Buyer Personas: How to Gain Insight into your Customer's Expectations, Align your Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business

11Start Small, with an Eye to the Future

Knowledge is power.

These three words appear in quotations that have been cited and repeated countless times. An Internet search attributes this phrase to a wide variety of familiar names ranging from Sir Francis Bacon and Kofi Anan to Tom Clancy and Mary J. Blige.

Perhaps a cliché, and yet, as with most clichés, within it resides the truth.

It's a theme that appears in numerous episodes of the original Star Trek series, in stories about people who become powerful after acquiring new knowledge. The inhabitants of a troubled planet who followed the instructions of an idol or disembodied brains learn that their leadership is merely an illusion, a machine, or a supremely fallible mortal. Once the truth is revealed to the citizens of the planet, our heroes, Captain Kirk and his crew, warp away on the Enterprise, leaving the inhabitants to take control of their lives.

We can't promise that the knowledge and insights that you will gain by interviewing your buyers will make you a hero, but we do know that you will have the power to quickly effect dramatic change in your company and take more control over the strategies we've discussed.

The logic is inescapable. Your buyer interviews will give you insight into the factors that influence buyers' decisions. With this clearly defined information, you can become a trusted authoritative resource within your company: the one person to consult for guidance on messaging and activities intended to convince ...