The Forgotten Persona in B2B Product Design
There is a difference between B2B and B2C customer acquisition and business model strategy, which also means there’s a difference in considered personas.
For a B2C company, the more a product team can maximize its customer base at the lowest customer acquisition cost with the most repeat purchases at the most profitable margin, the more successful it will be.
For a B2B company, the previous factors are the same but the available market is much smaller. To compound this, all B2B buyer personas (with decision-making authority) need to be kept happy: 80% of revenue in the customer portfolio will come from 20% of the customers (e.g. Fortune 500 customers). Repeat purchasing is more challenging, but also the most lucrative.
For B2B companies, 80% of revenue in the customer portfolio will come from 20% of the customers.
Normally, when stellar B2B supplier product teams strategize to build an awesome experience for their company, they start by understanding the B2B Buyer personas involved in the purchasing experience. After the interviews, personas are created and plotted on a journey map.
Depending on the type of B2B buying experience, the personas normally center around the Buyer and the Buyer Manager. The Buyer is actively engaged in monitoring supply, reordering, monitoring their budget. The Buyer Manager, also the decision-maker, negotiates volume discounts and establishes preferred B2B suppliers.
Who’s missing, you might ask?
The Buyer Accounts Payable Persona holds more power in the B2B business model strategy than the team gives them credit for.
Don’t they just get the bill and pay it? In theory, yes. In practice, they are essential because they make the payments on time. If your invoicing process doesn’t match theirs, then they aren’t paying you on time. Or sometimes not paying at all, which can kill your working capital.
If enough issues arise with billing at scale (remember the most lucrative contacts are with the biggest companies), then the Buyer CFO has the power to look for another supplier that will not cause them pain auditing on pricing agreements or purchase order approvals. The manual work of processing up to tens of thousands of global individual invoices per month adds up.
Hint: If you are doing B2B purchases at scale, check the logs on your biggest customers buying behaviors.
My recommendation is to interview and map out the B2B Buyer Accounts Payable Persona. The easiest way to find the elusive persona is to go to your own Accounts Receivables department and identify which customer accounts have billing issues and who is consistently paying their bills late. Those are your smoking guns…
If you need help getting started, download our B2B Persona template, (Illustrator Download Link) or inspiration check out our B2B Buyer Accounts Payable persona ( PDF Link).
If you need help, excellent tools have been developed to navigate the complex world of decision-makers and winning deals. One of my personal favorites, by Randy Hendriks explains the different channels that deals start and finish.
