Buyer Generation: What Are the Buying Group Personas You Need to Know?

Most B2B marketers still build campaigns around a single decision-maker. But enterprise deals aren’t won by convincing one person—they’re won by aligning many. In fact, Forrester found that engaging just three buying group members can boost conversion rates by over 50%. That’s because influence doesn’t come from shouting louder. It comes from helping each stakeholder overcome their unique fears, roadblocks, and unknowns—so they can confidently say “yes” together. 

Yet buying groups rarely agree at the same time. One stakeholder might be eager to move forward. Another is raising compliance concerns. A third wants to delay until next quarter. These moments of misalignment stall deals—not because of lack of interest, but because no one is speaking directly to each buyer’s lens. 

In this article, we’ll explore the eight most common buyer personas in today’s B2B buying groups—including champions, blockers, budget controllers, and end users. You’ll learn how to engage each persona through an account-based marketing (ABM) approach with targeted messaging, timely content, and the right channels to influence the full group—not just one lead—and ultimately accelerate deal velocity. 

What Is a B2B Buying Group? 

Also called a buying committee, a B2B buying group is a cross-functional team of stakeholders who collectively research, evaluate, and approve a B2B purchase decision.  Each member brings a unique perspective based on their role, priorities, and risks—often coming from different departments with different goals. While they may not care about the same things, they all influence the final decision. 

We’re in what Forrester calls the buying group era. As B2B solutions grow more complex—and the risks of getting them wrong grow more visible—stakeholders from across the business now take part in purchase decisions. These individuals research on their own terms, engage with different content at different times, and influence one another long before anyone fills out a form. If marketers don’t meet each persona with relevant content throughout that journey, deals stall or quietly disappear. 

This shift demands more than just a new message—it requires a new model. Moving from marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to marketing qualified accounts (MQAs) means tracking behavior across the entire account. It’s not about who clicked; it’s about who’s aligning. Engagement from roles like IT, finance, or legal—even if fragmented—becomes part of the signal. ABM teams must now orchestrate outreach that sees the full shape of intent, not just the loudest voice.

The 8 Personas in the B2B Buying Group 

To win B2B deals, you must know who’s in the buying group and what drives each person toward a purchase decision. Gartner finds typical tech purchases involve 14 to 23 stakeholders with overlapping and evolving roles. Without addressing these shifting personas and their unique goals, your messaging will miss the mark and stall deals.

Improved persona targeting goes beyond job titles. In a buying group, a single stakeholder may play different roles—champion, blocker, or budget owner—depending on the stage of the deal or internal dynamics. And job functions can blur across personas: a VP of Finance might act as both a decision-maker and a skeptic; an IT lead might start as a technical evaluator and become an internal advocate. That’s why it’s the marketer’s job to deliver content that speaks to persona-driven needs, not just job functions—and to do so across every phase of the buying process. By combining behavioral signals, firmographics, and content engagement data, marketers can map visitors to their likely roles and serve the right message at the right time—accelerating alignment and reducing deal friction. 

Below are the eight common buyer personas you’ll encounter across the B2B buying journey. 

Purchase Influencers 

Purchase influencers are often the first to engage—researching solutions, comparing vendors, and shaping early internal conversations. They focus on features and how the product supports their team, though they rarely make the final call. Titles range from team leads to senior practitioners across IT, operations, and marketing. 

How to spot them: Frequent engagement with early-stage awareness content like blog posts, comparison guides, and explainer videos. 

Blockers (Challengers) 

Blockers or challengers question change and are common in early to mid-journey stages. They flag risks, costs, or disruptions that could slow or stop the deal. Titles typically range from legal, finance, IT, and security. 

How to spot them: Sporadic views or bounces on return on investment (ROI) tools, security docs, and checklists. They may surface in sales calls with objections or red flags. 

Champions (Advocates) 

Champions or advocates drive buying group momentum and stay active through the funnel. They advocate internally, share content, and aim to solve a known problem. 

How to spot them: Repeat visits to use cases, product deep dives, and value-focused content—like ROI calculators, cost-benefit analyses, or case studies showing measurable business impact. 

