Papago Vans
Internal review only

Marketing plan  /  Avatar input

Internal · fifteen minutes

Who actually
buys our vans?

We are about to spend real money telling a specific kind of person that Papago is for them. Right now the description of that person is assembled from industry research and reasonable guesses. You talk to these people. This is the correction.

Before you start, five things

  1. Fill this in on your own, and do not talk it through with anyone first. Several of us are answering the same questions separately. Where we disagree is the most valuable thing this produces, and it disappears the moment we discuss it beforehand.
  2. Do not look anything up. No CRM, no notes. What you remember without checking is what actually stuck, and that is the signal we want.
  3. Answer about specific real people, not about "our typical customer." Every question below is anchored to three people you personally dealt with. The typical customer does not exist, and describing them is how everyone ends up writing the same vague paragraph.
  4. Where it asks for someone’s words, use their actual words. Not a tidy summary. Their phrasing is what goes into the ads.
  5. There is no company answer and nothing here is a test. If your view contradicts what you think the owner would say, write yours. A survey everyone agrees on teaches us nothing.

Partial is fine. “I never found out” is a real answer and often a more useful one than a guess. Nothing saves until you press submit at the bottom, and a draft is kept in this browser if you need to stop and come back.

First

Who is answering

So we can compare how the answers differ by role. A salesperson and an SDR see different halves of the same person, and that gap is worth seeing.

The main part

Three people you dealt with

Two who bought and one who did not. Pick people you spoke with yourself and can still picture. If you cannot fill all three, do the ones you can.

Someone who bought

Person 1

Most recent one you can picture clearly.

Who were they?
First name and last initial is plenty. Or the deal name if that is easier to recall.
What was going on in their life when they first got in touch?
Not what they asked for. What had just happened to them. Retirement, a job going remote, a house sale, a diagnosis, a lease ending, kids leaving.
In their own words, what did they say they wanted?
As close to verbatim as you can get. Their phrasing, not ours. If they said “we want to be off grid for a week”, write that, not “large battery bank”.
What were they most worried about?
The thing they kept circling back to, or asked twice.
Why did they buy, or why didn’t they?
Your honest read. If you never found out why they went quiet, write that.
Someone who bought

Person 2

A different sort of buyer from Person 1 if you can.

Who were they?
First name and last initial is plenty. Or the deal name if that is easier to recall.
What was going on in their life when they first got in touch?
Not what they asked for. What had just happened to them. Retirement, a job going remote, a house sale, a diagnosis, a lease ending, kids leaving.
In their own words, what did they say they wanted?
As close to verbatim as you can get. Their phrasing, not ours. If they said “we want to be off grid for a week”, write that, not “large battery bank”.
What were they most worried about?
The thing they kept circling back to, or asked twice.
Why did they buy, or why didn’t they?
Your honest read. If you never found out why they went quiet, write that.
Someone who did NOT buy

Person 3

Went quiet, went elsewhere, or said no. This one matters most.

Who were they?
First name and last initial is plenty. Or the deal name if that is easier to recall.
What was going on in their life when they first got in touch?
Not what they asked for. What had just happened to them. Retirement, a job going remote, a house sale, a diagnosis, a lease ending, kids leaving.
In their own words, what did they say they wanted?
As close to verbatim as you can get. Their phrasing, not ours. If they said “we want to be off grid for a week”, write that, not “large battery bank”.
What were they most worried about?
The thing they kept circling back to, or asked twice.
Why did they buy, or why didn’t they?
Your honest read. If you never found out why they went quiet, write that.

Then

Patterns you notice

Now you can generalise, because you have just spent ten minutes on real people rather than starting from an abstraction.

What do people ask you that we answer badly?
The question where you find yourself hedging, guessing, or changing the subject.
Write down one phrase you hear customers use over and over.
Their words, not a summary. This is the single most useful thing on the page for writing ads, because it is language we can use back.
Who is NOT a good fit for us?
Describe someone we should be happy to lose. Being specific here is more useful than being polite.
When someone walks away, what is it usually about?
From what you have actually seen, not what you would expect.
What is one thing about our buyers that would surprise someone outside the company?
Optional. Leave it blank if nothing comes to mind.

Last question

Pick the two that decide it most often

This one is last on purpose. A list of options put in front of you early would have shaped every answer above it.

Two facts, then you are done

Age and where they live

For Google, which unlike Meta still needs telling who to show ads to. About the same three people you described above, not buyers in general. A rough guess is fine and “no idea” is better than a made-up number.

Person 1, bought
Person 2, bought
Person 3, did not buy
Anywhere in the country we hear from more than you would expect?
Optional. Somewhere that keeps coming up given we are in Mesa, or somewhere you assumed we would hear from and never do.
Draft saved in this browser as you type.

Got it. Thank you.

Your answers are in. Please don’t compare notes with anyone who hasn’t filled it in yet.