Cloud-Based File Sharing: The 4 Buyer Personas Every MSP Should Know

The Casual Visitor: The digital equivalent of the tire-kicker at a used car shop. They are the very beginning of the customer journey, and there’s no telling if they will ever make the transition to that category. They have no urgent need, but they do have at least some reason for visiting your site or inquiring about your goods or services. In terms of rank and title, this could be anyone from an IT intern, an IT manager or even the CEO. Generally, they will be more concerned with the concept of the product or service, as opposed to the nitty-gritty technical details.

The Investigators: Now come the questions. They want to know about SLAs, encryption features, user access privileges, administrative oversight, and compliance with regulations like PCI, SOX, HIPAA and others. This is the stage where your technical skills and your sales skills converge – and it’s at this stage where you begin to see their level of involvement/responsibility within their organization. The tire-kickers are long gone, and now you’re dealing with someone with a real problem: the need to security store and share files in a cloud-based environment.

Evaluators: Once they’ve received their answers, they’ll likely want to take it for a test spin. They’ll want to see how user-friendly the UI is; how easy it is to add and remove users and most importantly, how it stacks up to the other solutions they’ve been test-driving on the side. This is where the superiority of your product comes into play. As you know, consumers usually don’t care about features and specs, but in the realm of cloud-based file sharing for businesses, these can make or break a deal.

The Urgent Buyers: This persona can be identified by the use of several keywords, including “fines”, “non-compliance”, “security breach” and “help!” They are the closest thing you’ll get to an impulse purchase in the world of B2B tech, but make no mistake, their buying decision is driven by a very real and urgent need.