Understanding Buyer Personas

A prospect tells you: "We’re also looking at [Competitor]." Most reps make one of two mistakes: - They panic and start discounting before the customer even asks. - They attack the competitor, thinking that will win trust. The best reps? They guide the conversation...without badmouthing or getting defensive. Here’s how we teach folks to do it at Sales Assembly: 1) Find the gap. Instead of “We’re better because…” ask: “What made you start looking in the first place? What’s missing today?” This gets them to focus on their pain, not a feature battle. 2) Understand their criteria. Instead of “Why are you considering them?” ask: “What’s most important to you in a solution?” You want them defining success in your playing field. 3) Focus on fit, not features. Instead of “We’re better at X,” ask: “What’s been standing out to you in each option so far?” If they highlight something critical you do better, that’s your opening. 4) Help them think ahead. Instead of “They don’t do [X] like we do,” say: “A lot of teams in your space have prioritized [X] because it impacts [Y]. How are you thinking about that?” This frames the conversation around outcomes - not a feature war. 5) Guide the decision process. Instead of “Who’s your front-runner?” ask: “What’s your process for narrowing down options?” If they don’t have a clear decision path, they’re likely to stall. 6) Make the decision feel easy. Instead of “How can we win this deal?” ask: “If you had to make a decision today, what would give you confidence?” This surfaces final concerns...so you can remove them. The goal isn’t to beat competitors. It’s to help buyers feel confident that choosing you is the right move.

I stopped asking "What are your priorities?" in sales calls. I'd get generic, unhelpful answers each time. I ask these instead: 1. What are the top 3 metrics you're measured on this quarter? ↳Knowing their key performance indicators reveals what truly matters. 2. What's keeping you up at night about hitting those goals? ↳Their biggest fears and challenges point to where you can create value. 3. Where are you currently losing revenue or leaving money on the table? ↳Quantifying the cost of inaction builds urgency for change. 4. Have you explored other solutions before? What didn't work? ↳Understanding past failures helps you differentiate and avoid the same pitfalls. 5. What would a successful outcome look like for you in 6 months? ↳Aligning on their definition of success guides your solution positioning. 6. Who else is impacted by this issue across the company? ↳Identifying all stakeholders ensures you bring the right people into the process. 7. What's your budget range for addressing this? ↳Getting a sense of investment appetite upfront avoids wasted time. 8. What's your decision-making process and timeline? ↳Mapping the path to a decision keeps the momentum going. 9. What concerns do you have about moving forward? ↳Surfacing objections early allows you to directly address them. 10. How will you measure ROI if we're successful? ↳Defining ROI metrics upfront justifies your pricing and business case. Vague, open-ended questions lead to vague, unhelpful answers. Get specific, and you'll uncover the insights to truly understand the buyer's situation. --- Repost ♻ to help your network with this important skill Comment “SEQUENCE” below if you want me to send you 13 email sequences that sell like crazy. 

Your prospects are lying to you. Not about budget.... About what's really stopping them from buying. Most sellers spend 90% of their time convincing people why they SHOULD buy. But completely ignore why they WON'T. It's like Eminem in 8 Mile. Remember that final battle? He called out every single reason someone could use against him. Took away their ammo. Left them speechless. That's exactly what you should be doing in sales. The Unspoken Objections (The Real Reasons People Don't Buy): Fear - "What if this doesn't work and I look stupid?" - what do you think your prospects are afraid of with your product, get ahead of it. Pain of Change - "Learning something new sounds exhausting" - how hard do your prospects believe the change process will be? Uncertainty - "I don't trust that this will actually deliver" - Have they ever done something like this before? Past Experience - "We tried something like this before..." Ego/Commitment - "Admitting we need help means I've failed" Being Wrong - "What if I pick the wrong solution?" Things are OK - "We're not dying, so why rock the boat?" Lack of Understanding - "I don't even know what this does" Most reps pray these never come up. Winners address them before they're even thought. The 8 Mile Approach to Selling: Instead of: "Our product increases productivity by 47%" Try: "I know you're probably thinking 'another tool to learn' - here's why this one's different..." Instead of: "We have 500 happy customers" Try: "You've probably been burned by vendors before. Here's what we do differently..." Instead of: Hoping they don't bring up price Try: "Yes, we're expensive. Here's why companies still choose us..." When you proactively address the unspoken objections: 1. You build massive trust (they think "wow, they get it") 2. You control the narrative 3. You eliminate their escape routes 4. You sound like a peer, not a pitcher The uncomfortable truth? People don't buy because of what you tell them. They don't buy because of what they tell themselves. And if you're not addressing what they're telling themselves, you're just another rep making noise. Stop selling features. Start dismantling fears. Your close rate will thank you. Sit down. Map these out in the messaging process (this applies to outbound just as much as it does demos) Get to work. Now everybody from the 313...

