Are You Targeting the Right Buyer Profiles?

The first — and most important — obstacle for a B2B startup is ‘we can do without it’. – David Chabot, B2B Technology Marketer

Business problems that matter have owners who have budgets and a willingness to use those budgets to remove a pain.

With my previous venture, HireVoice, we had users with problems, but those problems were not business priorities. The Human Resources (HR) teams we met either didn’t have budgets or were not in control of their own budgets (a red flag).

Companies generally prefer to invest money in acquiring new customers rather than spending on cost centres like HR. In businesses as in everywhere else, money is limited. Budgets need to be assigned, and departments have roughly the same budget allowance from year to year.

If, at the beginning of the year, Marketing gets 2%, IT gets 10% and Operations gets 6%; this is the money that’s available for the taking.

An exercise like the Money Map can help you discover where money is spent and who has purchasing authority – and who the right buyer profiles are – in an organization.

You’ll want to go after the largest budgets available for your product. Target the right buyer profiles. You may have to convince economic influencers to transfer spend to your solution, but the reward is there if you’re willing to go the distance.

More on Buyer Profiles

• How to Find an Internal Change Agent to Make the Sale in B2B
• How to Map the Needs of the Decision-Making Unit (DMU) in B2B Sales
• The Role of the Economic Buyer in B2B Sales & Customer Development (Where They Are, and How to Sell to Them)