Value Selling Blog

Buyer personas—those semi-fictionalized representations of your ideal buyers—should be the driving force behind your messaging and marketing initiatives. Without understanding what kinds of topics they want to learn about and what current challenges they want to overcome, your efforts are a shot in the dark.

When I worked in a marketing role, I found that conducting interviews helped my team develop and refine our buyer personas successfully. Generally I advocate for talking with three different groups.

1. Your sales team
2. Your customers
3. Prospects who chose not to purchase from you

Based on my years of conducting interviews with these three types, I gained a few key insights.

As a former salesperson and sales manager, I know how much effort it takes to close a complex sale. Although it took extra work and time to create a business case to prove the ROI of investing in my solution (an ERP system), I always felt the process was well worth it. 

There are a few reasons I advocate using a business case as part of the sales process, particularly for long and/or complex sales cycles. One reason is obvious: a business case includes ROI calculations that prove to your customer the financial logic of investing in your solution.