Using Story to Sell: This simple shift can change everything for your sales team. Because of pressures from quotas, salespeople often walk into meetings thinking about how they can get what THEY want out of it (a sale) rather than how they can help THE CUSTOMER get what they want. This will actually cause fewer sales because salespeople don't truly understand how they can help the customer overcome a problem or achieve a goal. But in reality, you and your product are the MENTOR and your customer is the HERO. In classic story archetypes, the mentor is the person who helps the hero get "unstuck". They give them a magical gift or a special tool that helps the hero forge ahead on their journey. (Think about how Obi-Wan gave Luke a lightsaber.) This is where an empathy walk becomes your secret weapon. Airbnb transformed their entire strategy after doing an empathy walk. They mapped out their customers' average day step-by-step and asked at each point: "Where does our customer get stuck? How can our product help them get unstuck?" This simple exercise revealed something crucial they'd missed...they needed a mobile-first strategy. You can apply this same principle to your sales conversations: 1. Map your customer's journey before your next meeting 2. Identify the exact moments where they struggle 3. Show how your product (the magical gift or special tool) helps them overcome these specific obstacles When you truly understand where your customer gets stuck, you can position your product as the perfect tool to help them succeed. And when you help heroes succeed, they remain loyal to you forever. #SalesTraining #EmpathyInSales #SalesStrategy

A rep called me frustrated. "I ask all the right questions, but they clam up after 10 minutes. Discovery feels like pulling teeth." I listened to her last call. She was doing everything "right" according to most sales training. Except for one thing. She was treating discovery like an interrogation instead of a conversation. Here's what I told her: Stop trying to get everything in 30 minutes. You're not a police detective gathering evidence. Instead, go deep on what matters most → their pain. Three questions that changed her entire approach: "What's driving this to be a priority right now?" "What happens if you don't solve this in the next 6 months?" "How is this impacting you personally?" Notice something? No questions about budget. No stakeholder mapping. No buying process. Just pain. Deep, emotional, get-them-talking pain. Here's what happened on next call: Prospect spent 20 minutes explaining their challenges. Shared things she never heard before. Got emotional about the daily frustration. Old Rep would've panicked: "I didn't get the buying process info!" New Rep said: "Based on everything you've shared, this sounds complex. Let's schedule another call to walk through how companies typically solve this." Prospect immediately agreed. Why? Because she proved she understood their world. The follow up call? Prospect brought their boss. Shared budget range. Outlined their evaluation timeline. All because the first call was about them, not about her information gathering checklist. Look, I get it. Sales methodology says you need certain data points. But prospects don't care about your methodology. They care about feeling understood. When you nail the pain, everything else flows naturally. The reps's close rate went from 18% to 29% just by changing her discovery approach. Same questions. Same product. Different mindset. Sales VPs: teach your reps to be consultants, not interrogators. The reps who master this thinking close bigger deals because they uncover the real emotional drivers behind every purchase decision. Ever noticed how your best discovery calls feel more like therapy sessions than sales calls? Strange, isn’t it? 😎 — How 700+ clients closed $950 million using THIS 6 step demo script: https://lnkd.in/eVb32BUx

