Buyer Persona

What is a buyer persona?

Buyer persona (German Käuferpersona) refers to the condensed profile of a person who takes part in a customer's purchase decision. It describes the person's role, goals and metrics, the triggers that lead the person to look for a solution, the person's objections and decision-making authority. The persona is based on conversations with customers and prospects and stands for a typical representative of a role, not for a real individual.

In business with companies, rarely does one person decide alone. For each target segment there are therefore usually several personas, for example for budget responsibility, the functional department and IT. While the ideal customer profile (ICP) selects the companies, the personas describe the participants within them: whom sales approaches, with what arguments and in what order. Both are building blocks of the GTM strategy and feed into sales, marketing and product planning.

Content of a buyer persona

A usable persona is limited to information that changes the approach in sales. Age, marital status or leisure interests are not part of it in business with companies. What matters:

• Role and metrics: the area of responsibility and the key figures by which the person is measured internally.
• Purchase trigger: the specific event that sets off the search for a solution, for example an objection raised by auditors, the departure of a key employee or a new statutory obligation.
• Current alternative: what the problem is currently solved with. Often these are spreadsheets, in-house developments or doing without a solution.
• Objections: the concerns regularly raised in the sales process, for example switching effort, data protection or integration with existing systems.
• Decision authority: whether, and up to what amount, the person can decide alone, which approvals are needed and whether procurement is involved.
• Information channels: where the person finds out about solutions, for example through trade associations, advisers, events or recommendations from the person's own network.

Roles in the buying centre

The totality of participants on the customer side is called the buying centre. A distinction can be made between users, who work with the product every day, and influencers such as IT management or subject-matter experts, who formulate requirements and evaluate vendors. In addition there are decision-makers with budget responsibility, who sign, and procurement, which negotiates terms and contract conditions. There is often also an internal champion who drives the project forward within the customer's own organisation.

Decision-makers and influencers need different arguments. Users and the functional department are persuaded by the benefit in everyday work, budget holders by economic viability, that is, payback, risk and implementation effort. An argument that reaches only one role fails either at approval or at implementation.

Particularities in German companies

In Germany, two further participants often belong. If the customer has a works council (Betriebsrat), it has a right of co-determination on the introduction of software that is suitable for monitoring the behaviour or performance of employees (Section 87(1) no. 6 of the Works Constitution Act, BetrVG). Case law interprets this suitability broadly: it is enough that the system can capture such data; an intention to monitor is not required. Without agreement with the works council or a decision of the conciliation board (Einigungsstelle), an internal arbitration body with a neutral chairperson, the customer may not introduce such a system.

If the vendor processes personal data on behalf of the customer, the customer's data protection function also reviews the technical protective measures and the data processing agreement, which regulates the scope and limits of this processing.

Development and maintenance

Personas arise from structured conversations with customers, with prospects in an ongoing sales process and with prospects who have decided against the offer. The last group is particularly revealing because it names the objections on which sales processes fail. In addition, conversation notes and loss reasons from the CRM are evaluated, the system for customer and sales data (customer relationship management).

The personas are reviewed when the target segment, product or price tier changes, and regularly on the basis of the loss reasons of recent quarters. If the decision in a segment shifts, for example, from the functional department to the management, the sales approach and materials must follow.

Personas from the perspective of investors and buyers

Investors do not as a rule demand a persona description, but they examine its effect. A company that knows its buying centre can explain the sales cycle and the closing rate in the sales funnel, the staged model from first contact to closing. It can also justify why both values improve with growing experience. The time to closing assumed in the financial model must fit the number of participants and the approvals required.

Before an investment or purchase, investors examine the market, customers and sales (commercial due diligence). In doing so, they or their advisers often hold conversations with reference customers. Frequently the very roles described in the personas are asked: users about the benefit in everyday use, decision-makers about economic viability and the intention to renew the contract. If the answers contradict the company's assumptions, that weighs more heavily than any slide in the pitch deck.

