Mastering B2B Product Design: From Positioning to User Personas

1. B2B Product Company Workflow

1.1 Team Composition and Collaboration

Typical B2B SaaS companies consist of a product R&D team, sales and marketing teams for acquiring new customers, a service team for retaining existing customers, and functional departments such as administration, HR, finance, legal, and public affairs.

Main collaboration flow:

R&D develops features for the sales team to attract new users.

R&D updates and optimizes projects for the service team to maintain existing users.

Sales feeds user requirements back to R&D for new development.

Service reports bugs or user requests to R&D for resolution.

1.2 Internal Workflow of the R&D Team

The R&D team includes product managers, experience designers, and technical staff (frontend, backend, testing). Demands are classified as functional or experience‑driven.

Functional demand: Initiated by sales, service, or product, followed by research and design led by the product manager.

Experience demand: Initiated by sales, service, or experience designer, with joint design by product and experience designer.

Before analysis, designers should: (1) clarify product positioning and value, and (2) become familiar with user personas.

2. B2B Product Positioning and Value

2.1 Product Positioning

Product positioning defines how a product meets the needs of a target market. Example: WeChat’s positioning has consistently been “social communication” across multiple versions.

2.2 Positioning Formula

Positioning = Target Customers + Differentiated Value

Target customers are industry segments such as education, medical, logistics, etc. Differentiated value may include production management, customer management, office collaboration, or data analysis. Examples: DingTalk, Fanxiang XiaoKe, Xuebao Online.

2.3 Product Value

User value (B2B): Rational, measurable, focused on cost reduction and efficiency gains (e.g., attendance system reduces management cost by 35%).

Commercial value (B2B): Direct revenue from SaaS subscriptions, outsourcing fees, or service fees. SaaS revenue = unit price × number of customers × contract length (years).

Key terms: unit price (based on customer needs), customer count (new and renewing contracts), and marginal cost (additional cost per new SaaS client).

3. B2B User Personas

3.1 What Is a User Persona?

Two main types are used:

User Persona (qualitative): A fictional representation based on real observations, describing roles, goals, motivations, and scenarios. Used early in design to guide product decisions.

User Portrait (quantitative): Data‑driven profiles built from demographic, behavioral, and consumption data, emphasizing statistical analysis and real‑time updates.

3.2 Value of User Personas

They support design at all stages: before design to set product goals, during design to define strategies, and after design to aid marketing, operations, and sales planning.

3.3 Characteristics of B2B Users

B2B users include decision‑makers, middle managers, and operators. Their goals are rational (revenue growth, efficiency) and differ from C‑end users, whose motivations are emotional and experiential.

3.4 How to Build B2B User Personas

Formula: B2B Persona = Client Persona + Role Persona = Industry Features + Enterprise Features + Key Person Job Attributes + (minor) Personal Attributes.

Steps:

Quickly study an industry or client to gather industry and enterprise characteristics (using web search, company websites, public databases).

Interview internal experts (sales, support, consultants) to collect detailed information about key contacts.

Visit the client, verify assumptions, record observations, and consolidate findings.

Extract common traits across multiple clients to create a reusable, generalized persona.

4. Conducting User Research

Research methods include:

User Interviews: Face‑to‑face, phone, or observation; avoid leading questions and respect privacy.

Customer Feedback Groups: Organize joint groups with product teams.

Surveys: Define clear questions, design logical structure, clean data (remove outliers, duplicates, illogical responses), and analyze using trend, importance, and segmentation analyses.

On‑site Observation: Experience the product in the user’s environment and note pain points.

After data collection, write clear reports that present insights and recommendations.

Conclusion

Every detail of product and user understanding is worth studying; readers can follow the presented framework and concepts to deepen their B2B product knowledge.