Buyer persona

Where it comes from

Alan Cooper introduced personas to software design in The Inmates Are Running the Asylum (1999), to design for specific users rather than a generic one. Adele Revella brought the idea to marketing, focusing it on how the buying decision is made, and developed it in her book Buyer Personas (2015).

What a useful buyer persona includes

• Role and context: job title, team, who they report to and how their work is measured.
• Triggers: what happens to make them start looking for a solution.
• Decision criteria: what they compare across vendors (price, integrations, security, support).
• Objections and perceived risks: what would make them rule an option out.
• Role in the purchase: decides, influences, uses or vetoes.
• Where they get information: media, communities, events, peers.

Details like age or hobbies rarely help in B2B; what matters is the professional context.

The buying group

Gartner notes that a complex B2B purchase typically involves six to ten decision-makers. That's why a B2B tech company needs several buyer personas: for example, the operations manager who lives with the problem, the CFO who approves the spend and the IT lead who reviews security.

How to build them

1. Interview recent customers, lost deals and the sales team.
2. Review call recordings, support tickets and CRM data.
3. Group patterns by role, not by individual.
4. Summarize each persona on one page and share it with marketing, sales and product.

Common mistakes

• Making them up in an internal meeting, without talking to customers.
• Creating so many that nobody uses them.
• Confusing them with the ICP, which describes the company, not the person.

Related terms

• Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
• Jobs to be done (JTBD)
• Conversion funnel

Sources

• Gartner, The B2B Buying Journey.
• Adele Revella, Buyer Personas (2015).