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tags: A2, Prospecting
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# How to build your IBP
Once you have defined your ICP, it's time to develop your Ideal Buyer Personas or IBPs!

 
## Why do you need an IBP?
When making a sale, you will likely chat to many different people within the company you're targeting. The larger the company, the more personas you will likely have to go through.

Each of these people will have very different pain points, interests, and motivations. It's therefore very important you know exactly who you're talking to at each stage of the journey and how to adapt your sales strategy and tactics accordingly.

You will likely encounter three main types of buyer persona's within a company:

- **End-user:** The person who will be using your product
- **Budget holder:** The person who can approve the purchase
- **Decision maker:** The person who makes the decision to buy

Unfortunately, in the B2B environment, there is rarely one person who embodies all three roles. The larger the company, the more personas and specific roles there will be.

**Knowing who you're talking to at each step of the way is crucial to a successful sale.**
 
## There's no clear IBPs at my company... how do I build them?
Many companies will already have their IBPs figured out. Most often, this function relies on marketing. But chances are, throughout your career, you will have to craft your own IBP. Here is the process to follow in a nutshell:

1. Identify the most common people you usually talk to when doing a sale. What are their roles or titles? Who is usually the end-user? Budget-holder? Decision-maker? Are they the same person?
2. Once you have these, you create a fictional representation of this person. Include demographic and psychographic data: their role, pain points, challenges... here is the template they actually use at Hubspot 👇


3. Whenever you communicate or have a meeting with this person, have the buyer persona front and center and make sure you do the exercise of getting into their shows. It will make you much more effective 😉

Want to deep dive a little more? Here is how inbound marketing expert Richard Higgins from Hubspot approaches Buyer persona's 👇

{%youtube fSTfs0SFiHo %}

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