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GullySales

Buyer personas that show your team who decides, what they weigh and what to say.

Gully Sales builds B2B and B2C buyer personas from interviews with real buyers and your own sales evidence, so every message, campaign and sales conversation is written for the person who actually says yes.

  • Profiles of the people who decide, drawn from evidence, not from a template.
  • The buying committee mapped for B2B; the shopper and the household for B2C.
  • Personas your marketing and sales teams use every week, not a deck they file away.
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Gully Sales Private Limited works with small and medium businesses across India, and every engagement starts with a free audit.

In one paragraph

What is B2B and B2C buyer persona development services?

Buyer persona development from Gully Sales gives Indian SMBs evidence-based profiles of the people who make and shape a purchase. For B2B we map the buying committee: users, influencers, deciders and procurement, and what each one weighs. For B2C we profile the shopper, the household and the occasion. Every persona records goals, triggers, objections, information sources and language, with a plan for how marketing and sales will use it.

The problem

Your marketing and sales are aimed at a buyer nobody has written down.

Most SMBs can name their customer's company and not the people inside it. The founder pictures the owner who signed the first order, the sales team pictures the purchase manager who haggles, and the agency writing your ads pictures nobody in particular. In B2B the decision passes through a user, a specifier, a finance approver and a signatory; in B2C it passes through a household. Your marketing and sales speak to one of them, chosen by habit, and the others hear nothing.

You will recognise it as

  • The founder, the sales lead and the agency each brief a different buyer, and none of them has written theirs down.
  • Campaigns bring enquiries from people who cannot buy: the user rather than the decider, or the wrong size of company.
  • Your sales team keeps losing deals to an objection that never appears in the marketing.
  • In B2B, deals stall after the first meeting because someone you never met has a say.
  • In B2C, the person who buys and the person who uses are different, and your message reaches only one.

What it costs the business

  • Marketing money goes to the wrong audience, and the enquiries that arrive are slow to close, low-fit or both.
  • Sales conversations start from scratch every time, because nothing has been learnt about what this buyer needs to hear.
  • Agencies and new hires take months to learn the buyer, and each learns a slightly different one.

Why it persists. Personas have a poor reputation in small businesses, and often deserve it. Many are a stock photo, a made-up name and a list of adjectives, produced in an afternoon and never opened again. Owners who have seen one conclude the whole idea is agency decoration. The real thing needs evidence from buyers and a plan for who will use it, and few teams have time for either while running the business.

If it stays unresolved. The gap widens as you grow. Every new salesperson, writer and agency inherits a vaguer buyer than the last, and the message drifts further from the person who decides. Growth then depends on the few people who still carry the picture in their heads.

What changes

You get buyers your whole team can describe, and messages built for them.

In the first weeks

  • A clear list of the people who make and shape the purchase, and which of them matter most.
  • Interview questions for buyers that your team can keep using after we leave.

In how the work runs

  • One shared description of each buyer that marketing, sales, service and agencies work from.
  • Sales conversations that start from the persona's goals and objections, not the product sheet.

In sales and marketing

  • Campaigns aimed at the person who can say yes, so enquiries fit better and move faster.
  • Fewer stalled B2B deals, because the committee members who slow decisions are anticipated.

In what management can see

  • Content and channel choices based on where each persona actually looks for information.

Over the longer term

  • A buyer record that improves with every win, loss and interview, instead of a deck that goes stale.

We control the research, the personas and the activation plan. Better-fitting enquiries and shorter sales cycles usually follow when personas are used, but they depend on the campaigns and conversations your team runs with them, which we can help build.

Who it is for

This is for businesses whose message has to reach the person who decides.

The businesses it suits

  • Founders and marketing heads of Indian SMBs whose campaigns bring the wrong enquiries, or too few.
  • B2B companies selling to committees: manufacturers, industrial suppliers, software and services firms.
  • Consumer brands, clinics, schools and retailers where the buyer, the user and the influencer differ.
  • Businesses about to brief a new website, campaign, agency or sales team, and wanting a buyer to brief them on.
  • Companies entering a segment or category where their old picture of the buyer no longer applies.

What usually prompts the call

  • A new website, brand or campaign is about to be written and nobody can say for whom.
  • Enquiries are up but qualified ones are not, and the sales team is tired of chasing the wrong people.
  • A large B2B deal was lost to a stakeholder your team never identified.

