Client Context
A Fortune 500 financial services company wanted to develop a resource to help their commercial teams better prepare for personalized discussions with a diverse range of institutional clients.
The Business Challenge
When teams went to plan for conversations, existing client personas lacked consistency, data quality, design polish, and narrative impact. As a result, they were used sparingly as commercial teams struggled to connect the dots between personas and messaging that would meaningfully drive outreach and sales enablement with clients.
Capabilities Applied
- AI Analysis
- Primary Market Research
- Secondary Research
- Design & Visualization
Approach
HawkPartners collaborated closely with our client team to reimagine a persona approach that better captured sector trends, brand perceptions, behavioral characteristics, and key messages for products and services. HawkPartners incorporated nearly 20 unique data sets for each persona, reflective of organizational CRM data, primary qualitative & quantitative research, and secondary data analysis. The team leveraged AI to efficiently mine and integrate publicly available data into the profiles, where available. We created over 50 robust buyer personas across 18 sub-sectors and multiple client buyer profiles such as CFOs, COOs, and Treasurers, resulting in a true library of customer knowledge to serve the vast organization. We leveraged our strong editorial skills and robust institutional knowledge in financial services during the process to ensure accuracy, nuance, and actionability.
Impact
The new personas were spotlighted at an organization-wide summit to help commercial teams better address the behaviors and needs of their customers across business lines. They quickly became essential resources, earning praise from both the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Commercial Officer for their capture of complex data within well-designed, user-friendly tools. Today they are widely used by commercial, marketing, and other growth-oriented teams as both standalone guides and AI-searchable assets to better understand customer needs.
The personas have also become foundational training resources, helping relationship managers distinguish the unique motivations, priorities, and decision-making styles of senior buyers. They also play a central role in customer journey mapping efforts, ensuring that buyer characteristics and preferences are incorporated in moments that matter throughout the sales lifecycle.
