Profiting from buyer personas in business-to-business selling

In Business-to-Consumer (B2C) selling, the concept of a “Buyer Persona” is well understood. Profiling customers and selling to their specific needs has led to increased sales and a more effective customer relationship. Increasingly, the same concept is being applied to Business-to- Business (B2B) selling, but to achieve the desired results a different approach is required. Here we examine how companies can use the idea of a “Buyer Persona” to develop a buyer-focused strategy that works in the B2B arena.

What is a “Buyer Persona”?

A Buyer Persona is a detailed profile of an example buyer. Its purpose is to better understand the buyer’s goals, concerns, preferences and decision process, plus any limitations there might be on the buyer’s capacity to purchase. A traditional (i.e. B2C) Buyer Persona focuses on the buyer’s personal attributes. Often the outcome is a short description of a typical buyer, the situation the buyer finds his or herself in, the buyer’s needs and their reasons to buy. This is referred to as a “scenario”. Typically, a Buyer Persona for B2C concentrates on the buyer’s physical and emotional needs, the aim being to uncover buying habits based on factors such as gender, education, income, marital status, occupation and employment status. Not all these categories are appropriate for a B2B profile. A big mistake is to assume that what works well in a B2C context will produce meaningful results for B2B.

The purpose of a B2B Buyer Persona

In B2B markets the Buyer Persona is designed to:

Enable a salesperson to develop empathy with the buyer more quickly – an important aspect of solution selling
Focus salespeople’s attention on the way the buyer is likely to behave during the purchasing process
Help salespeople understand the behaviours they must adopt and the sales tools they need to deploy to make the sale
Identify ways of overcoming common reasons for not buying

What is important for B2B?

A buyer in a B2B transaction is largely categorised by the position he or she is playing in the purchasing company’s organisation, and within that position the specific role they are concentrating on at any particular time. In a B2B context, Buyer Personas focus less on scenarios and more on identifying the buyer’s pain points, motivators and sources of validation – see call out box “The purpose of a B2B Buyer Persona”. Of course, good salespeople automatically adapt their sales approach to the individual as they get to know them. But an effective Buyer Persona enables Product Marketing to produce the right sales materials, reduces the time salespeople spend in the office preparing for sales calls, allows them to establish empathy with buyers more quickly, and steers them towards the most effective sales process for each individual decision maker.

The B2B Buyer Persona

A B2B Buyer Persona focuses on the shared characteristics of the holders of specific job positions that are key to the buying decision. So, if the Operations Director is a key decision maker then it answers questions like: • What are the key performance measures for an Operations Director in our target market? • What are their goals and ambitions likely to be? • What is their educational background? • Is their outlook more strategic, tactical or fire-fighting? • What sources will they turn to for more information, or to verify or justify their decisions? • What are likely to be their major objections to buying? And most importantly, the Buyer Persona puts this information to practical use by guiding salespeople to the right solutions to sell to this buyer, how to present them and how to conduct the sales process.

A multiplicity of roles

A point often overlooked in B2B Buyer Personas is that within a given job position there are multiple roles. For example, an Operations Director may have been recruited to rationalise operations and dramatically cut costs, or their primary brief could be to transform the company into a leading-edge, flexible producer. In B2B selling, salespeople need to be aware of the predominant role each buyer is playing within his or her organisation and sell to the drivers and needs of that role. Companies are currently failing to take full advantage of Buyer Personas because:

They do not take into account the business issues impacting each individual decision maker and influencer
They fail to explain how the solutions they have to offer address these issues.
They do not appreciate that a job title (e.g. “IT Director”) encompasses a range of different roles, and whichever role is most dominant will affect the way that the person performing the job behaves and responds during the sales process

Understand your B2B customers

Unlike in B2C selling, where personal preferences, attributes and character play a great part in the decision-making process, B2B selling is governed much more by organisational objectives and individuals’ business-related targets. Personal characteristics are still important, but should only affect the tactics of selling, not the strategy. For example, it might help in a sales discussion that the salesperson knows the IT Director is keen on rugby and likes to wear smart suits. But these preferences won’t be anywhere near as important as they would be in a B2C sale. Looking at the example of IT Director, there are at least three roles this person could be playing within the organisation:

Business Strategist
Transformational Leader
Function Head

Successful salespeople will get to know which of these roles is predominant for the person they are selling to, and will sell to that role. What your salespeople need is focused messaging and materials to help them do this.

Equip your salesforce

To get ahead of the game you need to be thinking about buyer-focused sales materials. These build on your current stock of materials to focus salespeople’s attention onto what is really motivating each individual decision maker. An effective set of buyer-focused sales materials encourages salespeople to identify the role being played by each B2B buyer, guides them in how to sell to that role, and provides the tools and materials needed to conduct the sale.

Conclusions

B2B buyer-focused sales materials do not need to be complicated. If they are too complex salespeople won’t use them. Buyer Personas can provide an added dimension to B2B selling, increasing salesforce productivity and enhancing win rates. B2B Buyer Personas are different from those used in consumer markets, because they focus on the shared characteristics of particular job positions and take account of the various roles the job holder may perform. The learning from a Buyer Personas project is delivered in the form of improved sales strategies and tactics with supporting tools and materials. B2B Buyer Personas are complementary to rather than a replacement for existing sales materials, and they give your salespeople an edge in the increasingly competitive and challenging arena of solution selling.

This article was written by Charles Stubbs of Solutions for Sales. For more information email or call +44 (0)1702 586742.