What Gully Sales does

The work, component by component.

Persona scoping and hypotheses.

We start with what you already know: sales records, enquiry logs, service tickets, reviews and the team's own picture of the buyer. From it we draft the roles that shape a purchase and the hypotheses to test, so fieldwork asks what nobody can answer from the desk.

Why it matters:
Interviewing without hypotheses produces stories; interviewing to test them produces personas.
You receive:
A scoping note: candidate personas, the segment each belongs to, hypotheses and the interview plan.
Business value:
Fieldwork goes to the questions that will change your messaging, not to confirming the obvious.

Evidence from real buyers.

We interview recent customers, lost prospects, non-buyers and, in B2B, each member of the buying committee, about a real purchase: what triggered the search, what they weighed, who else was involved, what nearly stopped them and where they looked. Call recordings and sales debriefs are added.

Why it matters:
A persona built from the team's memory repeats its blind spots; one built from buyers shows what the team never hears.
You receive:
Interview guides for each role, anonymised transcripts and a coded evidence log by persona.
Business value:
You hear the buyer's own words, and those words become the language of your messaging.

B2B buying committee and B2C decision unit.

For B2B we map who takes part in a decision and how: the user who feels the problem, the influencers who compare options, the decider who signs, and procurement or finance who can veto. For B2C we map the shopper, the user, the household members who weigh in and the occasion that prompts the purchase.

Why it matters:
Most lost deals and wasted campaigns come from speaking to one role when another decides.
You receive:
A decision-unit map for each segment: roles, influence, what each cares about and where they clash.
Business value:
Your team knows who to reach, in what order, and what each person needs to hear.

Persona construction and prioritisation.

Each persona is written as a working document: goals, triggers, needs, decision criteria, objections, information sources, channels, language and the moments when they are open to a conversation. We then score the personas on value, reachability, influence and ease of conversion, and recommend which to lead with.

Why it matters:
Six personas treated equally means six diluted messages; two prioritised personas give the team a focus.
You receive:
Persona profiles with a one-page summary each, plus a prioritisation matrix with the reasoning.
Business value:
Budget and effort go to the buyers who decide most and are easiest to reach.

Activation plan and roadmap.

Personas are only useful in use. We turn each one into a message map, a content and channel plan, sales talking points, objection responses, qualification questions and agency briefs, then set a roadmap for rolling them into the website, campaigns, CRM fields and sales training, and agree how they are updated.

Why it matters:
What separates a persona that changes results from one that gathers dust is a plan for who uses it, and when.
You receive:
Persona-to-message map, sales and marketing playbook inputs, agency brief template and an implementation roadmap.
Business value:
The personas show up in the next campaign and the next sales call, not in a folder.

What you will have at the end.

  • Scoping note: candidate personas, the segment each belongs to, hypotheses and the interview plan.
  • Interview guides for each buyer role in your market's languages, with anonymised notes and a coded evidence log.
  • B2B buying-committee map or B2C decision-unit map for each segment, with roles and influence.
  • Persona profiles with goals, triggers, needs, criteria, objections, sources, channels and language, plus one-page summaries.
  • Prioritisation matrix scoring each persona on value, reachability, influence and ease of conversion.
  • Persona-to-message map: what each persona needs to hear at each stage, in their own words.
  • Sales inputs by persona: qualification questions, talking points and objection responses, with an agency brief template.
  • Implementation roadmap and an update routine so the personas improve with each win and loss.

How it runs

The engagement, step by step.

  1. 1

    Gather what you already know.

    We meet the owner, the sales team and whoever runs marketing, go through sales records, enquiry logs, CRM notes, service tickets, reviews and past campaigns, and write down the buyer as the company sees it today, including where the versions disagree.

    You provide:
    Two working sessions, access to sales and enquiry data, and the team's honest picture of the buyer.
    We produce:
    The scoping note: candidate personas, segments, hypotheses and the interview plan.
    Done when:
    The owner agrees the list of roles to research and the questions worth asking.
  2. 2

    Recruit and interview buyers.

    We recruit recent customers, lost prospects, non-buyers and the roles in the buying committee, and interview each about a real purchase they made or did not make: what started it, what they weighed, who was involved, what nearly stopped it and where they looked.

