Nobody makes B2B buying decisions alone anymore.
The average purchase involves 6-10 stakeholders. The CFO cares about ROI and risk. The VP of Operations cares about implementation and workflow impact. The end users care about whether this thing will actually make their jobs easier.
Each has different priorities, different concerns, and different definitions of success.
Your messaging tries to speak to all of them at once. Which means it speaks to none of them effectively.
We see this constantly in client audits: companies with one generic message trying to serve an entire buying committee. It’s the same pattern we see when B2B marketing plans fail before Q2—a lack of alignment between strategy and execution. The CFO can’t find financial justification. Operations can’t see how implementation works. End users don’t understand how it helps them. Everyone stays confused, and the deal stalls.
When your messaging focuses only on one persona, you risk alienating everyone else. When it tries to be everything to everyone, it gets watered down into meaningless corporate speak that nobody remembers.
The solution isn’t better copywriting or more creative taglines. It’s a problem-persona matrix.
This framework connects the dots between the specific problems each persona faces and how your solution addresses them. Done well, it transforms messaging from generic noise into a tool that drives consensus across the buying committee.
Here’s how to build one that actually works.
Step 1: Stop Targeting “Decision Makers”
That person doesn’t exist.
Start by identifying the three to five key roles actually involved in your buying process. Not who you wish were involved, but who consistently shows up in real deals.
Focus on the people most likely to influence or approve the decision:
Common B2B personas:
- CEOs or business owners care about growth and ROI
- Marketing leaders care about pipeline and lead quality
- Operations leaders care about efficiency and process improvement
- IT or technical stakeholders care about integration and security
- Finance leaders care about budget and measurable returns
Your specific personas depend on your industry and deal structure. Manufacturing companies may involve plant managers or procurement. SaaS deals may lean heavily on marketing, finance, and IT. Professional services might include practice leaders and compliance.
The process is the same regardless. But the specific personas and their problems must reflect the reality of how deals actually get done in your market, not how you wish they got done.
Step 2: Name the Real Problems (Not Your Version of Them)
Every persona has specific frustrations that keep them from saying yes. Your job is to articulate those problems in their language, not yours.
This is where most companies make critical messaging mistakes. They describe problems from their own perspective: “They need better analytics.” “They lack integrated systems.” “They don’t have enough data.”
Wrong.
Here’s what real personas actually worry about:
CEOs: Missing revenue targets, losing ground to competitors, inability to scale
Marketing leaders: Can’t generate enough qualified pipeline, low conversion rates, attribution gaps
Operations leaders: Inefficient processes costing time and money, manual workflows causing errors, can’t scale without adding headcount
IT leaders: Security risks, integration nightmares, system downtime, vendor lock-in
Notice the difference? These are human concerns expressed the way actual people think about them, not sanitized corporate speak.
If you can’t articulate each persona’s problems in language they’d use when complaining to a colleague, you don’t understand them well enough to sell to them.
Step 3: Connect Problems to Outcomes (Not Features)
Now comes the critical work: connecting those specific problems to the specific outcomes your solution delivers.
Not features. Not capabilities. Outcomes.
If a CEO cares about growth, show how you accelerate revenue. If an operations leader cares about efficiency, show how you save time or reduce errors. If IT cares about security, show how you eliminate risk.
This mapping exercise reveals uncomfortable truths. If you can’t clearly tie your solution to a persona’s core problem, one of three things is true:
- That persona isn’t actually central to your sale
- Your positioning needs work
- Your solution doesn’t solve their problem (and you need to stop pretending it does)
Most companies discover they’ve been targeting personas they can’t actually help. Better to learn this now than after burning budget on campaigns that don’t convert.
Step 4: Build the Actual Matrix
Stop overthinking this. You need a simple table that maps personas to problems to solutions.
Place personas across the top. List their core problems down the side. Fill in how your solution addresses each problem for each persona.
Example matrix structure:
| Persona | Problem | Solution Message |
| CEO | Revenue growth stalling | “Our platform creates predictable pipeline tied directly to growth goals, not marketing activity.” |
| Marketing Leader | Low lead quality killing sales confidence | “We generate qualified leads that convert to opportunities, not database entries sales ignores.” |
| Operations | Manual processes eating team capacity | “We automate workflows that currently waste 15+ hours per week per person.” |
| IT | Integration risk and vendor sprawl | “We integrate with your existing stack in days, not months, without custom dev work.” |
This format makes it immediately clear where your strongest messages are and where you’re reaching or being vague.