Executive Sponsors 

Executive sponsors appear in the mid-to-late stages of the funnel to ensure alignment with strategic goals. They bring authority and often help overcome blockers. 

How to spot them: Light but high-value engagement with leadership briefs, business impact summaries, or analyst reports—often via mobile or forwarded links. 

Budget Controllers 

Budget controllers usually appear during vendor selection in consideration to early decision stages. They assess pricing and ROI to understand how the price works within the overall department and company budgets. 

How to spot them: The budget controller is often linked to a finance or procurement role. You’ll see spikes in activity on pricing pages, ROI calculators, and vendor comparison sheets.  

Legal/Compliance 

Legal and compliance roles surface late in the journey to review risk, privacy, and contract terms. 

How to spot them: Brief, focused engagement with security documentation, compliance content, and terms of service. 

End Users 

End users influence early solution exploration and validate usability mid-journey. Since they are the people using the product, their focus is on ease of use and how the solution will impact their day-to-day responsibilities. 

How to spot them: Interest in demos, onboarding guides, tutorials, and feature pages—especially content that previews day-to-day use. 

Decision-Makers 

Decision-makers—often senior executives like CIOs, CFOs, or VPs—enter during late consideration to approval stages. They weigh stakeholder input and focus on ROI, strategic fit, and overall business value before giving the final sign-off. 

How to spot them: Selective engagement with executive summaries, analyst reports, and case studies featuring measurable results. 

8 Questions B2B Buying Groups Ask Throughout the Buying Journey 

 B2B sales cycles are long—and that makes them vulnerable to change. Stakeholders come and go, priorities shift, and new voices enter the conversation. To maintain momentum, your content must nurture the entire account, not just individual leads. A strong ABM content strategy anticipates the evolving questions and concerns that surface throughout the buying process. 

Here are the eight key questions your content should be ready to answer to keep accounts engaged and deals moving forward. 

1. “Does this solve our actual problem?”

This question arises early, at the awareness stage. Buying groups won’t move forward until everyone agrees on the real problem. Each persona and department see the problem differently: the champion spots a broken process, IT flags tech inefficiency, finance worries about tech debt, and end users struggle with usability. 

Your content needs to help each stakeholder recognize their unique pain point and its impact on their role/department and how it will affect their organization. This will persuade them toward your brand as the solution partner of choice. 

ABM Prep 

Use intent data to identify what different stakeholders are researching and tailor messaging across channels accordingly. Create persona-specific content that reframes the problem in their language, such as: 

• “What Finance Usually Overlooks About Workflow Bottlenecks” 

• “Why IT Misdiagnoses Usability Issues as Speed Problems” 

Thought leadership, explainer content, and pain point reframing surface gaps and start the problem discussion process. Support them with interactive tools like ROI calculators, diagnostic guides, or assessments to validate pain points and prioritize which problems need solving. 

Channels to use: 

• Connected TV (CTV) and podcast ads to generate top-of-funnel awareness and brand recognition. 
• Content syndication to educate targeted roles at scale, especially in sending thought leadership content for relevant verticals. 
• SEO content and owned channels to ensure problem-based resources are highly discoverable as stakeholders begin their research. 
• Display advertising and LinkedIn Sponsored Content to drive exposure and reach within your target account list (TAL). 

2.  “Who will be impacted, and how hard will implementation be?”

These fears surface early, at the awareness stage, before vendors are seriously compared. Buying groups hesitate when change feels risky or disruptive. For example, legal worries about risk exposure. Operations fears broken workflows. Finance stresses over onboarding costs. End users dread steep learning curves. Once there’s clarity on the problem, the group’s next concern is what it will take to fix it.  

Your job is to ease those concerns by showing what change looks like—and proving that it’s manageable with your brand’s help. Use content that helps each stakeholder picture the change and how others like them succeeded with your brand as their partner.  

ABM Prep 

Gather feedback from teams that hear about the onboarding process directly from customers. Input from sales teams, customer success, and onboarding teams can uncover common sticking points that your content should address. Focus on showing how your brand’s partnership elevated the results, so you build more trust in the relationship. 