Practical example

A vendor of shift-planning software sells to logistics companies with 200 to 800 employees. The first ten sales processes show a pattern: the head of warehouse operations is convinced after the product demonstration, after which the process stalls for an average of three months. Evaluation of the conversations produces four personas with different concerns:

• Head of warehouse operations (user side): measured on schedule adherence and overtime. The purchase trigger is short-notice absences, which today are covered by telephone and spreadsheet.
• Head of HR (influencer): attends to working time law and collective agreement rules. The objection is that the mapping of the collective agreement rules is unclear.
• Commercial managing director (decision-maker): decides on amounts above the approval limit of the divisional head and asks about payback and implementation effort.
• Works council (co-determining): must agree to the introduction because the system records the working hours of individual employees. Without its agreement, the conciliation board decides.

The vendor then changes the process. The head of HR receives an overview of the mapping of the collective agreement rules early on. The works council receives a draft works agreement and a description of the data stored, the management a payback calculation based on the overtime saved. The works council's involvement thus begins in parallel with the product review rather than after it.

Previously, an average of six months passed from the product demonstration to signature, of which three months were standstill. In the following ten sales processes, the duration falls to four months because the head of HR and the works council review in parallel. In the financial model, the sales cycle for this segment is set at the measured four months, not at a target value. For investors, exactly this difference matters: an improvement evidenced in completed sales processes supports a plan; an announced one does not.

Distinction from related terms

• Ideal customer profile: describes the company type by industry, size and purchase triggers. The buyer persona describes the participants within this company type.
• Target group: a statistically delimited group with shared characteristics. The persona condenses motives, triggers and objections into a typical representative of a role.
• Buying centre: the totality of participants in a specific purchase decision. Personas describe the typical roles within it.
• User profile in product development: describes how a product is operated. The buyer persona describes how and why it is bought; in business with companies, users and buyers are often different people.

Common mistakes

• Designed at a desk. Personas without conversations with customers and lost prospects reproduce the team's assumptions and merely confirm them.
• Only the user described. Anyone who knows only the user side convinces in the product test and fails at approval by budget holders or procurement.
• Demographics instead of purchase trigger. Personal characteristics say little in business with companies. What matters are the trigger, the current alternative and decision authority.
• Too many personas. If ten roles are equally important, prioritisation is missing, and marketing and sales spread their efforts over secondary roles.
• Co-determination overlooked. If the works council is involved only after the product decision, the sales cycle lengthens by the negotiation over a works agreement.

Frequently asked questions

How many buyer personas does a company need?

As many as there are roles that materially determine the purchase, in practice usually two to four per target segment. Further personas increase the effort in marketing and sales without improving the approach.

How many conversations are needed for a persona?

There is no fixed number. It makes sense to keep talking until further conversations no longer reveal new purchase triggers, objections or decision paths. Conversations with prospects who declined count just as much as conversations with customers.

May interviews with customers be recorded?

Only with the consent of all participants in the conversation. The unauthorised recording of the non-publicly spoken word is a criminal offence under Section 201 of the German Criminal Code (StGB). In addition, a recording is processing of personal data, about whose purpose and storage period the participants must be informed under the GDPR.

Does a vendor with a self-service model need buyer personas?

Yes, with a different focus. With product-led growth (PLG), the focus is initially on the user who tries the product out on their own. For the move to larger, company-wide contracts, personas for budget holders and IT are additionally needed, which come in only at this stage.

Do buyer personas belong in the pitch deck?

As a rule not as a separate slide. What should become visible are their consequences: a plausible sales cycle, rising closing rates and an approach that reaches the actual decision-makers.

The Roemer Capital view

Before investors call reference customers, we go through the customers likely to be contacted with the management and assign their contacts to the roles described. That way it becomes visible early whether a customer's users and decision-makers describe the benefit in the same way or whether doubts exist between the functional department and the management that an investor would find in conversation.

In the financial model, we make sure that the sales cycle and closing rate per segment fit the number of participants. A product whose introduction involves the works council, IT and data protection is not planned with the cycle of a purchase that a functional department approves alone.