Slides from our StartupTalk #27: Create your first B2B buyer personas in startup sales

1. Presented by
Build your own B2B Buyer
Persona

3. What would your theme
tune be going into a
wrestling ring?

4. Hi, I’m Caragh ...
@startupinbound

7. What are we talking
about today?

8. Buyer Personas

9. How can we save time and money?

10. Today’s Agenda
● What is a Buyer Persona?
● How to Create Buyer Personas
[Free Tool]
● How to use Buyer Personas

11. What is a Persona?
Definition:
Semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer
based on real data and some select educated
speculation about customer demographics,
behaviour patterns, motivations, and goals.

12. How to Create a
Buyer Persona
● https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona

14. Persona Development
Who are your customers?
How old?
Job role?
Experience?
Family? Goals?
Challenges?
What keeps them up at night?
List out every detail imaginable.

15. Persona Development

19. Am I building something
people want?
What is your Unique Value
Proposition?
UVP: A bundle of benefits, from a
customer’s perspective, which
summarizes why customers turn
to your company.

20. Key Activities

21. Sounds like we need
to dig deeper!

22. How to use buyer
Personas

23. Who REALLY is Felix Lopez?
Name, Job Title, Like
Chocolate Ice-cream
Live interactions with
Website pages - Looking
for a position in HubSpot
Automated Communication,
tasks set to follow up, log
activities
Interested in
New Series A
program for
Startups -
Reach out
ASAP
Managed by Caragh
Kennedy, EMEA, MRR
4K
All Sales,
Marketing &
Customer
Communication

24. There are a lot of ways you can use your
buyer personas to fuel better marketing,
sales, and service initiatives.

25. ● Use language that your persona is familiar with.
● Segment your list of contacts by buyer persona.
● Create a piece of content with a specific persona in mind.
● Audit your existing content for persona alignment.
● Combine personas with lifecycle stages to map out content
ideas.
● Use dynamic content to tailor your website to different
personas.
● Do some co-marketing with companies that your personas
follow.
● Reallocate your ad spend.
● Reallocate your human resources.

26. I would like to introduce you to Timmy.

27. Timmy is like… Your average IT buyer!

28. What Timmy’s purchasing process used to
look like. Back in 1999...
Conference
Sales call
Onsite meeting
Purchase
Happy customer

29. Linear buyer journey
Awareness Consideration Decision
Conference
Sales call
Onsite meeting
Purchase
Happy customer

30. Relying heavily on sales
Marketing Sales
Conference
Sales call
Onsite meeting
Purchase
Happy customer

31. Now how about Timmy’s
buying journey in 2020?

32. Scrolls through LinkedIn one evening...

33. Finds an interesting post...

34. Clicks through and lands on a blog...

35. Realizes he needs to take action!

36. So he discusses the topic with his team

37. Follows up with Google research...

38. And downloads an Ebook...

39. Etc.

40. It will end up looking something like this
Social media ad
Blog Article
Event
Google
search
Content
download
Email
nurture
Sales
call
Webinar
Email
sequence
Sales call
Content
download
Purchase
Onboarding
Support ticket
Newsletter

41. Or actually...
Social media ad
Blog Article
Event
Google
search
Content
download
Email
nurture
Sales
call
Webinar
Email
sequence
Sales call
Content
download
Purchase
Onboarding
Support ticket
Newsletter

42. Social media ad
Blog Article
Event
Google
search
Content
download
Email
nurture
Sales
call
Webinar
Email
sequence
Sales call
Content
download
Demo
Content
download
Purchase
Meeting
Awareness
Consideration
Decision
Or even better...

43. Switching from sales to marketing
Marketing Sales
Marketing Sales Services
Then
Now

44. In other words...

45. “Yes, hello. We’re still on hold”

46. Flywheel Free of Friction
Funnel Full of
Friction
Better Experience EraBetter Product Era

47. Today, It’s not what you sell...it’s
how you sell and how you go to
market!

48. Our selling motion has to
match the way our buyers
would like to engage with
us

49. Here’s how we can connect...

50. Is it intuitive and easy for people to purchase?

51. 6 Key Steps to a Sales
Process
01
Prospecting
The process of sourcing
new, early-stage leads to
begin working through the
sales process - conducted
by BDR team
02
Connecting and
qualifying early
Initiating contact with
prospects with the aim of
kickstarting sales process,
qualifying if they’re a good
fit for your business
03
Research/discovery
Understanding key
challenges of this persons
industry, identifying needs
of their business,
discovering plans and
goals of the business

52. 6 Key Steps to a Sales
Process
04
Presenting
Time to present the key areas
your product can help your
prospect to achieve their
goals and overcome current
pain points identified
05
Handling Objections
Listening to your prospects
questions and objections to
tailor your product fit to their
needs and goals
06
Closing
Getting commitments,
negotiating contracts
and setting timeline for
contract close dates

53. Summary Slide
● Think “always be helping” - be as informative as possible
● Stay true to your mission and values; thinking long term versus
short term
● Be proactive & transparent with your prospects and potential
customers
● Your content strategy today, will set you up for success when
things return - long term success
● Have a plan for when everything returns - what are you doing on
that day!
● Reduce churn, it’s a silent killer for your business and cash flows
● Customer behaviour has changed, adapt your marketing strategy
to meet ‘new’ needs

55. Thank you

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