Sales 2.0 Conference Highlights Need for Buyer Personas

This September 10th, I attended the Sales 2.0 Conference in Chicago.  The conference focused on the changing environment of sales and paid particular attention to issues related to understanding buyers. One of the more notable speakers was Kevin Hooper, VP of TSG at Hewlett Packard.  Our firm, Goal Centric, was privileged to work with Kevin to address the need to create a sales enablement tool that would enable a neophyte sales force of 100 plus inside and field sales representatives engage in sales conversations with key executives in the Healthcare market.

At the conference, Kevin shared with the audience his use of a Buyer Persona Sales Playbook that was created as a go-to-market and selling guide for HP's Commercial Segment sales teams.  The guide included:

• A detailed description of an archetypal medical organization
• A review of executive personas 
• A target buyer persona 
• A detailed review of buying processes and scenarios   
• An in-depth insight into the issues and needs of the buyer personas   

These proved instrumental in helping Kevin's teams to significantly increase the percentage of deals over $100k and to increase the average size of each deal.  COnsidering the ecnomic times, this is a remarkable accomplishment!

 The take aways from Kevin's presentation, which also focused on sales measurements, can be as follows:

• Attaining a deep understanding of who your buyers are is critical
• Understanding what their buying processes are and aligning must be part of every sales organization's go-to-market plan 
• Creating innovative enablement tools that give your sales team's the insightful knowledge needed to hold a "conversation" with buyers is now a given 
• Increasing top line revenue growth is directly related to mapping to your buyer's buying processes and relevant issues at the time they need it the most  

Buyer personas and the innovative Buyer Persona Sales Playbook tool created in conjunction with HP portends how organizations must adapt to the new world of Sales 2.0.  One message was clear at the Sales 2.0 conference - companies who do not adapt will most certainly not survive.