User Operation: How to create a To B user portrait?

Why do we need to create user portraits? How to create B-side user portraits? What are the key factors to consider? What are the application scenarios? By the way, let’s compare the C-side user portraits

Recently, when I was talking about users with a B-side sales leader, I intuitively said that we still need to study the users and roughly divide them into categories. The boss said that the B-end and the C-end are different and cannot be separated, so they can only be fought one by one.

I almost believed it.

Fortunately, it was just a little bit off.

Then this article came into being, to share some of my small research results with you.

This article mainly discusses why we need to create user portraits, how to create B-side user portraits, what are the key factors to consider, what are the application scenarios, and by the way, compares them with C-side user portraits.

As a reminder, user portraits and user stratification are not the same concept.

1. Why do we need to study user portraits?

It is to solve a problem: Who are we facing?

Just like if you let me go to the battlefield to fight, you have to let me know who the enemies are and where they are, right?

Either, have the coordinates of their specific geographical locations; or, give me a standard, for example: anyone wearing green clothes is the enemy; or, develop a weapon that can automatically identify where the enemy is, and I just need to press fire.

In order to ensure the effect, maybe we need to send our spies into the enemy's interior to tip off the enemy and hand over maps?

How can I fight if I don’t know anything?

We can't just keep carpet-sweeping endlessly, can't we? Or just kill them one by one?

The way humans understand the world is by “labeling”.

If To C user portrait is to forcibly shrink a large number of people with blurred faces into several typical types based on one or more common attributes, it will make it easier for us to see them more clearly.

To B is to bring the people who were originally hidden behind companies of different sizes and industries and whom we cannot see to the front one by one according to their position in the decision-making process, the characteristics of the department they belong to and other factors, so that we can have a more concrete and personalized understanding of these roles.

Whether it is To B or To C, we are always facing people.

When facing a specific person, we can better perceive the emotions behind him and the factors that drive his decision-making, empathize with him better, provide him with what he wants, and impress him more easily.

There are also cases where it is fine for a company to not have user portraits. The bosses and leaders generally have a rough idea in their minds, and who the users are is basically conveyed in a few vague words.

There are secret manuals of peerless magical skills and martial arts, and there are treasure maps for treasures, but the romantic bards are probably only legends left. . .

2. What does the C-end user portrait look like?

The rough portrait of a C-end user looks something like this. I extracted it from a data report. Mainly some two-dimensional labels:

The detailed one looks like this, and it can be said to be three-dimensional:

It covers all aspects of a typical real user, including:

1. A typical day: daily lifestyle and habits;
2. Basic personal information: age, location, education, etc.;
3. Economic situation: consumption habits, income level, payment method preferences, etc.;
4. Online behavior habits: social media usage, online consumption habits;
5. Different user demand scenarios;
6. Factors influencing consumption: channel preference, main source of information;
7. Users’ hopes and dreams: improve existing services or develop new products based on them;
8. Users’ concerns and fears: Building an emotional connection;
9. Brand preference: infer more user preferences based on this;

C-end consumption tends to be individual and irrational, and decisions are made based on feelings, with frequent impulse purchases. Classify based on key attributes such as gender, occupation or behavioral preferences.

The B-side is often based on an overall evaluation of a solution to a problem by multiple people at the company level. There is basically no impulse buying, and they value value more. Sufficient trust needs to be established before purchasing.

User personas must take into account everyone in the entire purchasing decision-making team , and it is best to create a separate user persona for each role.

The data/information sources of B-side users are mainly as follows:

1. Questionnaire survey of potential/existing customers
2. One-on-one interviews with potential/existing customers: a little troublesome, but it makes customers feel valued
3. Sales team interviews: Learn the skills and experience of the most successful salespeople and replicate them for promotion
4. Internal data mining and analysis: Reasonable data mining and analysis of the reasons behind customer behavior
5. Interviews with company executives: They may have unique ideas
6. Customer Success Team Interview: They are the ones who deal with customers all the time and know them best
7. Peer exchange (conference/informal)
8. Public/paid data analysis report

Cintell surveyed 137 companies with 25 to 5,000 employees in North America and released a B2B data analysis report in 2016. (This is the only report I can find at the moment. Considering that my country’s B2B industry developed later than others, I think this report is quite valuable for reference.

The report shows:

71% of companies that exceeded their business goals had documented user personas , while only 37% of companies that just met or did not meet their business goals had documented user personas; the rest had them verbally.

Companies that exceed their business goals have a deeper and more comprehensive research pipeline than other companies.

3. The B-side user portrait mainly includes the following dimensions:

Among them, those companies that exceeded their business goals placed the most emphasis on the following five factors:

Role Drivers

What is the direction or goals for this company or role?

Is the company in a phase of rapid growth and expansion, or is it in a phase of cutting costs and improving efficiency?

Can our product help this person get promoted within the company? Power or position?

Can our product help them achieve their goals quickly?

Concerns and challenges

What stresses them out?

What are they afraid of?

What obstacles does our product help them remove?

Why are they afraid to buy our products?

What important problems do our products help them solve?

How is their overall business going now?

What system are they using now? What troubles did those systems cause?

Which competitor's product are they using?

How can we make their jobs easier?

Are our products or solutions good enough for them to choose us over our competitors?

Roles in the decision-making process

You probably know who are the people at a company who use your product? But who are the key purchasing decision makers? That is, the person who can make the final decision on the purchase. A company may have different people in different departments who can make this decision, try to find the one with the most influence and buying power.

Organizational goals and priorities

Sometimes even though the product is great, the client’s company culture and our buying cycle may not be a good match. This type of company usually doesn't change until it encounters major problems.

What types of companies will quickly adopt our product?

What is the company's attitude toward complex products or solutions?

Do our products or solutions match their corporate culture?

Basic information of the organization

Industry

Company size

Location

Business Model

Annual income scale

4. What does the B-side user portrait look like?

It probably looks like this:

It is obviously different from the C-end user portrait.

There are a few points to note:

1. Don't get hung up on unimportant details. It doesn’t matter if there’s a few years difference in age or how many children you have.
2. Focus your main time and energy on finding the core decision maker and then thinking about how to impress this person.
3. Integrate user portraits into the work of various departments within the company, such as sales training, new employee training, employee surveys, etc., to continuously obtain feedback.

5. What are the application scenarios of B-side user portraits?

1. External transmission of company/product/service information
2. Content marketing (see this article for a typical example: Without tracking metrics and free trials, ToB company Ahrefs still grew 65% year-over-year)
3. Project Prioritization
4. Cross-departmental coordination
5. Event Organization
6. Resource requirements
7. recruitment
8. Sales Development/Customer Success
9. Product development
10. New employee training/sales training

In conclusion:

The full conclusion of the above data report is that companies with excellent business performance perform better than other companies in the following ten aspects.

1. More than 2 times more likely to create a user profile

2. More than 2 times may form a formal user profile file

3. 7.4 times more likely to have updated their user profile in the past six months

4. User profile information sources are more diverse

5. Qualitative interview research method was adopted

6. 2.3 times more likely to understand customers’ purchasing motivations

7. Consider the people in the entire purchasing decision chain

8. 3.8 times more likely to have internal staff dedicated to user portraits

9. 2.4 times more likely to use user portraits to explore customer needs

10. Categorize data based on user profiles, using more factors beyond basic organizational information.

It is best to continuously iterate and update the user portrait based on data analysis and multi-faceted communication feedback.

The ideal situation is: as time goes by, the image of the different user roles the company is facing will become clearer and clearer, and the marketing and sales departments will have more confidence in their work and will not be panicked.

Source: Bendao Brand Survival Story (bendao221)