a bit on the situation. Here are two scenarios/examples. 
    * Scenario 1: Sometimes sales has a ton of institutional knowledge around their target customers. This might be because of the history they’ve had around this sales motion/target audience and how long the company has been focused on selling a particular type of product or solution. Using a Visa example, our sales team has had years of experience working on selling our core products to heads of card programs at financial institutions. In this scenario, customer personas may not be super beneficial to Sales (although they can be very beneficial to Marketing, in order to develop great creative/content)!  
    * Scenario 2: If you’re working at a company that is focused on engaging with a new audience or new types of buyers, in these cases there is not a lot of institutional knowledge or insight into who these buyers are. Using another Visa example, over the past few years we’ve been developing new products that target new verticals (to us) – such as insurance companies. In these instances, customer personas can be invaluable for Sales!

I've heard mixed opinions on sharing customer personas with Sales. Some say it's useless information that Sales tends to ignore. Have you found that Sales appreciates customers personas? What's your approach there?

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