Buyer Personas: A Smart Way to Align B2B Sales and Marketing

Presenter: Adele Revella
Broadcast on Thursday, January 17, 2008
Duration: 90 minutes
Cost: $129

With marketing so busy generating leads and getting the sales process started, where is the plan to engage the sales people and motivate them to work on all of these new opportunities? Observe the typical sales launch and you’ll find an audience filled with bored reps who are reading their email or merely pretending to listen. The reason that most sales launches fail to inspire action and uptake is that marketing and sales people just don’t speak the same language.

This seminar explores the use of buyer personas to align sales and marketing around a compelling premise – that both groups can succeed by focusing on the language of the buyer. We’ll illustrate the use of buyer personas to capture and communicate relevant insights about the target buyers’ priorities, problems and attitudes. Companies will see that they can anticipate the way each of the different types of target buyers will react to their product, service or solution, and that this is what marketing needs to be presented at the sales launch.

Look closely at your industry’s most successful companies and you’ll find a sales force that can confidently relate the company’s solutions to the needs of an established set of buyers. An experienced rep knows how to sell current solutions to known prospect types because he’s heard their story before. But introduce a product or service that involves a new sales process, or more critically, requires the rep to call on a different type of buyer, and that rep needs to know much more than product positioning and marketing tactics. It’s easy to see why sales people will resist developing new product opportunities or market segments if he thinks he can make his numbers without all that risk.

Companies will learn how to leverage buyer personas to prepare for success at every step in the sales process. When sales and marketing can anticipate their buyers’ questions, concerns and objections, they can confidently develop training and tools that establish the perfect answer to their buyers’ needs.

You Will Learn

How to avoid the mistakes that cause new sales launches to fail
The 7 steps to create buyer personas
What’s included in a buyer persona
How to communicate persona information to the sales people
How buyer persona information relates to the content of sales tools and web content

Who Should Attend

This seminar is for you if you are responsible for the success of a product, service or solution, or for the marketing programs and sales training. It is especially valuable for companies that have more than one product, or are working through multiple direct and indirect sales channels.

The primary focus of this seminar is B2B companies involved in lengthy sales process with multiple buying influences.

About The Presenter

Adele Revella has more than 25 years of experience as a technology company executive, trainer, and consultant. She is the author of the highly-acclaimed Pragmatic Marketing seminar, Effective Product Marketing, detailing a go-to-market process that exposes the real needs of business-to-business buyers and salespeople. She has consolidated more than two decades of relevant experiences into a process that shows marketers how to think like their target audiences, including buyers, customers and sales people.

In the 1990’s Adele served in executive roles at three technology companies, guiding product management, marketing and sales teams to achieve leadership positions in untapped markets. Her market-driven approach was also heavily influenced by her tenure at Regis McKenna, Inc., the PR firm that defined technology marketing during the 80’s, plus five years running her own market research and consulting firm at the end of that decade. “Excellent”, “great speaker”, “has the battle scars to be highly credible”, are just some of the words attendees use to describe Adele who has a clear vision and convincing action plan for companies that believe marketing can contribute to highly successful products and services.

Adele has a particular focus on buyer personas and writes the Buyer Persona blog.

What Participants Said

Of the participants who evaluated this seminar, 97% would recommend it to a colleague. Some of their comments:

"I found the specific tactics, along with the practical worksheet and reading suggestions, relevant and useful today!"

"If you want to get a handle on how to improve your customer facing marketing/sales tools - start by attending this seminar!"

"It open your eyes on how to approach sales teams within the organization."

"Good overview of whys and hows of keeping the consumer in mind at all stages (development, marketing, sales). Good tips on creating sales tools."

"Adele's great. I remember her from a 2-day seminar a few years back. It's nice to see that she's providing this level of information. This kind of detail makes the MarketingProfs [membership] a good investment."