• Coordinate with sales and customer success on real customer stories that spotlight smooth rollouts and positive outcomes, such as: “How [Company] Onboarded in 30 days Without Disruption” and “What Rollout Looked Like for [Customer]—Without Breaking Workflows” 

• Develop persona-specific FAQs and onboarding guides with your brand’s role in the process to preemptively answer concerns before they become objections.  

Pulling back the curtain on the deployment and onboarding process relieves concerns because it gives your audience a clear, realistic picture of what to expect from the solution and from your brand’s support—reducing uncertainty, building trust, and making the path to success feel achievable. 

Channels to use: 

• Content syndication to scale distribution of onboarding and success content to high-intent accounts. 
• LinkedIn ads tailored to specific personas/roles like blockers from legal and finance. 
• Short-form video or animations that visualize life after rollout and how your brand’s partnership benefits your existing customers. 
• SEO blog content and thought leadership content focused on implementation readiness and checklists. 
• Awareness-stage guides like “What Most Teams Get Wrong About Rollout”. 
• Podcast interviews that highlight the before, during, and after phases of a rollout with a valued customer. 

3. “How will this affect our budget and contracts?”

This question surfaces in the consideration-to-early decision stage. Blockers and budget controllers sometimes step in at this stage—but can shut things down fast. Just as the buying group starts to align, budget controllers enter with questions about cost, while legal brings redlines and risk assessments. If pricing is vague or contracts feel rigid, the conversation shifts from maybe to “let’s think about this more.”  

Your goal is to reduce friction by making pricing, value, and approval steps easy to understand and act on—especially for stakeholders who haven’t been involved until now. 

ABM Prep 

Use past account insights and sales notes in your customer relationship management (CRM) to uncover what teams have asked for or needed in the past to sign off on a deal. Based on this data, create content that equips personas with resources tailored to how they work: 

• Share CFO-friendly one-pagers that break down pricing models, usage-based costs, and ROI levers like time savings, revenue growth, and cost avoidance. 

• Offer mock or real contract with tracked edits showing before-and-after language changes in common negotiation areas, and compliance-ready docs to speed up legal review. 

• Provide budget planning tools that map costs over quarters and highlight financial impact. 

This content isn’t just helpful—it gives finance, legal, and procurement a framework to say “yes” because it answers their key questions upfront and aligns the purchase with budget and compliance needs. 

Channels to use: 

• Email nurtures triggered by pricing page visits or late-stage asset downloads. 
• Sales-shared content like pricing FAQs, approval guides, or contract walk-throughs. 
• LinkedIn retargeting ads focused on finance and procurement personas. 
• Resource hubs with downloadable tools (e.g., budget calculators, legal docs). 
• Proposal templates or total cost of ownership (TCO) calculators on your website built for internal sharing. 

4. “Can we trust this vendor?”

This question, usually asked in the decision stage, is a sign that that buying group wants certainty. They need to feel like they’re gaining a partner, not just a product. Executive sponsors and blockers want proof that your company is credible, stable, and respected. Without that confidence, even well-aligned deals can stall or die quietly.  

Your goal here is to reduce perceived risk and reinforce credibility through third-party validation and peer reassurance. 

ABM Prep
Focus on building confidence across key stakeholders with trust-driving assets like analyst reports, case studies and peer validation. Ask for executive help in scheduling 1:1 conversations with high-intent accounts. Use a highly targeted TAL—built from engagement and intent data—to deliver content that aligns with where accounts are in the buying journey: 

• Syndicate proof points that speak to each decision-maker’s priorities, like relevant customer success stories, third-party validation, and peer-to-peer conversations. 

• Create opportunities and scripts for 1:1 outreach that your executive subject matter experts (SMEs) and sales can use. 

• Promote awards earned from third –parties like G2 and publicly highlight reviews that apply to each solution you offer. 

Using content and conversations to build buying group confidence strengthens the group’s relationship with your brand. It shows them that you have an answer for their concerns and that your entire organization is on their side and wants to see them succeed. 

