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Tag Archive for: B2B sales

4 Ways B2B Buyer Persona Research Supports the Sales Process

October 31, 2022/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, B2B Marketing Blog, Blog Posts /by Tricia Lindsey
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What was the last movie you watched? Maybe it was Top Gun: Maverick or Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Now, imagine that you’re a cast member on the set of one of these movies. If you have the movie script, you’re going to understand each character’s role in the movie, what their lines are, and what motivates them. In fact, if you understand the story well enough, you might just improvise an iconic scene. However, if you show up to set without a script, you won’t know what the story is, what your lines are, or how you should even respond to the characters around you.

The same idea applies to B2B sales. Fundamentally, you need to understand how the buyers and stakeholders in your target accounts talk to each other and how they embark on and conclude a buying journey. Buyer personas give you a sense of how these conversations start, end, and what type of “dialogue” each character uses. Most importantly, buyer personas give you a broader view of the decision making process.

Don’t Fast Forward Through Your Buyer Personas

One of the most common mistakes salespeople make is the failure to recognize that there are several decision makers involved in the buying process. In fact, Gartner reported that an average of six to 10 people are involved in most buying decisions. Our experience shows that many sales teams struggle to even identify five roles involved in the decision making process.

Moreover, Buying Facilitation author Sharon Drew Morgen calls out a key point about sales when she states, “a seller is in a unique position to serve a buyer by helping them discover the how, what, when, where, and why needed to solve a problem within the parameters of their culture.” She follows a bit later in her book with this key point as well, “[a single] buyer cannot know all of the answers to your questions because the odds are huge that they have a decision team working with them.” 

So, how does a seller go from not knowing an organization to understanding their culture? How does a seller go from knowing one member of a buying team to understanding the needs of the entire buying team? 

First, sales teams need to slow down and ensure they are meeting the needs of each stakeholder. The best way to do this is to establish some baselines as to what a typical stakeholder for your product or service might want from a vendor.

Secondly, sales teams need to be certain that the messages they are sending align with the needs of the buyers. Similarly, marketing teams need to ensure that any account based marketing (ABM) content or broader based content addresses these needs as well. 

Third, marketing and sales teams need to understand how a stakeholder makes decisions over time. In nearly all cases, some members of the buying committee have a role to play at the start of the journey, middle, end, and a limited number will be involved in the project from start to finish.

For example, when a movie starts, we might have some sense of the climactic battle, but we don’t know the role that every actor might play. Is the character we meet in the opening scene going to be with us throughout the entire movie? Or will they “be brief and be gone”? Is the character we meet towards the end the true person our hero has to defeat in the end? Or is there someone lurking in the shadows who is even more powerful?

We see this idea play out in the Hobbit movie trilogy. It might be obvious as the first movie begins that Frodo is going to be with us through the end of the story. But Sam is the real surprise, as without his help, it wouldn’t be possible for Frodo to defeat Sauron.

The key takeaway: If you fast forward through the entire movie, would you really understand the plot (sales process)? You might understand how the battle (or sale) was won or lost, but you wouldn’t really understand how it happened. You wouldn’t understand which actor (or persona) was critical to the story, and you wouldn’t understand who was rooting for the hero (the seller) or against them. 

Supporting Actors Need to Understand Everyone’s Role

We once worked with a client who had successfully built relationships with leadership at several universities. This client wanted to develop buyer personas for university c-suite roles to inform their marketing strategy and related materials. The goal was to take a role-based approach rather than leading with a product-first strategy.

To make this pivot successful however, the sales and marketing teams in our client would require a deeper understanding of the needs of key buyer personas. In particular, our client was focused on the needs of a VP of Research and a Chief Academic Officer in a university setting. 

In a typical university, a VP of Research and a Chief Academic Officer have different responsibilities. A VP of Research is responsible for directing the university’s mission, focusing on policy issues, and establishing community relations. A Chief Academic Officer ensures academic quality in all departments, programs, and services within the organization.

Our client learned that each persona would need to hear a different message if they were to develop an interest in our client’s solution. The sales team would best be able to develop rapport with the Chief Academic Officer by discussing fundraising in academia. Similarly, the VP of Research might be interested in communicating to the student body about research grants or new partnerships. 

The key takeaway: Buyer personas give you an essential look into the motivations and needs of each buyer you’ll meet on the journey to a successful sale. 

