Buyer and user personas

Build one buyer persona for the purchase and one user persona for the workflow. Outbound can reach the person who makes the purchase decision with a message built for the person who lives in the workflow. The buyer persona tells you how to reach and persuade a stakeholder.¹ The user persona tells you what daily work must improve. An end user can reveal a pain that someone else in the conversation cannot see.²

Start with an account map

Map the account, then assign each contact a job in the purchase and in the work.

Map the people involved in using and paying for the product.³ Research whether each person would use the product, pay for it, or participate in selecting it.⁴ Include the person who makes the purchase decision, since customer segment analysis should identify that person.⁵

Write one line for each contact. Include the work they would own, whether they would use the product, pay for it, select it, or be affected by the result, what would make the purchase worth supporting, and what would make the daily workflow worth changing.

Ask, "Who would own those use cases within an organization?"⁶ Once you can separate the owner of the use case from the people who help approve, fund, or select it, the account map is usable.

Keep two profile cards

Use two cards with shared account context and different jobs. The buyer card guides the purchase conversation; the user card keeps it tied to daily work.

A buyer persona works at the individual level and produces a profile of the person's role, goals, and pains.⁷ Add responsibilities, objections, and preferred ways of learning.⁸ Then ask, "What does this person care about, and how should you communicate with them?"⁹

A user persona should follow the person's identity, intended activities in the application, and organizational role or title where that helps describe the work.¹⁰ Record how the person spends the day, what motivates them, and what challenges the work creates.¹¹ Write the user's job in plain language, with the task they own, the friction they face, and the result they want.

The cards can overlap. A buyer persona can include someone who uses the product, so keep one contact on both cards when that person participates in the purchase and lives with the workflow.¹² Keep the motives separate even when the contact is the same.

Separate cards also expose conflicts. Users may want to consent to applications without centralized IT assistance, while IT teams want less noise from those requests.¹³ Record both pressures so the message does not solve one side's problem while creating the other side's objection.

Run the account conversation in order

Use the same sequence in account research and on a call: understand the work, map the purchase, then choose the message. Each step should produce a usable answer before you move on.

1. Find the user owner. Ask, "What do they do every day? What's their job to be done? And what's the pain that we solve for them?"¹⁴ Listen for a specific activity and its consequence. The use case should be clear without repeating product language.

2. Find the purchase participants. Ask, "Who inside those companies do we engage, and how?"⁷ Separate the person who uses the product from the people who pay for or select it. If the account gives you only a department name, keep mapping until you can write an individual profile.

3. Find the buyer's response. Ask the people around the purchase, "What is he going to respond to in the product the most?"¹⁵ Translate the answer into the buyer's goal, concern, and preferred proof. Record the buying process before a price conversation, because knowing the persona and buying process helps determine the prospect's objective in negotiating price.¹⁶

4. Choose the lead persona. Most organizations speak to three to five main buying personas.¹⁷ Give the first outreach to the persona with the clearest ownership of the problem and the strongest reason to act. When one persona is responsible for 90% of business, focus there instead of dividing attention evenly.¹⁸

Turn the cards into outbound messages

Set the account strategy at persona level and let each card control the angle. The user card supplies the work context; the buyer card supplies the reason to engage and the way to make the case.

Salespeople need to identify their audience at the persona level.¹⁹ Get more granular when a broad audience hides different responsibilities or messages, down to the title where needed.²⁰

For the buyer, lead with the outcome that supports the purchase and address the concern that could stop it. For the user, describe the work that becomes easier and the result that improves. Tailor the message to each persona's goals instead of making every contact carry the same argument.²¹

When users need the solution in their work, present to and educate those business users.²² When several people join the call, give each person a reason to respond from their own card. Ask the user to explain the workflow, then ask the buyer how the organization will judge the change. Move forward when both answers point to the same use case and purchase reason.

Validate before you reuse

A persona card is ready to reuse when it reflects observed customer language and decisions. Update it when conversations expose a different owner, pain, or buying path.

A customer persona template is a structured document based on research. It covers a buyer type's goals, blockers, and decision process. The template organizes the work. The research is the product.²³ Personas need customer research alongside internal assumptions.²⁴ Validate those assumptions with real customers and keep updating the profiles as you learn.²⁵

Bring sales, marketing, and support into identifying the right audience and creating the target persona.²⁶ Use the resulting persona to identify where the audience sits in its buying journey.²⁷

What not to do

These mistakes blur the two cards and send the call toward the wrong person or outcome.

• Define buyer personas around specific people inside the company.²⁸
• The creator should not be the primary user, and the design should address other users' needs.²⁹
• Keep users with conflicting needs in separate cards. The user persona method suits products with multiple personas whose needs are independent and nonconflicting.³⁰
• Check the people on the call by asking, "Were the people on the phone the right buyer personas to speak to?"³¹ When they are not, call that out and remap the account.