For more than 25 years I have been focused on a single goal: developing marketers who are the trusted source of competitive strategies and rapid revenue growth. I first learned to use buyer insights to guide marketing strategies at Regis McKenna, the PR firm that launched Apple and nearly every other tech company that mattered in the 80’s. It wasn’t until the next decade, while leading product management, sales and marketing teams for three B2B companies, that I realized the buyer persona’s power for all marketing decisions. So in 2001, when Pragmatic Marketing® asked me to build its Effective Product Marketing™ seminar, it was only natural that the core methodology would be based on buyer personas. Leading that seminar for the next ten years, I met literally thousands of bright, motivated marketers from every corner of the globe. They plied me with countless, very often incisive, questions. They shared a wealth of observations on how buyer personas apply to their businesses. From this experience, I learned that the buyer persona can be a highly effective tool. But it’s not a tool like scissors, something to just pick up and use. The ultimate value comes from very specific insights and skillful application. Having seen so many get it either right or wrong, I now know all the snakes and ladders by heart. This is the knowledge and experience Buyer Persona Institute was created to share. In our customized research studies, we interview buyers, probing for the 5 Rings of Buying Insight™ that inform our clients’ messaging, positioning and sales strategies. Then we follow up with our Using Personas Workshop to ensure that marketers put those insights to work. We set goals, and stay in touch to review progress and evaluate results. For marketers who prefer to conduct their own research studies, and agencies that want to build personas for their clients, we offer the Buyer Persona Masterclass, revealing everything a marketer needs to know to become a buyer persona expert. If you are committed to harnessing the power of buyer personas, we’re with you all the way.