Buyer Personas Tell You When It’s Time to Say Your Lines

We recently conducted a buyer persona project for a client who sold a SaaS solution of interest to law firms. They learned that law firms rarely make any recommendations to clients about what software to use because they don’t want to be liable for anything. 

However, Chief Legal Officers or General Counsels who work for companies about to go public might be interested in the software. 

As a salesperson, this discovery shows that you can’t always rely on referrals from every market segment you might touch. Without this information, a sales team’s outreach efforts would be fruitless. This knowledge allowed our client to utilize B2B buyer persona research to create extremely targeted outreach — maximizing the use of their sales and marketing team’s time. 

The key takeaway: You can’t always rely on existing clients to evangelize for you. Sometimes, you run into people who aren’t interested in your services whatsoever. But with buyer persona research, you’ll be able to maximize the value of your efforts and minimize wasted opportunities.

Buyer Personas Align Sales and Marketing Teams

Famous movie duos aren’t always in agreement throughout a movie. Take Maverick and Rooster, for example. Throughout the better part of the movie, Rooster resents Maverick after learning that Maverick pulled Rooster’s application to flight school, setting him back from his peers.

However, after Maverick gets shot down in an effort to distract the enemy jets, it’s none other than Rooster who risks his own life to save Maverick. The dynamic duo then steals an old enemy F-14 aircraft and barely makes it back to the base alive.

The beef between Maverick and Rooster created a riff across the entire team. This tension almost cost the entire flight crew their lives as they trained for the dangerous mission.

The same idea holds true for sales and marketing teams. When everyone is clear on what personas you’re going after you can provide unified sales and marketing content without confusion.

The key takeaway:  It’s frustrating for a buyer to get different messaging from sales and marketing teams. Being in alignment internally creates a better outcome for your buyers which is the ultimate goal. Aim for cohesion, not confusion.

Be the Hero Your Buyers Deserve

In Top Gun: Maverick, Hangman only gets 35 minutes of screen time. (In contrast, Maverick gets 113 minutes, and Rooster, 66 minutes.) Although Hangman is an integral part of the jet fighter squad at the beginning, he isn’t selected for the death-defying mission. However, just as Maverick and Rooster are about to be shot down, Hangman comes in and saves them in the most heroic way possible.

The moral here for B2B sales teams is clear. Even the characters with the least amount of screen time can make a big impact. It’s easy to focus on the stars and forget that other actors can help you achieve your goals. Like Frodo and Sam, or Maverick and Hangman, you need to understand all the key personas, not just the ones with the biggest titles or the most screen-time if you want to win the deal.

Finally, don’t ask your sales team to win a deal without giving them the knowledge of all the players that matter, especially those folks who seem to be merely a supporting actor at first glance. We can help you get that early first look at the script of the buyer’s journey so you’ll know before anyone else how the story turns out in the end.

 


With 15 years of experience in B2B tech market research, Cascade Insights understands the value in knowing your buyer personas. Learn more about our sales services here.


Special thanks to Sean Campbell, CEO, for advising on this piece.

B2B Sales Tactics Customer Buying Journey

Are Your B2B Sales Tactics Derailing the Customer Buying Journey?

October 30, 2020/in B2B Customer Experience Research, B2B Customer Journey Mapping, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts, Marketing Enablement /by Laura Johnson
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B2B sellers often think of their role in the customer buying journey as a numbers game. And organizations reinforce this notion. Promotions and pay bumps often hinge on how well the rep measures up to their KPIs. From the number of SQLs they convert to how much revenue they generate, these metrics are necessary for tracking and analyzing your sales team’s performance. However, these metrics don’t tell the full story but are chronically overemphasized.
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The Long Game: Selling New Products | New Product Sales | Cascade Insights

The Long Game: Selling New Products

September 26, 2019/in B2B Marketing Blog /by Brian Surguine
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Does your sales team approach new product sales the same way they approach existing product lines?

According to Darden School of Business Professor Thomas Steenburgh, new product sales look very different from selling existing products. Selling new products can require more face-to-face time with customers than when selling established products. Management also has to be patient with the fact that new sales just take longer to go through. However, getting new product sales right can generate huge returns in the long run.

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Hero's Quest: The B2B Buyer's Journey

Hero’s Quest: The B2B Buyer’s Journey

August 7, 2019/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Customer Journey Mapping, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Brian Surguine
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In the B2B buyer’s journey, buyers have to wade through a lot of nonsense to find relevant information.

