Target persona is a marketer’s depiction of the profile of a single target consumer. Typically, persona includes the demographic profile of an individual. It may also include the motivations of the individual. For Body Boss, target personas included high school football coaches, collegiate strength and conditioning coaches, collegiate football coaches, professional baseball coaches, etc. Understanding the internal narrative of any persona could be the difference between making a genuine connection (and sale) or being swept aside with the rest of spam.
Google “internal narrative”, and you are left with how to write one, change one, or mixed in with “internal monologue”. My back-of-the-napkin definition is “personal story”.
Marrying the idea of internal narrative with persona would be a crude way of applying something specific and powerful to something otherwise abstract. Instead, internal narrative should be applied to the exact person being engaged with (in sales) – highlight “internal” as how she tells her story.
Persona-wise, I am a 30-year-old male sales and marketing leader at a startup. (There’s more, but let’s leave it at that.)
My internal narrative dives much deeper into who I am. I am highly ambitious with strong entrepreneurial ambitions. My role at SalesWise is to lead and learn. This will help me in the next phase of my career. I care about leveraging technology to further my team and company’s capabilities. With my company and team’s success, so will my own success.
My internal narrative is attuned to my goals, character, risk tolerance, etc. For a sales professional to effectively engage with me, s/he must go beyond my persona and understand my internal narrative – trigger a deeper truth and purpose.
Understand the difference between persona and internal narrative. Apply each accordingly.