People-First GTM Playbook: Transform Your B2B Strategy

Mark Kilens — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 06:58:52 GMT

Chapter 1: The Customer Compass: Engage, Listen, Learn

Creating and building traditional buyer personas is such an old-school way of thinking about audience research, development, and definitions.

To me, it’s a company-first approach.

“Let’s spend time creating a fictitious representation of our ideal buyer by doing surveys, maybe talking to a few people, and doing some third-party research.”

Blah!

I'm not saying personas aren’t valuable. They are. What I’m suggesting is that how we build them and the things we’re trying to understand about our “ideal buyers” needs to change.

We need to focus more on the emotive attributes, the problems, the places and content they like to engage with, and who they respect and trust.

And we need to talk to more real people and use communities and social networks to truly understand who the ideal buyer really is.

Most buyer persona resources tell you to focus on surface-level, somewhat generic facts.

Instead, go deeper into the mind of the buyer and study them in a way that’s truly people-first.

People First GTM Book

People-First GTM Playbook: Transform Your B2B Strategy

Chapter 1: The Customer Compass: Engage, Listen, Learn