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Going Beyond Brexit: Doing Business in the UK, France, and Germany

May 15, 2019/in B2B Marketing Blog, Blog Posts /by Brian Surguine
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In this episode, we discuss how Brexit will impact the world of B2B with Martina Bozadzhieva, market research Europe expert at DuckerFrontier. Bozadzhieva’s expertise comes from direct experience navigating business dynamics in the turbulent European market. You’ll definitely want to listen if you do business in the UK, France, or Germany.

In This Episode:

  • Current business trends and challenges in the UK.
  • The companies set to benefit the most with a “hard” Brexit.
  • Unique EU regulations that impact B2B businesses.
  • Germany’s current economic state and unique aspects of doing business in Germany.
  • Business challenges and opportunities in France.
  • Differences in communication styles between the UK, France, and Germany.
  • Advice for country managers who are moving from corporate to another country, including how they can best interact with corporate.

Resources:

  • Martina’s LinkedIn profile
  • Martina’s Twitter page

The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a hybrid market research & marketing firm specializing in the B2B tech sector. Subscribe to the podcast to keep up with the most pressing issues facing marketers in the B2B tech sector. 

 

Win-Loss Analysis: Is Your Team Set Up To Succeed?

Win-Loss Analysis: Is Your Sales Team Set Up To Succeed?

May 14, 2019/in B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts, Win/Loss Analysis /by Brian Surguine
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Improving win rates is within your control. After many B2B win-loss analysis research projects, we have found that simple adjustments can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of your sales team.

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Data's Cold Embrace

Data’s Cold Embrace

July 25, 2018/in Blog Posts /by Trevor Gilbert
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David Fisher, author of Hyper-Connected Selling, knows that technology-enabled sales is great, but it’s never going to satisfy the need for human connection.

The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.

As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.

   

B2B's Amazon Moment

B2B’s Amazon Moment

July 12, 2018/in Blog Posts /by Trevor Gilbert
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Chloë Thomas, author of “B2B eCommerce MasterPlan” joins us to talk about B2B eCommerce. Yes, B2B companies need to go online. No, they shouldn’t be taking their cues from the Amazon consumer experience.

Chloë’s book: http://a.co/fZpuzum

The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.

As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.

   

 

Boardroom Diplomacy: Marketing Needs Allies

Boardroom Diplomacy: Marketing Needs Allies

May 16, 2018/in Blog Posts /by Trevor Gilbert
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Apple PodcastsSubscribe to B2B Revealed on Google PlaySubscribe to B2B Revealed on StitcherSubscribe to B2B Revealed on Soundcloud

Myopic marketing executives focus solely on messaging to external audiences. Lack of attention to internal communications costs marketers influence on business decisions … and allies.

Savvy marketing leaders have an internal messaging strategy at the ready. This helps them achieve their creative goals while balancing business benefits.

In our latest episode of the B2B Revealed Podcast, Sean Campbell interviewed Darcy Kurtz, drawing on her experience leading global product marketing at Sage.

Partnership vs. Solo Artist

Darcy Kurtz

According to Kurtz, marketing teams often communicate poorly with other departments in their own companies. This inevitably leads to problems. Kurtz pointed out that sales and marketing executives at many companies fail to be “100 percent aligned”, and many fail, “to have the same goals.”

The tension begins when marketing teams act alone. They come up with great plans, messaging strategies, and value propositions without input from the sales team. Then, marketing qualified leads (MQLs) are thrown over the fence, with the sales team is left holding the bag.

Aligning the funnel requires better cross-department communication. Sales needs to be involved in the goal-setting process so that marketing can bring in higher-quality leads.

“[Ideally,] marketing is being held accountable for more than just, ‘Did you bring in a certain quantity of leads or certain quantities of MQLs?’” said Kurtz. “I really look at quality as much as quantity, so how many of those are converting into true sales qualified leads and closed deals?”

Boardroom Fluency

Stunted collaboration between marketing and sales is only the beginning. Kurtz also urged marketers to rethink their approach to boardroom meetings.

“I’m a big believer that marketing needs a seat at the table when it comes to business discussions,” Kurtz said. “When I’m mentoring marketing folks about this, I tell them, ‘You need to learn as much about business management as you do about marketing management,’ to be successful long-term.”

