Buyer Persona Playbook

A comprehensive guide for Marketing and Sales

Common understanding of where to play and how to engage with prospects

Unified message to move buyers through their journey and close more deals

Buyers are in control of their journey

The Internet, Covid pandemic and Generative AI tools like CHATGPT have disrupted the traditional B2B buyers' journey.

Their journey is no longer simple or linear.

Sales and marketing needs to adapt to how buyers make purchasing decisions today.

“62% of B2B buyers said they can now develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list solely on the basis of digital content.”

How B2B Buyers make purchasing decisions today

The buyers journey is no longer linear and has three main stages.

As the buyers move through their process, they don't simply flow from left to right. They can and actually do move back and forth between each stage.

If the buyer has not found enough vendors who make their short list, they will go back to the Discovery stage to find more.

If a buyer finds out during the Validation stage that a potential vendor can't do what they say they can do, then buyers will go back to the Research stage and find another vendor to validate.  Or they can even go back to the Discovery stage to find a new supplier.

In addition it’s not a single individual who goes on this journey. Multiple roles are involved including:

  • Executives

  • Engineers

  • Production managers

  • Product development engineers

  • Procurement

Some may talk with the sales team, some might go on the site visit, while others might just simply consume the content on your site.

The journey that B2B buyers take is chaotic and cannot be controlled by the sales team and more importantly does not fit neatly into the classical model of awareness-consideration-decision.

How to adapt to the modern B2B Buyer’s Journey

The answer is quite simple: consistency.

Consistency in the message, no matter if they read it online, watch a video or hear it from your sales person, the message needs to be the same.

If you have different messages on different platforms, you will cause confusion.

And we all know: when you confuse you lose.

To get a common message, the first step is to make sure that marketing and sales have a common understanding of:

  1. The demographics and psychographics of target audience 

  2. What specific problems buyers are trying to solve.

  3. What specific product or service solves that problem

  4. How that product or service solves the problem

  5. What discovery and nurturing  channels to focus on

To get a consistent message across all platforms and between sales and marketing, you need a guide - a playbook.

Here is how the Buyer Persona Playbook works

  • Document

    • Company Demographics

    • Persona Demographics

  • How does your target audience describe their problem?

    What have they tried before?

    What happens if they don’t solve this problem?

  • How do you solve their problem?

    What makes it unique?

    What are the outcomes / benefits?

  • What makes you unique and different from all of your compeition?

  • Identify the

    Discovery Channels - how does your prospect find you?

    Research Channels - how do your prospects create their short list?

  • 15 second elevator pitch

    Client Engagement Map - when they buy from you, what can they expect?

Who needs Buyer Persona Playbook

The Buyer Persona Playbook is designed to bring the Sales and Marketing team together to create

  • A common and unified message to be used by both teams

  • Agreement on where the teams should be focusing their marketing efforts

  • A process for teams to collaborate in a more integrated sales process

    • Manufacturing

    • Wholesale

    • Distributors

    • e-commerce

    • B2B Services

  • Buyer Persona Playbook

  • 2-4 weeks

  • $5,000