Channels to use: 

• Executive outreach offering 1:1 introductions or reference calls to build peer trust. 
• Email nurtures spotlighting customer wins, analyst recognition, and client quotes. 
• Targeted LinkedIn ads and content featuring testimonial videos, recognizable logos, and social proof. 
• Website sections highlighting metrics, awards, and third-party reviews. 
• Placements on peer review platforms to surface unbiased credibility. 
• Short (30 seconds or less) CTV ads that introduce a problem and reinforce a solution and experience unique to your brand. 

5. “What if it doesn’t work?”

This question surfaces in the late consideration to the early decision stage, when the desire to move forward in the buying process is strong, but the group is not 100% confident. Even when the buying group is aligned, fear of failure can quietly stall progress—especially for champions who’ve vouched for your solution. Without reassurance, they may hesitate or shift to a “safer” option. 

At this stage, your job is to reduce perceived risk and equip champions to win internal support. 

ABM Prep 

Use engagement and intent data combined with feedback from sales and customer success to understand what’s needed to ease risk and build confidence in your deals. Try to understand what green-lit the purchase previously. Analyze past deal notes and objections logged in your CRM to identify common fears and internal hurdles. Use these insights to develop content and tools that empower champions and reassure the whole buying group: 

• Create pilot program offers and risk-free trial outlines that lower commitment barriers. 

• Build internal pitch decks, email templates, and business case toolkits designed for champions to gain stakeholder buy-in. 

• Craft messaging that reframes rollout as a manageable, phased process, like “Start with One Team, Scale in 60 Days.” 

This targeted content not only supports your champions but also reduces anxiety by providing them the material they need, helping the buying group move confidently toward a “yes.” 

Channels to use: 

• Direct sales enablement (pitch decks, rollout roadmaps, risk-reduction one-pagers). 
• Email nurtures triggered by late-stage behaviors like pricing page visits or ROI tool use. 
• LinkedIn content and ads focused on ease of rollout, internal advocacy, or pilot program offers. 
• Customer story videos or articles specifically about smooth rollouts and quick wins led by a champion. 
• Audio ads or 1:1 interviews on a podcast highlighting the problem-solution-implementation-results framework. 
• Display advertising campaigns that reinforce “low risk, high reward” messaging about partnering with your brand. 

6. “Who’s owning this?”

This question surfaces early—between the awareness and consideration stages—when the buying group is forming but still debating on who owns the project. Deals stall when there’s no clear internal owner. Champions may flag the problem but hesitate to lead. Others show interest but assume someone else is driving. Without a defined leader, meetings slow, momentum fades, and urgency disappears. 

 Your job is to help surface ownership early and empower the right stakeholder to step forward with confidence. 

ABM Prep 

Use intent signals, CRM notes, and sales feedback to pinpoint where ownership gaps cause friction and which stakeholders took charge in past deals. Look for patterns like stalled follow-ups or single-persona conversations. Use this insight to build tools and content that clarify responsibility and motivate action: 

• Share role-mapping tools that help buyers identify who should lead based on scope, function, or past success. 

• Create persona-based content like “What Success Looks Like for a [Job Title] Leading This Project” to frame ownership as a growth opportunity—not a burden. 

• Equip sales with multi-persona plays and messaging that position the champions within the buying group for success—and helps them rally internal support from the rest of the group. 

This approach gets your deal moving again by encouraging potential leaders to take initiative—and giving them the support to do it well. 

Channels to use: 

• Nurture emails featuring role-based ownership content like a success story that resulted in manager-to-director promotion. 
• LinkedIn Sponsored Content targeted by job title to encourage leadership and ownership of solving a problem. 
• Content hubs with stakeholder responsibility maps and internal planning checklists. 
• Interactive quizzes or tools that help identify the right active stakeholders. 
• Awareness-stage webinars focused on cross-functional project success with each department’s role and responsibilities. 

7. “Are we ready for this change?”

This question appears early in the awareness stage, when teams are starting to explore solutions but aren’t yet convinced that they have the energy, buy-in, or resources to take something new on. Change fatigue, poor timing, or a lack of internal readiness can quietly stall momentum before it starts. Even when the problem is clear, many buying groups hesitate—not because they doubt the solution, but because they’re unsure if now is the right time.  

Your job here is to make the pain of doing nothing impossible to ignore—and the benefits of taking steps toward a solution crystal clear. 

