Social media-era buyers tend to not engage until the last stretch before making a buying decision as they have access to a wealth of information including real world experiences. This makes it harder for marketers to find prospects that might be interested in their products or services early on, in order to influence them well before the moment of decision. The resulting problem for companies is that buyers make up their minds before they even had a chance to educate them on their offerings and ultimately leads to lost opportunities.

To be able to engage potential buyers long before the decision, marketers need to really understand who their customer is, where they go to solve problems and how they make decisions. Many companies struggle with agreeing who their customers are as evident in a 2010 Forrester Research Marketing & Sales Alignment survey. The results of this survey illustrate that most marketing and sales teams are aligned on internal issues but lack alignment when it comes to the customer.

Here are the steps to take to develop your buyers’ persona:

1. Make it a collaborative effort.

Understanding and profiling your ideal buyer is a collaboration effort that provides a tighter alignment as sales and marketing are involved in developing it. While market research can provide hard data, only sales reps can provide information collected from real world selling scenarios. Also do not forget to collect third-party information as it always provides better, and more realistic, insight into your customer’s decision-making process.

2. Strive for a complete 360° view of your buyer.

Do not just gather demographic information and a work title of your customers, but expand this to include geographic information, personality traits, work problems, decision drivers and priorities, world views, technology usage, shopping habits, hobbies, perceptions, etc. Going into more detail allows you to uncover information about your buyer that you may have never thought of before.

3. Talk to your customers.

The best source for this type of information is your current customer pool — and those you may have lost. Many marketers create customer personas using their wishful idea of the perfect customer. This is their view, however, and often very much different than actual customer information. Ask yourself this question: Is this what you think or is it proven, real world information?

4. Continue to refine your buyer profile.

Buyer and buying habits evolve over time. As a company you need to make sure you continuously monitor this change in your customers and adapt your messaging and selling habits to them. Only then are you able to maintain timely communication and relevance in their eyes.

Once you have developed this profile (and there may be multiple), you can discover more easily where to find and how to communicate with your buyers early on in their solution-discovery process. This in-depth knowledge of your buyer enables you to speak their language, leading to more personalized and targeted messaging, which results in higher-quality leads and ultimately creates a more efficient lead funnel with more sales-ready conversations.