Marketers: Stop guessing what your prospects are thinking. Start talking to your sales team. When I meet companies that are in the process of building personas, refining their ICP, identifying their prospect’s pain points, or brainstorming content, I often ask: "Have we talked to anyone on the sales team?" And if not, the big question is… “Why the heck aren’t they involved?” It always surprises me how often marketers hesitate to bring sales into the conversation. For too long, there’s been this problem (I swear I’ve been having this conversation for the better part of two decades): ➜ Marketing tosses whatever they’ve defined as “leads” to sales ➜ Sales complains about the quality of those leads ➜ Marketing says sales isn’t following up or appropriately closing the loop Sound familiar? I recently interviewed Mark Cox on my podcast about ending this debate once and for all. He made the case that sales and marketing MUST move as one—and any organization that doesn’t have these groups working together is likely to lose. (Those are my words, not his. He’s far less dramatic. 🤣) Here’s why: ➜ Marketing develops the ICP and buyer personas. ➜ But sales is in the trenches every day, having conversations with real prospects and hearing the questions, objections, and pain points firsthand. ➜ That feedback is gold for marketers. It helps refine messaging, value propositions, and targeting strategies. For growing orgs, this collaboration is even more critical because there’s no playbook—you have to build it together. At Accelity, we bring marketing and sales together early in our engagements to define what mutual success looks like, and often ask members of the sales team to be involved in our work on an ongoing basis. These small steps go a long way toward mutual success. Sales and marketing friends: is this situation improving? How can we do better? #B2Bmarketing #B2Bsales

The key to mastering discovery has nothing to do with asking questions. Here's a flip in perspective that recently changed my discovery calls: Before deciding which question to ask...you need to know what you're trying to get your prospect to say in the first place! When you know what you need them to say...it's much easier to reverse-engineer what to ask. Great discovery requires that you understand the relationships between: 1. The most common prospect "types" you'll encounter. 2. The most common problems for each type of prospect.  3. The broader business impact each given problem creates. When you know the flow of how situations --> problems --> impact, you can just authentically ask questions that lead the call in that direction. But if you just ask questions for the sake of asking questions, you come off as canned and don't even guarantee you'll "discover" what you needed to. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲: Define in advance what you need to "discover" for YOUR sale. 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟭: 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗦𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 What information do you need to know about your prospect to determine what problems they are likely to have? --- 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟮: 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 Based on the "type" of prospect you're meeting with, what problems do they usually have? If you know the top 3 pain points you solve for this type of prospect...just ask if they have any of those 3 problems. --- 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟯: 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 "Pain points" are usually 4-5 figure problems. You won't sell a 6-figure deal solving a 5 figure problem. Map out in advance why the "pain" you discovered might actually matter to an Exec. Hint: You can usually tie the operational problem to 1 of these things: 1. Help them make $ 2. Help them save $ 3. Mitigate risk --- 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟰: 𝗕𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 You probably won't get here on the first call. But if you can eventually get your prospect to articulate how the Exec problem impacts the entire business, you have a much stronger business case. Look for things like: 1. A C-Level Metric 2. A Board-Level Priority  3. Existential Business Risk ____ TL;DR Knowing where you need to take the call is FAR more important than knowing the "perfect" discovery questions to ask. Liking this concept and want help building out your discovery plan? You may enjoy the new 30 Minutes to President's Club discovery course where we teach you step-by-step how to build this for whatever YOU sell.