Kurtz explained that marketers often expect to sell ideas to the boardroom based on creativity alone. Marketers should take more care in explaining how their creative work furthers the company’s business goals.

Get Diplomatic

For Kurtz, marketing leaders can only expect success when they change their behavior. That means collaborating with sales, learning how to speak at the leadership table, and reevaluating how to present work internally. As a result, when those changes start to happen, everything runs more smoothly.

Messaging For The Masses

Finally, listen to the full episode for more insight into effective marketing, with topics such as:

  • 02:31 – Non-traditional techniques that work with small and medium businesses (SMB)
  • 04:50 – Overcoming resistance to closer collaboration between sales and marketing
  • 09:36 – Launching a SaaS product and developing a Go-to-Market strategy
  • 16:46 – Linking integrated marketing with business strategy and goals
  • 21:20 – Customer-led marketing vs. product benefits marketing

The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a market research firm specializing in B2B technology. Need more B2B brilliance? There are many ways to follow us.

Don't Fear The Churn: Inside Sales Management

Don’t Fear The Churn: Inside Sales Management

May 3, 2018/in Blog Posts, Sales Enablement Marketing /by Trevor Gilbert
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Growth problems? Try treating your sales development reps (SDRs) like vital resources rather than cogs in a machine.

That’s the message from Trish Bertuzzi, the President of the Bridge Group, which she shared with Cascade Insights CEO Sean Campbell on the latest episode of the B2B Revealed Podcast.

Upend Your Expectations for How SDRs Should Work

Sharing insights from her book, The Sales Development Playbook, Bertuzzi demonstrates the connection between SDR job satisfaction and sales growth.

First off, it’s important to acknowledge that SDRs are put in a very difficult position.

As Bertuzzi says, “It’s a hard job, we make it harder by not giving them what they need to stay longer.” SDRs are provided with little training, the wrong tools, and are managed by people who expect the average tenure to last only about a year. It’s little surprise then that when SDRs outgrow their roles they also tend to outgrow the company.

Bertuzzi believes there’s a way to fix some of these key issues, to the benefit of both the SDRs and the organization as a whole.

Give SDRs the Freedom to Grow Into the Perfect Role

In order to improve the SDR work environment, Bertuzzi urges companies to give SDRs the freedom to grow, without expecting too much, too soon.

To do this, Bertuzzi is a big proponent of micro-promotions.

Don't Fear The Churn: Inside Sales Management

“Trish Bertuzzi is the Best Selling Author of The Sales Development Playbook and founder of The Bridge Group, Inc.”

“What we talk about in the book, and what we talk about with our clients is creating a learning culture and creating micro-promotions,” says Bertuzzi. That means getting rid of the system of of promoting SDRs to account executives after they’ve outgrown the introductory SDR role.

“If you’re an SDR1 you just do the SDR role, you’re an SDR2 maybe you get to start participating in discovery calls and even maybe running some of those discovery calls. You’re an SDR3 maybe you get to run with a couple small deals.”

By following this system, SDR’s responsibilities increase with their experience. Incremental changes in job title and compensation provide more of an incentive for SDRs to stick around.

Sharing from personal experience, Bertuzzi says that ultimately it’s “all about advancing them through a learning process that gives them the full set of skills they need to be successful.”

Equip Your Team with the Right Tools and Tactics

SDR success also depends on mastery of a few key communication skills.

Bertuzzi emphasizes that SDRs should have a solid grasp of how to use a phone and send effective emails.

While these skills can improve with training, it’s best to hire people with a natural inclination for the role from the start.
Bertuzzi describes how one company had SDR applicants spend a day shadowing the current team. After seeing what the job would really be like, only 50 percent of them continued to express interest in the role.

In all honesty, it did make recruiting more difficult. At the same time, it also meant that the people who were hired came in with a clear expectation of what the job would be like, making them more effective.

More SDR Wisdom

Listen to the full episode for more SDR answers, such as:

  • Where does the idea of “all bound” fit in a world of outbound vs. inbound?
  • Which is more effective: PACT (Pain, Authority, Consequence, Target-Profile) or BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Time-Frame)?
  • What qualities should you be looking for when hiring for your SDR team?
  • What are some effective outreach tactics for phone, voicemail, and email?

The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a market research firm specializing in B2B technology. Need more B2B brilliance? There are many ways to follow us.

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