60-Second Summary
Experience across Leadfeeder, LinkedIn Sales Solutions, and Salesforce shows that a repeatable sales process tied to clear B2B buyer personas dramatically improves outcomes. Top performers research buyers, multi-thread accounts, surface stakeholders early, and align outreach to real business priorities.
Key takeaways: Identify buyer personas before outreach, map their org structure and motivations, and align your value to their priorities to increase conversion and shorten sales cycles.
Standout strategies & tactics: Multi-thread outreach to multiple decision-makers, use LinkedIn and social relationships for warm entry points, and run highly targeted email outreach via tools like Leadfeeder Contacts.
Real-world lessons & frameworks: Use a buyer persona question template (role, goals, pain points, buying groups, post-purchase stakeholders), map personas to capabilities and impact, and involve organizational leaders in early evaluations.
Execution pro tips: Ask the right questions early, surface internal partners quickly, time outreach to current buyer initiatives, and prioritize high-intent visitors with website analytics (e.g., clients have booked far more demos when focusing on intent).
*This summary was created with AI assistance, using our original content.
I’ve been fortunate to work with customers from nearly all industry segments and have exposure to multiple people within all levels of the organization. Prior to joining the sales team at Leadfeeder, I was an Account Manager with LinkedIn Sales Solutions and a Sales Development Representative (SDR) at Salesforce.
Working in sales roles at Fortune 100 companies has taught me the importance of a strong sales process and how to map it back to B2B buyer persona development.
Here are just a few trends that I have seen among my most successful peers:
They seek to understand what their client’s priorities are and make sure to ask the right questions, early on.
They uncover who their buyer partners with inside of the organization by getting all key stakeholders involved quickly.
They learn how to help their customers make an impact by helping them to receive recognition and accolades.
At the end of the day the goal should be to build a mutual agreement and create a working relationship that benefits all who are involved in the sales process. This is easier said than done, but the guide below will help you get closer to mastering this necessary sales skill.
How to create a B2B buyer persona: identify your buyer and what motivates them
Before even reaching out to a sales prospect identify who your buyer is and get to know what drives their decision making. Get to understand their organizational structure and possible challenges within their market.
I prefer to tailor this by industry, how long the company has been operating and what I can find out about the business during initial research on their website and social profiles.
Reach out to multiple decision-makers and ask the right B2B buyer persona questions
Reach out to more than one decision-maker at a time if you sell to larger companies. Typically sales conversations need to be warmed up and you don’t always know who is going to bite first. So for the sake of time management you can multi-thread your way into an organization.
Some tactical ways I approach this include:
Use social media to leverage existing relationships and find warm company entry points
Research the organization structure and decision-makers on Linkedin by searching for relevant job titles/keywords/locations
Locate email addresses to initiate highly targeted outreach through Leadfeeder Contacts
Use this B2B buyer persona template of key questions to understand your buyers and what motivates them:
What is their role, what are they responsible for, what keywords or descriptions highlight their main responsibilities?
What goals do they typically have?
Examples: Increasing pipeline, making better hires, cutting down customer support case to resolution time
What problem/pain point would you/your product/your solution solve for and why is this important to the primary stakeholder you’re reaching out to?
What buying groups will be stakeholders and who do they partner with inside of their own company?
Examples: Sales and Marketing, IT and Sales Operations, Human Resources and Legal Services
Who else will involve in the decision-making and evaluation process, and why?
Example #1: The VP of Sales might involve their Regional Sales Managers: One of their common priorities is to build and maintain a healthy pipeline
Example #2: The Director of Customer Success might involve the VP of Customer Support A shared priority of this group is to increase the company NPS Score
Where would your solution fit within the organization and who would be involved after a purchase?
Pro tip: Make sure those organizational leaders are a part of the early evaluation discussions.
After you’ve identified your B2B buyer personas and their associated buying groups you are ready to focus in on real-time sales needs.
What strong personas unlock
The best methods of outreach often includes value upfront
A few things to keep in mind here:
Understand the decision-makers individual goals at that moment. Perhaps you are speaking to a Director of Sales and its year-end, you know they are most interested in driving that last bit of revenue.
Are there any other key initiatives under way? Perhaps the company was just acquired and they are working to restructure or they just raised a big funding round and will be massively hiring.
Working through the B2B buyer persona examples and questions above is a great way to kick start sales into high gear. You can also prioritize your sales outreach to buyer personas that are interested in your product or service today using website analytics tools like Leadfeeder. Some of our customers have had great success, check out how one company was able to book 700% more sales demos in just 1 month.
Reach out to me with questions or share your buyer profile success stories with me on LinkedIn or Twitter!