Breaking into new personas in 2025? Here's how to leverage AI to build persona-based messaging. ⛔️ Mistake: Don't wing it with new personas. Don't set up your reps for failure. ✅ Step 1: Gather great data Persona creation is garbage in / garbage out. Feed AI with solid info: - Transcripts of sales calls - Competitor content - Key influencers to follow - Transcripts of customer calls ✅ Step 2: Feed into AI I like ChatGPT. But this can work with the others. Leverage this prompt: Take the attached [sales call transcripts, case studies, etc] and turn this into an Outbound Squad Messaging Matrix. The messaging should be written using the customer’s voice. This messaging matrix should be formatted into a table with these four columns: 1) Priorities Format this into a statement like this: [headline]. [outcome] + [avoid problem]. - Headline: What is top of mind for your prospect’s peers? Imagine you have a dozen of your prospects gathered in a room. All working at similar companies in the same role. What is top of mind for that entire group right now? What trends are they worried about or focused on? What do they want your help with? - Outcome: What outcomes do they want? What are the specific outcomes, metrics, or KPIs they want to improve? - Avoid problem: What problem do they want to avoid? What problem are they hoping to address or solve? Here's an example: Skill gaps & staffing. Find and attract the right talent to accomplish our IT business goals—while avoiding unnecessary costs and project delays. 2) Current solutions Now think about how the prospect is getting the job done. People: Are they hiring, reducing headcount, etc? Process: Are they implementing a specific process? Technology: Are they using technology? A competitor? 3) Problems Problems are what get in the way of priorities. This is what your prospect hopes their current solution will help with. This sounds like: “Manually processing payroll is labor intensive and frustrating for me.” But get to the impact on the business. This sounds like: “Our team is manually processing payroll across multiple systems. We need to hire extra employees just to handle the manual work, and we can’t hire as quickly as we need to. We won’t hit our hiring targets this year.” Help me define the problem in the customer's voice. 4) Aspirations This is your prospect’s desired future state. These should be similar to the outcomes your solution provides to your customers. ~~~ This is for: [company name] who sells [solution] to [persona]. Example clients of theirs are [insert examples] ✅ Step 3: Validate findings with real buyers NEVER rely on AI alone. - Take this to similar personas at your org - Take it to board members - Hire industry-expert consultants - Validate with customers ~~~ Leverage this approach to quickly build persona-based messaging to help your outbound/selling efforts. Was this helpful? Tag someone on your team who could benefit from this.

Most sales teams spend weeks creating detailed buyer personas that look like dating profiles "Jennifer is 35, has 2.3 kids, drives a Honda, and likes artisanal coffee." Then they wonder why their messaging falls flat. Here's what's actually happening while you're profiling Jennifer's caffeine preferences Your prospects are making decisions based on business priorities you've never researched. Real buyers don't care about demographics. They care about outcomes. The highest-performing sales teams I work with have completely abandoned traditional persona development. Instead of "Who is our buyer?" they ask "What is our buyer trying to accomplish?" Traditional Persona: → 35-year-old marketing director → Bachelor's degree → $75K salary → Works at 100-500 person company Outcome-Based Profile: → Needs to prove marketing ROI within 90 days → Has budget authority up to $50K → Reports directly to CEO who questions marketing spend → Success measured by pipeline contribution One profile tells you nothing actionable. The other tells you exactly how to position your solution. When it comes to won deals… Teams using outcome-based profiles had 23% higher close rates than teams using demographic personas. When you understand what buyers are trying to achieve, you can show them exactly how you help them achieve it. Stop profiling people. Start profiling problems. ♻️ Repost and follow for more insights Check out the AI-Powered Seller podcast for frameworks that actually drive response rates

The #1 sales mistake founders make? They sell what they want to sell—not what the prospect actually needs. I’ve sold ~$100M in deals as a founder, and I see this mistake all the time. Here’s a simple framework to close more deals: ~~ Most founders jump straight to pitching. Instead, start with question-based selling. Why? Because if you don’t know what your prospect actually wants, you’ll sell the wrong solution—and lose the deal. Here’s an example: You’re at a sponsored dinner. A prospect tells you about their e-commerce business. You spend 30 minutes explaining how your product will improve their conversion rate. They nod politely. The dinner ends. The deal goes nowhere. What happened? The prospect wasn’t focused on conversion rates. Their numbers were fine. What they really cared about was retention—the one metric their boss is hounding them about. You didn’t ask, so you didn’t know. And now you’re out of the running. Question-based selling prevents this. Start by asking questions like: • What are your top OKRs this quarter? • What’s your CEO telling the team to prioritize? • What part of your app experience is struggling vs competitors? The answers reveal what the prospect actually needs. Then, frame your product as the solution to their specific problem. If retention is their #1 pain point, focus on how your product improves retention—not conversion rate. When you make your prospect look good, they’ll buy from you. This one mindset shift has closed millions of dollars in deals for me. Don’t pitch until you understand your prospect. Ask questions first. PS: I’ll be sharing more sales frameworks and tactics soon. Follow Josh Payne if you want to level up your sales game.