Written by Student Reporter (Erwin Josua, EMBA, 2021)

On Tuesday, 27 October 2020, the School of Business Management of the Bandung Institute of Technology had a facilitator to teach students from the Entrepreneurship Class. This virtual class invited the Founder and Director of Aren Energy Investment Pte Ltd, Toronata Tambun to train young entrepreneurs from various backgrounds. In his presentation, he explained about the process of selling a product to consumers, especially about personas.

An entrepreneur who once worked at Schlumberger said that as a businessman, you don’t think about what the company wants to sell. But companies are required to be more sensitive to meeting consumer’s needs. “Making a product is easier than making a business. But if the products we make are not sold, our business will not run. Therefore, the products we sell must be close to consumers. With a bottom-up market research approach, companies will be able to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of their sales”, said this Harvard Business School alumnus.

Starting with the awareness of reaching consumers as closely as possible, companies also need to understand the importance of forming a persona. This persona can be seen as a representation of potential target consumers from various places. “The key to creating this persona is that it has to be a real person as an image of existing consumers. Then we have to understand all the dimensions that exist in consumers, be it rationally, emotionally and socially”, said a graduate of the Masters in Business Administration Management from Monash University.

Finally, he closed with a biased persona that could trap the company. As a person who has been in this energy company for a long time, he also instills a critical attitude from the persona that has been formed. “Can this picture describe the entire target consumers? Do not let our proximity to one or several consumers make us make products that are needed by those close to us. It would not provide benefits for people who are deemed capable of representing that person”, he said closing the meeting.