    You provide:
    Introductions to some customers and lost prospects; we recruit the rest ourselves.
    We produce:
    Interview guides, anonymised notes and a coded evidence log by persona.
    Done when:
    Each role has been heard to the agreed number and new interviews are repeating earlier ones.
  3. 3

    Map the decision unit.

    From the interviews and the sales team's debriefs we map who takes part in the decision, in what order, with how much influence and with what concerns: the buying committee in B2B, and the shopper, user, household and occasion in B2C.

    You provide:
    A review session with the sales team to test the map against real deals.
    We produce:
    A decision-unit map for each segment, with the points where roles disagree.
    Done when:
    The sales team recognises its recent wins and losses in the map.
  4. 4

    Write and prioritise the personas.

    Each persona is written from the evidence, in the buyer's own language, with goals, triggers, needs, criteria, objections, sources and channels. We score the set on value, reachability, influence and ease of conversion and recommend which to lead with.

    You provide:
    A working session to challenge the profiles and the priority order.
    We produce:
    Persona profiles, one-page summaries and the prioritisation matrix.
    Done when:
    Leadership has agreed the lead personas and can explain why.
  5. 5

    Turn personas into plays, and roll them out.

    We build the message map, content and channel plan, qualification questions, talking points, objection responses and agency brief template, and test each on a live campaign or open deal. We then brief the teams and agencies, add persona fields to the CRM and forms, and set the update routine.

    You provide:
    A live campaign or open deals to test on, time for briefings, and an owner for the update routine.
    We produce:
    Message map, playbook inputs, agency brief template, implementation roadmap and the update routine.
    Done when:
    The next campaign brief and the next call plan name a persona, and someone owns keeping them current.

Ways to work with us

Four ways to work with us, depending on how much you already know.

Persona programme

The full engagement from scoping to roll-out, for businesses building personas from evidence for the first time or replacing ones nobody uses.

Buying committee mapping

A focused B2B engagement that maps the roles, influence and concerns inside your customers' buying decisions and equips sales for each.

Persona refresh

For personas that have gone stale or were never built from buyers: we test them against fresh interviews and rewrite what the evidence changes.

Persona activation

For personas that exist but sit in a folder: we build the message maps, sales inputs and briefs and roll them into the teams' routines.

Why Gully Sales

What you are actually choosing when you choose us.

Our personas come from buyers, not from a brainstorm.

Every profile is built from interviews with real customers, lost prospects and non-buyers, plus your own sales evidence. Where the team's belief and the buyer's account disagree, we report the buyer's account.

We map the whole decision, not one idealised buyer.

B2B purchases are made by committees and B2C purchases by households. We profile every role that can start, shape or stop the decision, and say which deserve your budget first.

Personas are written for use, and we help you use them.

Each persona ships with a message map, sales inputs and a brief template, and we roll it into your campaigns, CRM and sales routines. A persona that changes no campaign and no call has failed.

We know what a salesperson and a writer each need from a persona.

Gully Sales builds and runs marketing, sales and customer systems for Indian SMBs, in the languages and cities your buyers live in. We write personas for the people who must sell to them tomorrow.

Where it applies

The same service, in different businesses.

Industrial equipment and components

The situation:
A machinery maker's marketing speaks to plant engineers, but deals are decided by owners and slowed by purchase managers the team rarely meets.
How it applies:
Buying-committee interviews at recent wins and losses, a committee map per customer type, and message and objection material for owner, engineer and purchase roles.
Likely benefit:
Sales reaches the decider earlier, and marketing answers the purchase manager's concerns before they stall the deal.

Healthcare and clinics

The situation:
A multi-speciality clinic advertises to patients, while many appointments are chosen by a spouse, parent or adult child after asking a family doctor.
How it applies:
Patient and family interviews around recent treatment decisions, personas for the patient and the family decision-maker, and content mapped to each one's questions.
Likely benefit:
Campaigns and the website speak to the person who actually books, in the words they use.

Consumer goods and packaged foods

The situation:
A regional food brand markets to the end consumer, but the purchase happens at a kirana counter where the shopkeeper's word and the household buyer's habits decide.
How it applies:
Shopper intercepts, household interviews and retailer conversations, personas for the household buyer and the retailer, and a message plan for each.
Likely benefit:
Trade and consumer marketing are aimed at the two people who decide whether the pack is bought.

