Finding your unique niche and audience is the key to unlocking new prospects and driving exponential growth. But truly understanding each persona involved in the buying process isn’t always as simple.
Luckily, with our proven system and the following steps, you can more accurately and effectively target a quintessential set of customers and personas you need to succeed.
B2B marketing is often more complex than B2C marketing because the opportunities are much larger in scale. As a result, these larger B2B opportunities take longer to win or close.
The best way to think of this sales scenario is to know you’re selling a “considered product or service” with an extended sales cycle.
Meaning that the value of the product or service being offered is often considered by multiple stakeholders/buyers in the company, and not just your direct contact.
So, what does that mean? Understanding the unique challenges and needs of each stakeholder is key to achieving sales success.
Often, the company’s leader will task a lower-level employee with conducting initial research on a specific pain or problem, and then report back key findings to the purchasing committee. Each member of the buying committee has unique challenges and perspectives that need to be addressed. So you need to understand each persona involved in this buying process.
We recommend you focus on these personas –
- Researcher – This persona is researching all possible solutions for a specific problem and selecting the top three or so solutions to compare. The key to attracting the researcher’s attention is to showcase how your product differs from those of your top competitors that they’re likely researching as well. This helps control the narrative vs. the researcher making their own assumptions.
- Influencers – This persona might influence the product or service being considered or influence the other members of the buying committee. Think of the employees who will be responsible for implementing a service or solution, or the accounting staff who’ll be responsible for allocating funds towards the purchase.
- The End User – This persona is the individual who will ultimately utilize the service. This means they’ll know the most about its functions and features and will ask specific and direct questions on how it will serve them best. Like, how easy is it to use your product or service? What does training look like? How long will it take for me to get up to speed? What kind of support should I expect?
- Decision-maker – This persona will want to know if your product or service will fix the problem they are experiencing. Will it make my team more efficient and effective? What kind of ROI can I expect?
- Financial Authority – This persona will want to know the terms of the contract, such as what is in the service level agreement and other details, including the escalation and cancellation policies.
As you can see, each of these personas has distinct questions and needs that must be addressed in your marketing and sales efforts. All of these personas must be identified when developing your ideal customer profile.
Download our guide on developing an ICP by filling out the form below.
You Will Learn:
- Which Companies Should You Target
- How to Identify The Right Personas
- What to Ask and Say to Each Persona Involved in the Buying Process
- Serve Your Customers Better by Knowing Their Pain Points and Needs
- Reduce Customer Churn
- How an ICP Can Help Onboard New Sales Reps
