Why is Persona-Based Selling So Important?
Technology has considerably accelerated over the last few years. As the interconnected world evolves and greater technologies become available, there is a risk that human connection will be lost among it. This could prove problematic for buyers.
Customers can find a lack of human connection a potential blocker during their purchase journey. In order to navigate these, buyers are requesting more personalized strategies when liaising through products and services.
But is your current sales strategy reflective of this?
Meeting the expectations of your buyer in 2023 presents many challenges and turning towards persona-based selling might just be the answer.
Read on to discover what persona-based selling is and how you can implement this approach for a successful sales strategy in 2023.
What is Persona-Based Selling?
To understand the role of persona-based selling as part of your sales strategy, you must first get to grips with buyer persona.
A buyer persona can be defined as a fictional person whose characteristics have been built by a sales team. These come from traits identified by a specific target audience and are used for the purpose of targeting customers with similar buying behaviours.
Persona-based selling begins with a deep understanding of your target audience. First, you must consider their goals and aspirations and what their purchase journey might normally look like.
Once these points have been established and underpinned by data that verifies the worth of targeting this buyer persona, the attributes of your target audience can then be narrowed down into one fictionalized character.
A buyer persona presents the opportunity to create one easily identifiable profile that all members of a sales or marketing team can reference. This unites sales and marketing strategies as each member knows exactly who they are targeting, the pain points they experience and how their product or service can solve this.
The Importance of Persona Based Selling
While buyer personas could be considered a handy tool to use as a reference point for sales and marketing teams, they can represent much more when used to their fullest potential.
In an increasingly technology-dependent salesforce, where the sales floor might be a Teams channel or where sales pitches happen virtually, both salespeople and buyers are facing unique challenges. The buyer is looking for more personalization than ever, while some technological developments champion a colder, less personal approach.
With data and information at our fingertips, the sales industry has continued to grow and develop in response to this. However, while data does provide unique, and invaluable, insight into who we are selling to and the effectiveness of our approach, it can be easy to forget that there are real people on the other end.
This is where persona-based selling comes in. Using both valuable data to inform a buyer persona and a personalized approach to depict the characteristics, persona-based selling marries both processes. This could prove priceless when saving time.
Not only does persona-based selling unite the two approaches, but it can also prove highly beneficial to multiple teams within the business.
For example, not only will a buyer persona help salespeople to visualize and pinpoint exactly who they are selling to, it will allow them to tailor their pitch towards a more targeted approach. Marketing strategies will also become more insightful, which could see targeted campaigns reaching greater levels of engagement.
A buyer persona can be a truly powerful tool if created and used correctly, and certainly shouldn’t be disregarded as an outdated sales tactic.
How Do You Create a Buyer Persona?
Creating a Buyer Persona
There are a few steps to this process, and it may vary depending on your industry.
Step 1
Ask yourself key questions about your potential buyer:
- Who are they?
- How would you describe them?
- What are their pain points?
- How do they buy?
- What is the best way to reach them?
- What is their role within the business?
These questions may vary, or you may look to adapt them to suit the individual needs of your sales approach, but the goal of this stage is to begin building a picture of who your buyer is and what makes them tick.
Step 2
Once you have asked yourself these questions, it’s time to underpin your findings by collecting and analyze relevant data.
This may be assessing conversion rate statistics, or you may choose to collect new data on your chosen buyer persona. Data is an invaluable tool that will build the buyer personas relevant for your customers.
Once your buyer persona has been created, it can be used to help inform marketing campaigns targeting a certain demographic or when pitching new services as part of your B2B strategy.
Creating a buyer persona correctly is key to its success. If you have incorrect data or allow bias to influence or sway the creation of your buyer persona, this exercise quickly becomes a hindrance to your sales efforts.
By targeting the wrong persona, you are at risk of wasting time and effort which can deflate your sales team and ultimately, lose profit.
Persona-Based Selling – A Multilingual Approach
It’s key to consider that in today’s world, your target buyer might not be working in one specific country – they’re more likely to be global. Many businesses see new geographical markets as potential for growth and expansion. It is likely that your targeted buyer might eventually investigate this.
For example, for customers looking for process automation software that supports their overseas employees, it could be an unnecessarily expensive task. Utilizing buyer persona, your business could capitalize on this valuable opportunity by offering a service that your competitors don’t.
By implementing persona-based selling with a multilingual approach, you can assist your buyer in tapping into niche markets instantly which was previously not an option.
By underpinning persona-based selling with a multilingual approach, you’re able to successfully target your desired audience wherever they may be based, and also provide them with a solution to support global endeavors
Convert your buyer today with inside global
Here at inside global, we offer lead generation, appointment-setting and outsourced sales service across the globe supported by our multilingual services. At inside global, our expertise paired with our proprietary data will help you expand anywhere, from APAC to the Americas. Contact us today to discover how