Software and IT services

The situation:
A SaaS company gets trials from junior users who cannot approve a purchase, and deals die when the finance head asks a question nobody prepared for.
How it applies:
Interviews with users, champions and approvers at won and lost accounts, a committee map, and sales plays and content for the approver and finance roles.
Likely benefit:
Marketing brings in the champion and sales is ready for the approver, so more trials become signed deals.

Proof

Work we can point to.

Agrinia, an agricultural company helping farmers grow natural and organic produce

The problem:
Agrinia was working to refine its sales strategies and, as the case study records, struggled to understand its diverse customer base, generate and qualify leads, and close sales.
What we did:
Gully Sales conducted in-depth customer research to create ideal customer profiles and detailed buyer personas, analysed customer behaviour, mapped the buyer's journey and developed value propositions for primary and secondary customers.
The result:
The case study reports enhanced customer understanding: research and buyer persona development enabled personalised interactions and stronger customer relationships, alongside improved lead quality.
Read the case study

Questions buyers ask

Before you enquire, the answers you will want.

How will the personas be used by marketing and sales?

Each persona comes with a message map, so marketing knows what that buyer needs to hear at each stage and where to say it, and writers get a brief that names the reader. Sales gets qualification questions, talking points and objection responses for each role in the decision. We roll these into campaign briefs, the CRM and sales training, and test them on a live campaign or open deals before hand-over.

What is the difference between a buyer persona and an ideal customer profile?

An ideal customer profile describes the company or household worth pursuing: size, sector, location, budget and fit. A buyer persona describes the people inside that account who start, shape and approve the purchase: what they want, what they fear, who they consult and what they read. You need the profile to choose whom to target and the personas to know what to say when you get there.

How long does a buyer persona engagement take?

There is no fixed timeline. The length depends on how many segments and personas you need, how many buying-committee roles must be interviewed and how easy those people are to reach. Recruiting lost prospects and non-buyers is the slowest part and the most valuable, so we do not swap them for friendly customers to save time. The scoping note sets out the expected sequence before work begins.

What inputs do you need from us?

Two working sessions with the owner, the sales team and whoever runs marketing. Access to sales records, enquiry logs, CRM notes, service tickets, reviews and past campaigns. Introductions to some recent customers and lost prospects, though we recruit most respondents ourselves. A review session with sales to test the decision map, and a live campaign or open deals to try the material on. Above all, willingness to hear what buyers say when it differs from the team's view.

How is success measured?

In two stages. At hand-over we report how much of the company's starting picture of the buyer the interviews confirmed, corrected or overturned, and how each persona scored on value, reachability, influence and ease of conversion. Once the personas are in use we track the share of enquiries and open deals that match a lead persona, the time to the first campaign and sales play that use them, and sales from a segment you were not addressing before.

What is excluded from the scope?

Deciding which market segments to serve is customer segmentation. Defining which companies or households to target is ideal customer profile development. Charting the stages and touchpoints a buyer passes through is buyer journey mapping. Measuring how satisfied existing customers are is voice of customer research. Writing the final campaigns, website copy or sales scripts is marketing and sales enablement work we offer separately. We say on the first call if your need sits elsewhere.

How many personas will we end up with?

Fewer than you expect. Most SMBs need two to four personas that matter, plus a map of the other roles that can slow or stop a decision. More than that and the messages blur and the team stops using them. We draft the full set the evidence supports, score them, and recommend which to lead with; the rest stay on record for when a segment or product makes them relevant.

Do B2B and B2C personas really need different methods?

The questions are the same: who decides, what triggers the search, what they weigh, what nearly stops them and where they look. The people and the setting differ. In B2B we interview several roles per account and map a buying committee with formal steps and vetoes. In B2C we interview shoppers, users and household members, often near the point of purchase, and map an informal decision unit with an occasion behind it. Some businesses, such as a brand selling to retailers and consumers, need both.

Talk to us

Tell us who you think your buyer is, and we will show you how to find out.

The free audit is a working growth strategy consultation about your buyers, not a sales pitch. If your need is segmentation, an ideal customer profile or journey mapping instead, we will say so.

  • No obligation and no sales script
  • A reply from someone who does the work
  • Your details are never sold or shared

Anything you share about your customers and plans is used only to prepare for the conversation and stays within Gully Sales.

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