If a cell in your matrix reads like marketing fluff (“we deliver value” or “we improve efficiency”), you don’t have a real answer. Keep working until you can articulate a specific outcome that specific persona cares about.
While each persona has unique concerns, remember that there are also five universal problems every buying committee member cares about—wasted time, rising costs, risk exposure, lack of visibility, and missed growth opportunities. Your matrix should address both the persona-specific problems and these shared concerns that help create committee-wide alignment.
Step 5: Reality-Test With People Who Actually Talk to Buyers
A matrix built in a conference room is worthless. It needs to survive contact with reality.
Review it with your sales team. Not in a formal presentation where they nod politely—in actual working sessions where they can tell you what’s wrong. Ask them:
- Do these problems match what buyers actually say?
- Does this language work in real conversations?
- What objections does this miss?
- Which personas do we consistently fail to convince?
Then talk to customers. Ask them if the problems and solutions feel true to their experience. Don’t lead the witness—let them tell you what mattered in their decision process.
Most companies skip this step because they’re afraid of what they’ll learn. The ones that do it discover their messaging is disconnected from reality in ways that explain exactly why deals keep stalling. This validation step is critical, which is why we built an entire framework around how to validate B2B messaging with sales feedback and testing.
Iterate based on feedback. This isn’t a one-time exercise—it’s a living framework that should evolve as you learn more about how real buying committees actually make decisions.
Step 6: Actually Use the Matrix (Or It’s Just Another Useless Document)
Here’s what typically happens: companies spend weeks building a beautiful messaging framework. Then it sits in a shared drive while marketing and sales continue doing what they’ve always done.
Don’t do that.
Your problem-persona matrix should guide every piece of messaging you create:
Website: Tailor landing pages or sections by persona. When a CFO lands on your site, they should immediately see ROI and risk mitigation. When an operations leader arrives, they should see efficiency and implementation.
Sales decks: Build slides that speak to each stakeholder’s concerns. Your deck should have persona-specific sections that reps can navigate to based on who’s in the room.
Campaigns: Create ads and content aligned with persona-specific problems. Stop running generic “learn more about our solution” campaigns and start running “here’s how we solve [specific problem for specific persona]” campaigns.
Sales enablement: Give your team one-sheets for each persona that they can share with stakeholders who weren’t in the initial conversation. Make it easy for your champion to sell internally.
Buyer enablement assets: Create ROI calculators, comparison guides, and implementation timelines that address persona-specific concerns. This is exactly what buyer enablement is designed to do—help your champion build the business case for each stakeholder.
The matrix becomes the foundation for consistent, problem-centric storytelling across every channel and every stage of the buyer journey.
When done right, prospects stop hearing generic corporate speak and start hearing solutions to their actual problems. That’s when deals stop stalling and start closing.
Stop Confusing Buying Committees, Start Driving Consensus
B2B decisions are collective, not individual. Messaging that resonates across the buying committee creates alignment. Alignment creates momentum. Momentum closes deals.
Most companies treat messaging like a creative exercise. They workshop taglines and debate value propositions in conference rooms. Then they wonder why deals keep stalling with multiple stakeholders.
The companies that consistently win don’t have better writers. They have better frameworks. It’s why we recommend building marketing plans around revenue outcomes, not tactics. They understand that effective B2B messaging isn’t about clever copy—it’s about ensuring every key role on the buying committee sees exactly how your solution solves their specific problems.
A problem-persona matrix makes that happen. It transforms vague positioning into clear, persona-specific narratives that drive real buying decisions.
Without it, you’re leaving consensus to chance. With it, you’re systematically addressing the concerns that typically stall deals.
The Problem-Persona Matrix is a core component of effective problem-centric messaging. Want to see how it fits into the complete framework? Read our complete guide to problem-centric messaging in B2B marketing.
Ready to build messaging that actually works across your entire buying committee? Our B2B Growth Audit includes a comprehensive messaging review and we’ll help you build your problem-persona matrix. Get your audit HERE.
