The Buyer Persona Blog
- February 2, 2022
Building an Early Buyer Insights System Can Save You Trouble
Early Buyer Insights Can Alert Leaders To Risks And Opportunities We are living in a time like no other. Where predictability is more elusive than we could have ever imagined. Buyers, consumers, and people, in general, are changing their behaviors continuously and rapidly. The heads of many buyers and consumers spin as each bit of news causes them to hesitate on buying something. Each month now presents new potential events that can throw people off course. Whether such events are environmental, political, global, economic, innovation, or crisis-related, the ripple effect is bound to touch an already fragile state of…
- January 26, 2022
How Business Leaders Can Guard Against Inaccurate Preconceived Notions About Buyers
Challenging Preconceived Notions About Buyers is a Two-Way Street Over the course of many years and just a few years as well, business leaders and organizations can develop preconceived notions about buyers and customers. In large organizations that have been in existence for decades, preconceived notions can become institutionalized. Becoming like dogma with multiple stories from years past turning into mythical company lore. In startups and emerging companies, the original founders’ conceived idea can become like King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur. Entrenched in stone while the world outside swirls around changing. We are living in a moment in history when…
- January 21, 2022
Put Insights at the Heart of Buyer-Focused Strategies
Business leaders must aspire for human-centered insights, not just intelligence Many businesses today, in their marketing and sales operations, have an insatiable thirst for data and intelligence about their buyers and customers. The last two decades have seen a rapid rise in multiple forms of analytics and intelligence applications. Starting with simplified data software programs to burgeoning artificial intelligence capabilities. What we now see is a myriad combination of data-centric efforts by organizations. Put forth in their quest to know more about buyers and customers. Doing so with the holy grail of aspirations. Gaining insights that inform and can…
- January 20, 2022
Buyer Insights Are a Matter of Interpretation
The critical skill of interpreting buyer insights is needed to achieve actionable outcomes A common thread in the many executive-level conversations and interviews I have had in the last twenty years is that of a lack of insights. Specifically, a lack of insights into their buyers and customers. The lack of buyer insights is consistently identified as a top challenge in any of the numerous C-Suite surveying as well. As we enter a pronounced era of uncertainty, decisions related to investments, strategies, markets, and the likes have intensified. Many of you know the feeling. When you are faced with…
- January 19, 2022
Buyers Want You to Shape a Better Future
An organization’s brand vision must show a better future for buyers We are living in what can seem like a never-ending time of unpredictability and instability. Two years into a worldwide pandemic. It is a long time. With no predictable end in sight. I referred to this time recently as an Era of Uncertainty. An era where buyers are seeking a better future. Perhaps more appropriate to say something stronger like – wanting a better future. On many fronts, buyers of today are contending with issues that impact their view of the world. Inflationary pressures. Supply chain obstacles. Staffing…
- January 18, 2022
How To Meet Buyers’ Goals in an Era of Uncertainty
To Accelerate Growth in Uncertain Times, Leaders Need Insights on How Buyers’ Goals are Changing We have entered a pronounced Era of Uncertainty. The past year has bedeviled both suppliers and buyers in the world of commerce. What was once dependable is no longer. Uncertainty has always been an element of business commerce. What the Covid-19 pandemic has brought on is a deep Era of Uncertainty that may very well last the rest of this decade. With this backdrop, business organizations will need to recognize that customer and buyer goals are changing. Rapidly and frequently. Each new world or…
- January 17, 2022
The Essay by Martin Luther King, Jr. That Lives Large In Jazz
King spoke to the significance of jazz in culture In 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. penned an essay concerning the significance of jazz. The essay was written at the request of the organizers of the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival. While one of Dr. King’s lesser-known speeches, it remains as one of the most profound essays about jazz in modern times. Contrary to popular belief, Martin Luther King, Jr. did not deliver a speech of this essay at the 1964 festival in Berlin. In July 1964, Dr. King received a request from the director and organizers of the festival to…
- January 16, 2022
Are You Future Intelligent?
Leaders will need to develop skills to translate AI into intelligence that shapes the future Anticipate, readiness, preparedness, forward-looking, foresee, envision, and predict. Powerful words with a common thread in leadership. Leaders in business, politics, arts, culture and civic governing all must possess character, traits, and abilities that these words define as well as imply. This is especially true today. When uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic cuts widely across societies and the globe. Historically, leaders have prepared by first looking at the past. Ingrained by decades of teachings in universities and management thinking, most of this past…
- January 15, 2022
Two Voids Buyer Personas Can Fill To Achieve Growth Strategies
Lack of buyer insights and brand vision can doom growth strategies On the minds of many CEOs entering 2022 is how to make business growth a top priority. Especially after two years of an enduring COVID-19 pandemic. While some industries have prospered, many have seen substantial losses. With businesses facing endemic new realities, businesses are bent on growing. A struggle for leaders is in aligning their teams and tactical operations with business growth strategies. This includes their interactions with buyers and customers. How well are these interactions aligned with business growth strategies? A question that CEOs and leaders will…
- January 14, 2022
Buyers Are Facing New Endemic Realities
4 Buyer Challenges Can Be Endemic For A Decade For the past two years, we have been living in a state of an enduring COVID-19 pandemic. New variants have disrupted countries, economies, markets, and industries. Some detrimentally. Business buyers have had to navigate new and mounting challenges. Making planning less predictable. Uncertainty reigns in business. During this span of two years, we have seen writers and pundits posit the notion of a post-pandemic world. Offering up how marketing and selling can succeed in a post-pandemic world. And buyers, and citizens of the world, anxiously waiting for an answer to…