The workshop persona describes your team, not your customer
You know the result. A day in the conference room, sticky notes on the wall, and at the end there it is: "Purchasing manager Thomas, 48, married, two kids, loves road cycling". Plus a stock photo. Everyone nods. Three months later nobody looks at it anymore.
That's not the facilitator's fault. It's the principle. Not a single customer was in that room. What came out of it is the team's collective opinion about the customer. And that opinion is usually the very reason positioning and sales don't land. It has just been written down again and given a first name.
Whether Thomas rides a road bike won't win you a single order. Knowing which event made him start looking for a solution in the first place will.
A persona nobody can back up with a real customer conversation is an opinion with a first name.
In B2B, a committee buys, not a person
The second mistake: workshop personas describe one individual. In B2B, almost nobody decides alone. Gartner puts the typical buying group for a complex B2B solution at six to ten decision makers. Management, the business unit, IT, procurement, often data protection or the works council as well.
Each of them has a different question. The business unit wants its problem solved. IT wants no new headaches. Procurement wants a second vendor to compare. Management wants to know whether it pays off in a reasonable time. With only one persona, you talk to part of the committee and lose the deal with the rest. Usually without ever finding out.
So what's useful is not one persona but a map of the buying committee: who is involved, who drives, who blocks, who has the final say.
Triggers and objections beat demographics
Adele Revella, founder of the Buyer Persona Institute, nailed the core of it early on. It's not about the buyer's profile, it's about the buying decision. Her model asks about the trigger, the expected outcome, the barriers, the decision criteria and the path to signature. Demographics come last, as a footnote.
Clayton Christensen and Bob Moesta framed the same idea from another angle with Jobs to be Done. Customers don't buy a product, they hire it to get a job done. Moesta reconstructs the entire timeline in interviews: from the first thought that something has to change all the way to the purchase. What pushed, what pulled, which anxiety held them back, which habit kept them stuck.
For B2B mid sized companies, that means in practice: a good persona answers four things.
- Trigger. Which event turns a latent problem into a project with a budget?
- Outcome. How does the customer judge after a year whether it was worth it?
- Objections. What almost made them not buy, or stick with the old way?
- Committee. Who has to agree, and with which argument?
Whom to ask, and who should ask
Most companies interview, if at all, their happiest customers. That's pleasant and largely useless. Someone who bought and is satisfied confirms what you already believe. The most valuable conversations are with those who decided against you, and with those who have the problem and still buy nothing. That's where the objections live that your sales team never gets to hear.
Which is exactly why your sales team shouldn't run these interviews. In The Mom Test, Rob Fitzpatrick explains why conversations lie: people are polite, they don't want to hurt you, and they'd rather say something nice about the future than something uncomfortable about the past. In front of your own salesperson, that goes double. No decision maker enjoys telling the account manager that the offer was too complicated or the contact person too weak.
We see this again and again in the IWCI Klartext Tour. In neutral surveys of customers, employees and partners, one thing stands out: customers rarely tell sales why they don't buy. They do tell a neutral institute. An external interviewer, an agency, or at least someone in house with no commission at stake is therefore not a nice to have. It's a prerequisite.
As for scope: 30 to 45 minutes per conversation is enough, by video or phone. Short enough for a managing director to say yes. Long enough to tell the story of a decision from start to finish. Not a questionnaire, but a conversation along the timeline, recorded and transcribed.
The three questions no interview can do without
Fitzpatrick's most important rule: ask about specific events in the past, not opinions about the future. "Would you buy something like this?" is worthless. "When did you last try to solve this problem?" is gold. That leads to three questions I never end an interview without:
| Topic | Mandatory question | What it reveals |
|---|---|---|
| Buying trigger | What happened that made you look into this at all? | A new managing director, a lost key account, an audit, a failed project. If you know the triggers, you know when to call. |
| Buying committee | Who else was involved, and who almost stopped it? | The committee, blockers included. This is where you hear the objections that never show up in a proposal. |
| Real alternative | What would you have done if we didn't exist? | Often not a competitor but Excel, an intern, or simply doing nothing. That's the opponent you have to position against. |
My rule: twelve, a third, one page
I work with a deliberately conservative rule. For me, a persona is only robust when three conditions are met:
- Twelve interviews: at least twelve conversations with decision makers per target segment, spread across the roles in the buying committee. Below that it's anecdotes. Around that point, triggers and objections start repeating, and new conversations add little that's new.
- A third headwind: at least a third of them with lost deals or non customers. If you only ask the winners, you build a mirror.
- One page: the result fits on one page per role, with trigger, expected outcome, top three objections, real alternative and role in the committee. Every statement traced to at least two interviews. No stock photo, no hobby.
Then come rhythm and ownership. Once a year the persona is renewed with a fresh round of interviews, unless the market shifts earlier, in which case immediately. In between, reasons from won and lost deals feed in continuously. The owner is a name, not a team. Typically marketing or product marketing, with an obligation for sales to release lost deals for interviews. If you don't set this up, in two years Thomas and his road bike will be back on the wall.
What to do in the first 30 days
- Audit what existsAudit your existing personas honestly: which statements are backed by a real conversation, and which are assumptions?
- Pull contactsPull a list of 20 contacts, including at least seven lost deals or non customers, so that twelve interviews remain after cancellations.
- Go neutralAppoint a neutral interviewer with no commission at stake and set up the interview guide with the three mandatory questions.
- Run interviewsRun the first interviews and after each one record trigger, objections and alternative in a simple table.
- Secure renewalName one owner and a fixed date for the annual renewal.
Personas are not a marketing artefact. They are the foundation for positioning, offer and sales speaking the same language as the customer. If you want to set up this process properly, without your own organisation colouring the answers, it's a typical topic for my advisory work.
FAQ
Why don't workshop buyer personas work?
Because no customer sits in an internal workshop. The result describes the team's assumptions rather than actual buying behaviour, so it helps neither sales nor positioning.
How many interviews does a robust persona need?
I work with at least twelve interviews per target segment, spread across the roles in the buying committee. At least a third of them should be with lost deals or non customers.
Who should conduct the interviews?
Not your own sales team, but someone neutral with no commission at stake, ideally external. Customers are far more open with a neutral interviewer about why they didn't buy.
How often should buyer personas be updated?
At least once a year with a fresh round of interviews, and immediately when the market shifts significantly. In between, reasons from won and lost deals should feed in continuously, owned by one named person.