Buyers personas are the foundation upon which great lead generation programs are built.

(In a recent MarketingSherpa study, they found the biggest problem at B2B sellers was a lack of quality sales leads.

Add in the lowest quota performance in history by CSO Insights and you’ll see why we share key lead generation ideas here.)

After describing buyer personas, a CEO told me “We know who we are selling to and it(‘s) going very well.   So we don’t need to get into this kinda exercise.”

But does he really?  He might think he knows, but would the buyer agree?  I really doubt it. If I asked one of their prospects “How well does ABC Co. know you?” How well would they do? I’ve got a $100 bill right here to say they would get a lousy grade. The target client will say “Hell no. They might think they know me, but they don’t!“

My advice is the same, regardless of your industry. There is a way to solve this conundrum.  Before you have the tactics discussion….

Develop deep personas of your prospective buyers.

The Principle is simple.

“If I know them and what makes them tick, I’ll know how to talk to them.”

Check out the profile of the CIO  (image belongs to Ten Ton Marketing.  Thanks for providing this.) Here’s a link to a article there, entitled “Are You Reaching the Right CIO?”

Note the depth of information - attitude, reputations, pet peeves, fears, values…. Think you could craft some content to get his attention?  Of course you could. Do you think the CEO above has this depth of information? He most certainly does not.

Develop buyer personas like this, Mr./Ms. CEO.  Your board will thank you for spending wisely.

What do you think? Do you have buyer personas like this?  Are you trying to develop them?

We welcome all comments and invite you to share this with others using the links below.

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Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York. Follow him on Twitter at @fearlesscomp

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers using the form below.