Client Avatar Worksheet
how to fill it out for best results

Before you can market your product and/or service, or sell it, you need to know who you are targeting and the best way is with a client avatar worksheet. Let’s see how we can work all that out. Download a copy of our Customer or Client Avatar Template Worksheet and follow along with the tutorial.

The image below gives you a feel for the look and arrangement, of a completed worksheet.

Why a Client Avatar Worksheet

If you’ve already read the article titled Client Avatar: Is It of Use to Me, then you already understand the Why.

If you haven’t, then the following will give you a good head start. The customer or Client Avatar is the easiest way, short of a full psychological profile, to understand the world from the potential client’s perspective. When we understand the world as they see it, we can make sure that we are working in harmony with them. This includes things like appropriate imagery, correct voice and tone; understanding their wants, needs, pains and fears, together with their values and drivers. Once we have completed our analysis, we can go a long way in understanding them.

Feel free to create as many customer or Client Avatars as you feel necessary to fully understand your ideal clients or customers. Iteration is key here, as you do one, it will spark ideas for a new one or even the one you just finished. Go back, update it, refine, make it better.

The only mistake you can make, is not understanding your ideal client well enough. The better the understanding, the better the results.

So, lets crack on.

Who

The very first question to answer is “Who is our ideal client?”

How to Complete the Client Avatar Worksheet

This is going to be easy, but much longer as a section. The easy answer is to create a customer or Client Avatar (or persona). This will work better with a concrete example. To that end, we offer role-playing training and associated certification. That is, we become the customer or client and the sales professional practises their engagement with us. Then we provide feedback to the sales professionals, enabling them to improve.

Every product needs its own set of customer or Client Avatars completed for each distinct buyer.

For the role-play course, we defined three distinct avatars:

• The Sales Manager who wants their sales professionals to improve their skills in a controlled environment, to avoid unnecessary mistakes. Ideal for new starters and those moving to new products.
• The Sales Professional who wants to improve their performance to be better at their job and to have certification to differentiate themselves from others within the company.
• The Solo Entrepreneur who wants to develop skills for their own day to day use, here the skills are more important than the certification.

For our walk through, lets consider the case of The Solo Entrepreneur, known internally as John Solo.

Below is John Solo’s completed Avatar Worksheet.

When filling out the Customer or Client Avatar Template Worksheet electronically, which is inside Acrobat, you move from box to box with the tab key. It speeds things up a lot. There are hover tips, to help with understanding what goes inside each box.

As you move through the worksheet, you’ll probably discover that you cannot complete all the sections, in that case, simply make a To-Do list on a separate bit of paper as to the information you’re missing. Then you can do your research, either a survey or thinking to flesh out that bit of the profile. If, in doubt, talk to existing customers or clients whenever possible, as they will help with insights you are missing. After all, they already have the perspective you’re looking to gain.

Fill out the parts that you can, much of it should be straightforward.

All this information will feed into:

• Value Proposition
• Product creation/customization
• Content, images, tone of voice, layout, etc.
• Marketing - email, website, brochure, flyers, conferences, etc.
• Social media

Personal Info

We start with understanding a little about John as a person, what does his life look like and where does he live.

As you can see, we’ve added in the basic information about John, the fact that he’s married with two children, lives in the home counties outside London and is the buyer for this product.

Knowing John is the decision maker and buyer, we don’t need to worry about working through an Influencer first.

Work Info

Now we have a look at where he works and what drives him daily.

Next, we see that he has a degree and works too many hours. This information goes a long way towards understanding your ideal client and what drives them forward. Getting the Quote and Inspiration right will give you a good insight into how they will behave and what drives them. More on that later.

Values

The values should be those relevant to the product and/or service you are targeting with this worksheet. It is highly likely that John will have other goals, such as improving his golf or squash skills. But they have no relevance to our goal here.

Goals

The goals will be what John is striving for, his short-and medium-term intentions. For someone so young, retirement goals typically are too far out.

Once again, we learn a little more about John. This helps us to understand what will appeal to him and what will not.

Wants & Needs

John has wants and needs for his business and for his home life. It is essential to know which are the most important, as this directs us in our communications.

So, we know John wants to grow his business, and that will mean more clients, selling to existing clients and, of course, increasing the value of each sale. Now we know this, we have a better idea of what appeals to John.

From what we already know, it’s possible to craft an email with the title of “Want to Sell More with Less Effort?” I expect John will be interested in that email title, as it speaks to his wants and needs.

Pains & Fears

Anything hidden or personal will be harder to find out. This applies to the pains and fears, whereas the wants and needs are clearly available. The more you tease out the pains and fears the more resonance you’ll find with our resulting communications.

The pains and fears section reinforces our understanding as to what keeps your ideal client up at night, what will convince them you understand them? When you can understand their fears, then you can help them

Objections & Barriers

Objections and barriers show how your ideal client will work against your product and/or service. The things that stop them buying or engaging with you. Unless your product is extremely expensive, price should not be here. We always talk about value and not price, this should be clear from the Value Proposition you’ll be completing in parallel with the customer or Client Avatar.

John’s biggest barrier to adopting our product and/or service ranges from no time to does it have value. As we know and understand these objections, we can put into place a strategy to counter them. The same applies with the barriers, since we already know what they are.

As we know John is time poor, we can allay that fear directly by telling him how long the role-playing training will last, by making it time bound, we eliminate that worry.

Information Sources

Finally, we get to the information sources. This is where we workout how to target our ideal client. In this case we ask the question, “What books does only John read?” We’re trying to eliminate any that are general purpose. John represents the niche of interest, so what books does my niche read. There is no point in choosing a detective book, if many people outside my niche read it too.

This applies to the whole section, answer the question “What <thing> does only <my idea client> <action>” giving:

• What books does only John read?
• What magazines does only John read?
• What conferences does only John attend?
• What role models does only John have?

This will be important if you’re buying ads on LinkedIn or Facebook, as they allow you to be super focused on targeting the person. The more niche targeting you can make the ad, the better chance of getting to the right person and, therefore, engaging with the ad.

Key Takeaways for a Client Avatar Worksheet

The following key points are critical:

• Use a professional Customer or Client Avatar Template Worksheet
• Fill out everything and make a To-Do list of things that need revision.
• Make as many revisions as necessary to target the niche.
• Understand your ideal client.
• Be super focused on the niche, it saves time and money later
• Make one worksheet for every avatar or persona

If your target market already has competition, then use that to inform your decision-making process. But, do NOT copy them. They might well have missed something and are leaving value on the table. You cannot instantly do anything worthwhile, so it follows that worthwhile things take time. This will be worthwhile and will take time if done correctly. You can always get help from others.

Resources - Client Avatar Worksheet

Download our FREE Customer or Client Avatar Template Worksheet