The 7 Buyer Personas Samurais

The Seven Samurais of Buyer Personas

Normally when we B2B Marketers talk about buyer personas or ICPs, our discussions narrow down to designations and titles. At best, we segment the buyer personas further based on the revenue of the organizations that they work for or the geos that they are based in. Little or no effort is invested in breaking down the buyer persona resulting in non-targeted and non-relevant communication. So, this new year, let’s explore the 7 types of buyer personas, or who I refer to as 7 Samurais

?1)Champion

In my mind the most important persona for a marketer to target. Without his buy in, no deal can ever move forward. So, who is the champion? Lets first define him. He either leads the function that will use the software or leads the project that has given the mandate to choose, decide and implement the software. Lets explain it further by giving two examples, one from Martech and one from procuretech.

In my previous organization, when we had taken decision to implement an ABM tool, it was not me, as the CMO who took the responsibility of identifying and shortlisting service providers. The mandate to select the vendor, after evaluation and implementing the same fell on the person who was leading the digital marketing function at the organization. Now as you can see, he was not the senior most person in the team, but he was next in line. Post his recommendation, I went through his choice and greenlighted the selected vendor. Similarly, when an organization decides to automate the procure to pay function in an organization, even if it’s a large one, the project lead is not the senior most person in the team. Sometimes, two levels from the top. It is these champions that all marketers need to engage with. One common mistake that marketers do, is they try and target the senior most person in the department or function but as you can see from the examples above, it might not always be appropriate. You will be missing the trees for the woods. One more point that I would like to make is that sometimes the champion can also be the final decision maker, for example, if the marketing function is going to invest in a SEO tool like SEMRush, more often than not it will be decided at the mid management level itself

?2)Decision Maker

The Eldorado. Touch your heart and tell me that whenever you make a list of titles to target, the first title that gets into the list belong to the C Level executives. I am you have. We all have. Yes, they are many times the decision makers, but the mistake that we commonly make, is that we consider only the senior most executives in the function as the sole decision makers. As examples here on will show from here on that the decision maker in a software buying process is not always the senior most person in the team, although he does hold the veto power. More often that not the senior most person just signs on the dotted line after evaluation done by the team. So do we even need to target the C Level executives in the buyer’s journey? The answer is yes, but one size does not fit all.

If you are an organization that is pushing a CRM software, the sales head or CRO or sometimes even a CEO will be the final decision maker. If you are selling a sales enablement software, then the Sales Operations Head, who usually reports to the CRO, will take the lead. And as explained below, if you are in the business of selling something like Ahrefs, then the decision doesn’t even reach middle management. Care has to be taken to clearly identify the decision maker and as can be understood from the description of a Champion, sometimes the champion and not the C level executive is the decision maker

?3)Gate Keeper

This is the trickiest persona in the buying cycle but also some one who can make or break the deal. When an organization does a demo, post the initial engagement, or when they have detailed discussion with the buying committee, there is always some one plays the role of a devil’s advocate, someone who is an eternal sceptic. They sometimes carry enough clout to veto a vendor or create enough doubts in the mind of the decision maker. Lets explain though an example. When you are implanting a CRM in the organization, while the champion could be the sales or the marketing organization, some one from IT or even sales, if the champion is marketing and vice versa, could act unconvinced about the potential of one vendor over the other. While the gatekeeper plays a role in influencing a decision only during the later stages of the buying process, its important for marketers to keep them in their radar. Creating battle cards, FUDs and competitive attack programs are just some ways to keep them updated and convinced. ?Hence you will notice procuretech software vendors also engage with the CIO and CFO organizations, even though they do not play any role in the early part of the journey

?4)Researcher

The junior most person in the buying hierarchy and hence the most ignored. Marketers feel that they can live without talking or engaging with this buyer persona and they could not be more mistaken. So what role do these researchers play? First let me explain who these are. Sometimes they are not even employees of the organization, but interns hired during their summer internships for specific projects. So why are they important and why should marketers target them? Let me explain via an example. One of the organizations that I advised told me that some of the largest enterprises in India, when seeking a freight procurement automation software, entrusted the task of creating a shortlist of 5 to 8 vendors to such interns. If your product does not come up in their secondary research, if they don’t form a favorable opinion of your product through their online research, if there aren’t enough material for them to build their awareness, chances are that you wouldn’t make the cut. Making sure your figure high in SEO ranks, having enough content on your website, featuring well on Gartner Peer Insights, G2 etc, having a strong social media presence are some of the ways to catch this persona’s attention

?5)Thought Leader

Whenever a large enterprise buys enterprise grade software, they have consultants and advisors engaged in the deal who provides support on various matters. Sometimes they also engage with external thought leaders whose experience and words carry enough gravitas for organizations to pay heed to them. These thought leaders could be academics, retired professionals, or even well-known consultants in their fields. I remember, long time back, while at Gartner, we had gone for a meeting with the Ministry of Defence (MoD). While there were representatives from KPMG in the meeting, what caught my attention was they also had a Professor from IIT Delhi as part of the panel to evaluate the proposal and his words carried weight. Now the question that you will ask is, should we bother addressing such thought leaders as part of our marketing campaigns? The answer is yes, but instead of reaching out to them as part of your general outreach, it has to be a lot less subtle. Best would be to invite them to your focused events, make them speakers at your events or perhaps record podcasts through which they get to know your organization and their products better

?6)Influencer

Influencer marketing has picked up a lot of traction in B2B SaaS marketing over the past 3 years, especially so after the pandemic. So who are these influencers? What role do that have in influencing the buying process? To understand that, lets first identify who are influencers and how they are different from analysts or thought leaders. An influencer could be any one who due to his experience, social media followership or expertise can play a crucial role in shaping a deal. Sounds very similar to a thought leader doesn’t he? Well yes and no. I define an influencer who commercializes his writings, podcasts, followers into paid influence which can then be used for getting your messages to the right audience with better response. Unlike a thought leader, an influencer acquires his influence by having the right kind of audience following him.

?7)The User

Isnt it ironical, that while all product marketing classes informs us that there is something very important called User Personas, almost all marketers ignore it while they fashion their outbound marketing programmes. While I agree that users usually don’t play a very important part in the buying process, but they play a very critical role during renewal and retention. A SaaS contract by its nature is due for renewal after a fixed period of time, be it a year or 3 years. At that time if the adoption of the product has been poor or the user experience not up to the mark, its almost certain that the buyer organization will not renew the contract. Understanding what the user wants during the customer journey, and rolling that into your marketing programmes, into your outreach messaging is as important as when you do the same for prospects. In SaaS, a prospect becomes a customer for a finite period of time and if users are not part of the marketing reach out, then you can as well kiss the customer goodbye