Tag Archive for: buyer personas
4 Ways B2B Buyer Persona Research Supports the Sales Process
/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, B2B Marketing Blog, Blog Posts /by Tricia LindseyShare this entry
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.
Video: Why B2B Organizations Need Buyer Personas
/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Videos /by Raeann BilowShare this entry
Buyer personas are table takes for any B2B organization. These are the times when it is particularly crucial for an organization to procure buyer persona research.
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3 Types of Market Research to Benefit Healthcare Cybersecurity Startups
/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Competitive Landscape Analysis, B2B Market Research Blog, B2B Marketing Blog, Blog Posts, Brand Research, Sales Enablement Marketing /by Raeann BilowShare this entry
It’s no secret that the tech industry has been experiencing some unsettling circumstances recently. Nearly every week, another major tech company announces more hiring freezes or layoffs.
While much of the tech space is entrenched in uncertainty, there are certain segments within it that remain resilient. One such area is healthcare cybersecurity – one of the fastest growing among venture capitalists right now. In fact, the healthcare cybersecurity market is expected to reach $35B+ by 2027, more than triple its size in 2020.
During such a rapid growth period, companies run the risk of making the wrong decisions and quickly squandering any potential success. Conversely, making the right business decisions during this time can help a company to expand and scale sustainably.
B2B market research is a key component to helping a rapidly-expanding healthcare cybersecurity startup grow in the right direction. Here’s how market research – particularly buyer personas, brand research, and competitive landscape analyses – can all be instrumental in setting a new company up for success.
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Is Your Buyer Persona Research Written So You Can Actually Use It?
/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Raeann BilowShare this entry
Buyer persona research should always yield highly useful information for companies. It allows marketers to understand exactly how certain buyer personas make complex buying decisions. With such valuable research in hand, marketers can then go on to create effective messaging that resonates with prospective buyers on a deep level.
To be able to unlock the powerful benefits of buyer persona research, however, marketers first need to ensure that it’s written in a way that their companies can actually use.
Buyer persona research should not be presented as a template that has been filled in with demographic and psychological details. Instead, it should dig deep into buyers’ key motivators, pain points, jobs-to-be-done, the decision making chain, and more. Those are the types of critical insights that companies need to win business.
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5 Risks of Conducting Your Own B2B Buyer Persona Research
/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Raeann BilowShare this entry
Imagine your company is about to launch a new product. As a B2B marketer, it’s your job to lead the charge on developing buyer personas. You need to gain insights into the people who will be buying your company’s new product.
To begin your research, you scroll through Google and see dozens of guides with instructions on creating your own buyer personas. There are templates you can fill out. They have checklists you can follow. There are sample interview questions for you to ask your current customers.
Initially, this may seem promising. However, given the importance of getting this research right—and the level of risks that are involved—DIY buyer persona research can be added to a growing list of things that are better left for the professionals.
Other projects like updating your kitchen, changing out your snow tires, or cutting your own hair may all seem like things you could potentially handle on your own. However, unexpected setbacks are bound to pop up along the way. These setbacks threaten to leave you with results that range from lackluster (at best) to catastrophic (at worst).
Similarly, marketers who attempt to take on a buyer persona research project on their own can expect to face setbacks that result in a reduced quality of output. These issues can lead to generic, run-of-the-mill, and sometimes even inaccurate information for companies.
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Mistakes B2B Marketers Make Without Buyer Personas
/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Raeann BilowShare this entry
Buyer personas are the multi-vitamin of market research efforts. Without them, companies grow weak sales and marketing efforts. With buyer personas in hand, companies can confidently take on new markets, new buyer types, and new opportunities with ease.
Yet this truth is sometimes ignored by marketers who are taking over a new position. Whether it’s a newly promoted marketer or a marketer at a new company, we’ve traditionally seen these people focusing on brand studies first vs. buyer persona efforts.
We think this is a mistake. While brand research is important, of course, it can sometimes be nothing more than a sugary snack that supports rebranding efforts, especially when compared to the multi-vitamin of buyer personas.
Is choosing a new website palette, a new logo, a new company name, or the design for a new website fun? Yes. However, we suggest marketers not take this step until they understand a fundamental question first: Am I saying the right things to the right people? That is a question that buyer personas are well suited to address.
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B2B Buyer Personas: Delete the Fluff
/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Customer Experience Research, B2B Market Research Blog, B2B Marketing Blog, Blog Posts, Marketing Enablement /by Sean CampbellShare this entry
The industry standard for B2B buyer personas is wanting. I frequently see buyer personas built by other vendors that read more like a dating profile than an exceptional piece of analysis and insight.
In these poorly amalgamated personas, significant time is spent on demographic details and personality traits of a buyer when other topics are far more critical.
B2B Brand Research: Don’t Skip the Qual
/in B2B Market Research Blog, Brand Research /by Isabel GautschiShare this entry
Applying a B2C approach to B2B brand research just doesn’t work.
Message Testing: Because Intent ≠ Interpretation
/in B2B Marketing Blog, B2B Messaging, Blog Posts, Message Testing Research /by Colleen ClancyShare this entry
Somewhere between intent and interpretation, a lot can get lost in translation.
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