Ideal Buyer Persona | Tony Zambito Founder of Buyer Personas and Buyer Insights Research

Ideal Buyer Persona

Jul 2013

How Can We Make Sure Our Buyer Persona Initiative is a Success? (5 Helpful Elements)

When it comes specifically to buyer personas, there have been plenty of questions about how to pull off a successful initiative. This is one question I typically have been asked when engaged in conversations helping people with questions. It can be a painful question for those who have made attempts in the past only to find they produced little results. And, left plenty of angst and frustration along the way amongst various departments. This concerns me. It makes it easy to discount buyer personas as a useful tool. Easy is the operative word. They have been presented as easy to…

Article by Tony Zambito

Jul 2013

Does Your Organization Have What It Takes to Catch Up to Evolving Buyers?

Today’s buyers are afforded sources of information, systems, and tools, which help them to make the right purchase decisions. Depending on the complexity of challenges faced, buyers may be seeking simple answers or complex custom solutions. For B2B buyers, the nature of buying itself has changed. This puts pressure on B2B marketers and sellers to evolve and get in lock step with buyers. Many are behind the pace of buyers. Statistics Losing Meaning Over the past year or two, we have had many statistics proclaimed about the buyer’s journey. Stating buyers are from 50% to as much as 90% through…

Article by Tony Zambito

Jul 2013

4 Hurdles To Being Customer-Centric (4 Steps to Jump Over Them)

In commoditized markets, B2B organizations are under constant threat of watching their customer base evaporate into thin air. Getting caught flat-footed as markets migrate to competitors offering newer products and services. Suffering the consequences of not transitioning from a product-centric company to a customer-centric company. Is Customer-Centric Enough? B2B organizations continue to struggle in the shift from product-centricity to customer-centricity. This is despite taking extraordinary steps to do so. Heralding new programs designed to focus the company on their customers. Implementing customer experience initiatives. Beefing up customer service capabilities. Creating new services to improve delivery and implementation. Yet, today such…

Article by Tony Zambito

Jul 2013

3 Pillars For Elevating Account-Based Marketing (Using The Persona-Based ABM Strategy)

In B2B companies, new account acquisition is an important strategy. Perhaps as important, if not more, is growing the share of business from accounts. This is where the power of marketing and sales coordination can make an impact. Shaping Account-Based Marketing, the concept of marketing to one entity, into a new powerful force. Not the Domain of One One of the most important concepts to solidify in Account-Based Marketing is this: to succeed takes alignment between marketing and sales. In selling, strategic account management (SAM), key account management (KAM), national account management (NAM), target account management (TAM), and global account…

Article by Tony Zambito

Jul 2013

Use Persona-Based Buying Scenarios To Improve Buyer Predictability

One of the must have competencies in the future of B2B is buyer predictability. Without it, there will be an inability to anticipate how to help buyers and customers. Creating the undesirable position of being old news. Scenario Planning Scenario planning, as a strategic tool, has been around for a while. It is used in several contexts. You will see its use in military, economic, and business environments. The use of scenarios in buyer persona and insight development is an important component. During the past dozens years, best-in-class organizations, from Fortune 500 to mid-size companies, have made use of persona-based…

Article by Tony Zambito

Jul 2013

Are You Treating the 57% of the Buyer Journey Statistic As Gospel?

I was inspired to write this article after reading Megan Heuer’s article entitled Three Myths of the 67% Statistic. Megan is Vice President and Group Director, Data-Driven Marketing at SiriusDecisions. It is a good read. I am happy to see SiriusDecision make a commentary on their statistic regarding the buying journey. As Megan points out, we have all seen a variety of numbers, such as the Corporate Executive Board statistic of 57%, as well as others. All stating buyers are not making their first sales contact until up to 70% of the buying process is completed. What I would like to…

Article by Tony Zambito

Jul 2013

How Well Do You Know Your Ideal Company Persona? (4 Ways You Can Know)

The concept of targeting companies has been around for a long time. Opportunity pipelines usually consist of company names. Sales automation typically has started out with creating a company account name. Knowing which companies to target has been the lifeblood for B2B Sales for decades. This approach, however, is starting to become like trying to race across a quicksand lake. B2B organizations find themselves sinking deep into a state of darkness with little knowledge about the companies being targeted. There is a reason for this. For years, we have done targeting quantitatively, categorically, and statistically. One problem, these approaches give…

Article by Tony Zambito