B2B - Buyer persona canvas

In business-to-business (B2B) selling, you may find multiple people involved in the buying decision. These people will have specific criteria for selecting your product. If you only appeal to a few of them, you may find the sale falling through. By modelling these customers you can improve your messaging and content to better target their individual needs. You are looking to build trust with your customers by creating a strong personal connection. These personas can be used in marketing and sales. The personas typically are based on roles. However, you may wish to split this further. For example, the needs of the CEO of a StartUp may differ greatly from those of a multi-national.

The key benefits are:

  • Better relationships from customer’s needs being met, how they want them to be met

  • Reduced cost by spending less effort on inefficient marketing and sales activities

  • Increased win rates in sales

  • Uncover buyer’s unmet needs

As you take part in a sale, you will move away from personas and begin to understand the individuals.

Refine your personas as you learn more, for example, when you see the way most people want to interact with you. Does the typical Chief Financial Officer want a brief slide on costs and ROI? Does the lead architect usually want a technical document on a typical deployment? You can do this post-sales by gathering feedback on what went well and what didn’t. Look for patterns, for example, are most CFO’s telling you there was too much information given to them.

When you have completed the buyer personas, refine your marketing and sales approach to meet their needs.

Feel free to recreate the canvas in a tool of your choice. Please attribute the author (Timothy Field), the source of the canvas (this webpage) and add the CreativeCommons BY-SA license

Photograph

Personas are representations of people. To make them feel more real, it can be useful to include a photograph. Use one that represents your customer. Make sure this isn’t someone famous, as that will impact how people think about them.

Role

The role the person has is particularly important. A CFO (Chief Financial Officer) is likely to be involved in the later stages and interested in the timeframe to achieve benefits, whereas a CPO (Chief Product Officer) will be more interested in how the solution will benefit the organisation.

Role may include a number of names for similar things, for example, if targeting a development team you may have:

  • Developer

  • Analyst programmer

  • Principle developer

  • etc.

Economic buyer

An economic buyer is the person who can make the final decision on the deal. This isn’t necessarily the budget holder. These are the people that have access to funds and how they are used. They may not necessarily own them.

Consider a situation where a senior architect has a great relationship with the CEO and wants to buy a tool. The architect will be the economic buyer as they can convince the CEO to give them the funding. The CEO may not even be heavily involved in the process.

Here are some clues to identifying the economic buyer:

  • They will be responsible for the ROI of the purchase

  • Will concerned about the success of the implementation

  • Will be reporting progress and ROI to senior stakeholders

  • Are most likely to sign off a contract

Avoid the following mistakes:

  • Targeting the CEO for everything

  • Finding out who the budget holder is and selling to them

  • Irritating the economic buyer by not paying them enough attention

Tailor your offering to the economic buyer:

  • Identify what their pain points they have

  • Ask them about the concerns they have about switching to your solution

  • Ensure they have a high-level rollout plan they are happy with

  • Show them how you will achieve the expected ROI

Responsibilities

This will give insights into what they care about. For example, a CFO may want to reduce costs, a COO may look at efficient processes. Use this to detail:

  • The objectives they have

  • The expertise they have

  • The typical tasks they are responsible for

Knowledge level of this type of product

This will give you insights into the level at which you should explain your offering. Giving highly detailed technical talks to beginners is a surefire way to reduce their interest.

  • Are they domain specialists or beginners?

  • How much will they know about your product?

How they want to interact with us

Some roles will want to be hands-off, such as receiving emails, while others may appreciate in-depth face-to-face demonstrations. Consider the frequency of interaction as well. For example, does this person want to be involved early on or at the end to sign off the business case?

Role in purchasing

Are these people:

  • Trusted advisors - They have no budget but may be considered the experts in the organisation. Perhaps the people who will use the tool on a day-to-day basis.

  • Budget holders - The person with the money

  • Economic buyer - The person who will be responsible for success and get the budget (see above for a detailed description)

  • Useful to keep informed - They may have an opinion on your product or be the users of it

Needs that influence the buying decision

This will give you insights into what you must include in your information to make a sale. Perhaps they want to see that it is easy to deploy or customise a tool. They may not believe your ROI and want case studies. This section is for the key factors that make the difference between a customer wanting the product or rejecting it.

Common reason for not wanting this product

What would put this person off buying from you?