Key takeaways
- A buyer persona describes a person; an ideal customer profile describes a company.
- Base each buyer persona on real calls and deals, not on guesses about age or hobbies.
- B2B sales usually involve several buyer personas, each with a different role in the decision.
- A buyer persona earns its place when it changes who you contact or what you say.
What goes into a B2B buyer persona
A B2B buyer persona holds the details that change how you sell to someone in that role. Leave out anything that would not change a message, a question or a decision about whom to contact.
- Role and seniority, with the job titles the role commonly goes by.
- What the person is measured on and what a bad quarter looks like for them.
- The problem you solve, described in their words rather than yours.
- The objections they raise and what they need to see to get past them.
- Where they look for advice and which channels they answer.
- Their part in the purchase: deciding, influencing, using or blocking.
What is the difference between a buyer persona and an ICP
An ideal customer profile describes the company that fits you, while a buyer persona describes a person inside that company. The ICP covers industry, size, location, technology and the events that make a company ready to buy. The buyer persona covers one role's goals, worries and language.
Teams use them in that order. The ICP picks the accounts; the buyer persona picks the people inside them and the message each one hears. In an invented example, a payroll software company targets accounting firms of a certain size, then writes one buyer persona for the managing partner who signs and another for the practice manager who runs the system day to day.
What is a buyer persona map
A buyer persona map lays out which buyer persona matters at each stage of a purchase and what each one needs from you. It is usually a grid, with the people involved down the side and the stages of the deal across the top.
The map shows gaps a single buyer persona hides. If finance only appears at the final stage, the deal stalls there, so the map prompts the seller to bring the finance view in earlier.
How do sales and marketing use buyer personas
Sales and marketing use buyer personas to choose people and words. Marketing writes content and campaigns for the questions each buyer persona asks; sales uses the same descriptions to decide which roles to search for at a target account and which discovery questions to ask.
The two teams should share one set. When marketing's buyer persona and the seller's picture of the customer drift apart, the messages a prospect receives stop fitting together.
What makes a buyer persona useless
A buyer persona is useless when it is invented in a workshop and never checked against real buyers. Stock details such as a name, an age and a favourite podcast feel thorough but rarely change a sales conversation.
Too many of them is the other trap. Two or three that the whole team knows by heart do more than ten that live in a forgotten slide deck.
Where Pebbles Ai fits
- FoundationCompany IntelCompany Intel holds the Audience part of your brand voice, so the assistants write for the people you sell to rather than a generic reader.
- CapabilityProspecting & customer recordsFind fresh leads searches 1 to 10 named target companies by at least one role and one location, so the roles in each buyer persona become the search. Ideal customer profiles in the CRM (in Beta) hold the company side.
Common questions
How many buyer personas does a B2B company need?
Start with one for each role that regularly decides or blocks a purchase, often two or three. Add another only when a different role keeps appearing in your deals.
Is a buyer persona the same as a user persona?
No. A user persona comes from product design and describes how someone uses the product; a buyer persona describes how someone buys it. In B2B the buyer and the daily user are often different people.
Where does the information for a buyer persona come from?
From call notes, won and lost deals, interviews with customers and the questions prospects send in. Each claim in the description should trace back to something a real buyer said or did.
About this page. Written by the Pebbles Ai team for people who run sales, marketing and growth. Last updated .