ABM Prep 

Use onboarding surveys, post-sale interviews, and customer success notes to uncover what readiness questions slowed previous deals. Supplement with insights from webinar Q&As or peer review sites where buyers voice solution concerns and roadblocks in their own words. Use these findings to create content and tools that normalize hesitation but show buyers a clearer path forward. 

• Develop self-assessment tools or readiness checklists to help teams identify their own gaps without pressure and how to solve them. 

• Create seasonal content that reframes timing objections as strategic advantages like “Why Q4 is the Best Time to Reset Your Workflows.” 

• Reframe the effort required with messaging around points like, “You don’t need to overhaul everything to make progress.” 

• Use “next best step” resources to show early-stage buyers how to ease into adoption at their own pace. 

This content helps buyers move from “we’re not ready” to “we can start here”—lowering the mental and operational barriers to change. 

Channels to use: 

• LinkedIn content designed to resonate with teams feeling overwhelmed or skeptical. 
• Blog posts and SEO content that speak directly to tech fatigue, seasonal planning, or incremental change. 
• Syndicated interactive tools like maturity assessments and readiness planners. 
• Email nurtures built around phased rollout or “get started” frameworks. 

8. “What’s the cost of not doing this?”

This question surfaces in the late awareness to early consideration stage. The buying group recognizes the problem but hasn’t fully internalized the cost of inaction—or the opportunity they’re missing. When urgency to solve the problem is low, even aligned buying groups stall. “We’ve lived with it this long” becomes the mindset, so even a strong solution can be sidelined. 

 Your job is to make the risk of standing still more uncomfortable than the effort of moving forward with the purchase. 

ABM Prep 

Gather and read-through CRM notes, sales objections, and lost deal reasons to uncover when and why urgency disappeared. Layer insights from peer review platforms, customer interviews, and closed-won post-sale deal analysis to understand what finally pushed action. Use these insights to build content that sharpens risk and showcases payoff: 

• Create interactive ROI tools and “cost of doing nothing” content that quantify the financial and operational impact of delay. 

• Develop “before and after” case studies that show what happens when similar companies wait too long—or take early action and win. 

• Build campaign themes around opportunity loss, with points and messaging like “Here’s what your competitors gained while you stood still.” 

• Highlight success stories that focus on speed-to-impact and early wins to reframe change as both urgent and achievable. 

This content isn’t about education—it’s about escalation. When you help the buying group clearly see what inaction is costing them, you create the urgency that tips the scale from “maybe later” to “let’s move now.” 

Channels to use: 

• Nurture emails featuring calculators, customer ROI examples, or “waited too long” stories. 
• LinkedIn content emphasizing lost opportunity or speed-to-value. 
• SEO-driven blog content answering, “What’s the cost of waiting on [problem]?” 
• Display ads and customer success videos focused on results gained from early adoption. 
• Audio ads featuring snippets of real customer voices and testimonies talking through their slower decision process and the benefits realized when the deal was done. 
• Interactive assessments that visualize risk or ROI tailored to industry and role. 

Turning Buying Group Insights in Actionable Opportunities 

Marketing’s ability to quickly identify in-market accounts and work through buyer persona mapping are key processes that set the foundation to successfully target, engage, and win over your accounts. 

Madison Logic helps ABM marketers move beyond one-size-fits-all programs to orchestrate multi-persona, cross-channel campaigns that accelerate sales and improve win rates. By unifying your data, channels, and personas in the ML Platform, you can create momentum across the account and drive faster, more confident decisions. 

The ML Platform allows you to: 

• Identify the full buying group within your target accounts based on B2B research data, engagement data, and technographic data through ML Insights to build robust persona profiles. 

• Activate multi-channel campaigns to your target account list across ABM Social Advertising with LinkedIn Ads, ABM Display Advertising, ABM Content Syndication, ABM Connected TV, and ABM Audio Advertising—all from one platform. 

• Track channel performance on high-intent accounts and trigger nurture campaigns across your marketing automation platform (MAP) integration with the ML Platform to keep buying groups moving. 

Ready to reach every stakeholder in the buying group? Contact us to explore the ML Platform and how we approach buying group identification and engagement in ABM. 

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