Buyer persona

Document your ideal customer's role, goals, and challenges to tailor messaging and prioritise features that solve real problems they actually pay for.

Buyer persona

Buyer persona

definition

Introduction

Why it matters

How to apply it

Keep learning

Growth orchestration

Get a grip on what's actually working and what needs course correction. Use data and experiments to make decisions instead of opinions. See how changes in one part of the system affect everything else. Random tactics don't compound, coordinated ones do.

Explore playbooks

Tool selection

Tool selection

Select tools across your growth stack using clear evaluation criteria. Avoid common pitfalls, ensure integrations work, and build a system that scales with your business.

Customer research

Customer research

Uncover specific pain points, validate assumptions, and reveal what actually drives buying decisions. Run research that produces actionable insights, not just interesting quotes.

Quarterly strategy

Quarterly strategy

Run quarterly business reviews that assess current state, set ambitious but realistic goals, build actionable roadmaps, and define key results that keep everyone aligned.

Monthly review

Monthly review

Analyse monthly performance data across all four growth engines. Identify what is working, what is not, and make tactical adjustments using a structured decision framework.

Related books

Disciplined Entrepreneurship

Bill Aulet

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Disciplined Entrepreneurship

Step by step approach to define customers, test value and design a go to market path that leads to repeatable revenue.

Spin selling

Neil Rackham

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Spin selling

A clear walkthrough of Situation, Problem, Implication, Need payoff with examples that match complex deals.

The Science of Selling

David Hoffeld

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The Science of Selling

Research backed techniques for discovery, framing and closing that marketers can support with better assets.

Breakthrough Advertising

Eugene M. Schwartz

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Breakthrough Advertising

A field guide to message market fit. Use stages of awareness to pick angles, craft offers and brief ads that speak to real pains and jobs.

Related chapters

1

Who to interview

Identify your best customers, recent churned accounts, and lost prospects. Build a list of 8-12 people who can tell you what really drives buying decisions.

3

How to conduct interviews

Ask questions that uncover real pain points, not polite answers. Structure conversations that reveal what actually drives decisions.

Wiki

Contact management

Organise customer and prospect information to track relationships, communication history, and next steps without losing context or duplicating effort.

UTMs

Track campaign performance precisely by appending parameters to URLs that identify traffic sources, mediums, and campaigns in your analytics.

Product-led growth

Drive acquisition and expansion through product experience where users discover value before sales conversations and upgrade based on usage.

Pareto Principle

Focus effort on the 20% of activities that drive 80% of results, systematically eliminating low-yield work to maximise output per hour invested.

Partner-led growth

Scale through partner relationships where other companies distribute your product to their customers in exchange for commissions or reciprocal value.

Founder-led growth

Build distribution through your personal brand and network where your expertise and story attract customers who trust you before your company.

Sales-led growth

Win customers through direct sales conversations where reps guide prospects from discovery to close with personalised solutions and relationship building.

Data warehouse

Store raw data from all business systems in one place to run analyses and build reports that combine information across marketing, sales, and product.

Growth lever

Focus resources on high-impact business mechanisms where small improvements generate disproportionate results across the entire customer journey.

Activity tracking

Log emails, calls, and meetings automatically to understand what drives deals forward and coach reps based on actual behaviour rather than guesswork.

Hypothesis testing

Structure experiments around clear predictions to focus efforts on learning rather than random changes and make results easier to interpret afterward.

Inbound Marketing

Attract prospects through valuable content that solves real problems, building trust and generating qualified leads who approach you.

Sales tech stack

Assemble tools that manage pipeline, automate outreach, and track performance to help reps sell more efficiently and managers forecast accurately.

Conversion tracking

Measure which marketing activities drive desired outcomes to allocate budget toward channels that actually generate revenue instead of vanity metrics.

Go-to-market strategy

Plan how you'll reach customers and generate revenue by choosing channels, pricing, and sales models that match your product and market reality.

Marketing stack

Organise the tools that capture leads, nurture prospects, and measure performance to automate repetitive work and connect customer data across systems.

Growth engine

Build self-reinforcing systems across demand generation, funnel conversion, sales pipeline, and customer value that create continuous momentum.

Deep Work

Block extended time for cognitively demanding tasks requiring sustained focus, maximising valuable output whilst minimising shallow distractions.

Email sequence

Automate multi-touch email campaigns that adapt based on recipient behaviour to nurture leads consistently without manual follow-up from reps or marketers.

Pipeline coverage

Calculate how much pipeline you need relative to quota to ensure you generate enough opportunities to hit revenue targets despite normal conversion rates.