Buyers personas are the foundation upon which great lead generation programs are built.
(In a recent MarketingSherpa study, they found the biggest problem at B2B sellers was a lack of quality sales leads.
Add in the lowest quota performance in history by CSO Insights and you’ll see why we share key lead generation ideas here.)
After describing buyer personas, a CEO told me “We know who we are selling to and it(‘s) going very well. So we don’t need to get into this kinda exercise.”
But does he really? He might think he knows, but would the buyer agree? I really doubt it. If I asked one of their prospects “How well does ABC Co. know you?” How well would they do? I’ve got a $100 bill right here to say they would get a lousy grade. The target client will say “Hell no. They might think they know me, but they don’t!“
My advice is the same, regardless of your industry. There is a way to solve this conundrum. Before you have the tactics discussion….
Develop deep personas of your prospective buyers.
The Principle is simple.
“If I know them and what makes them tick, I’ll know how to talk to them.”
Check out the profile of the CIO (image belongs to Tenton Marketing. Thanks for providing this.) Here’s a link to a article there, entitled “Are You Reaching the Right CIO?”
Note the depth of information – attitude, reputations, pet peeves, fears, values…. Think you could craft some content to get his attention? Of course you could. Do you think the CEO above has this depth of information? He most certainly does not.
Develop buyer personas like this, Mr./Ms. CEO. Your board will thank you for spending wisely.
What do you think? Do you have buyer personas like this? Are you trying to develop them?
