Information Technology Persona: Technology Partner

This post defines the persona that can be used by Information Technology firms who are planing inbound marketing initiatives. It is part of a series of articles on marketing personas used by IT firms. The persona deals with the focus on marketing being on a technology consulting firm that is looking to partner with us to diversify their portfolio or reduce their costs.

• Title: CEO, Managing Partner, VP, Director
• Company Size: Small to medium: 50-100 people. Large enough to not have a struggle for survival but small enough to not have thought seriously about an offshore office.
• Main issues:
  • Hiring and retaining good talent
  • Showing off this talent to get good clients
  • Using good talent/rates to hire better talent
  • Doing the above in a progressively larger circle that ads value
  • Can’t do everything in technology but dont like seeing it go
  • Very high client penetration costs which they want to make the most of when they get in
  • Keeping up with constant changes in technology
  • Dealing with a very high attrition rate in the IT industry
  • Surviving against offshore firms that drive the rates down
  • Surviving against big 5 firms with massive resources
  • Don’t trust someone else with their hard earned client-rust. Fear they will mess up project delivery.
  • Are afraid someone else will run away with their client
• Geography: Typically focused on a particular geography and work around it.
• Typical motivation to partner:
  • Know someone who knows someone who they can use in a project
• Education: Typically MBAs with Engineering backgrounds
• Works with:
  • Product Partnerships
• Daily tasks
  • Find business
  • Manage Finance (cash flows, expenses)
  • HR (hiring, evaluation, motivation..)
  • Project execution oversight (dealing with escalations from PMs)
  • Account Management (sometimes)
• Responsibilities
  • TODO
• Likes/dislikes about job
  • TODO
• Frustrations
  • Unresponsive partner
  • Too expensive
  • Incompetent
• Pressures
  • Having too much work for the team
  • Having too little work and watching a team sit idle
• Concerns
• Needs
• Role in buying process
  • Decision / Influence
• Drivers
• Typical LinkedIn Search > filter by companies that work in Microsoft (via Hubspot) and 50-100 employee companies 
• Examples: this , this