Buyer personas start with a solid understanding of the people buying your products and/or services. For most companies, this means some combination of customer surveys, internal and external focus groups, round tables, one-on-ones, clickstream data, web tracking, industry observations, competitor analysis, personal experience/expertise, anecdotal information, best practices, and hunches/“gut” instincts. Once you’ve finished gathering your data, the first step is to consolidate everything so you can get a good, overall picture of your customer base. Map out what you know about your customers, especially details about who they are, why, when and how they buy, and anything else that’s directly relevant to your product or service. Like any map, your scale isn’t ever going to be 1:1, but it should include enough detail so you can see the big picture — i.e. continents, islands, oceans, bays, rivers, lakes, etc. Once you’ve mapped out your customers, creating buyer personas is really just a simple, three-step process: (1) Create an organizational framework for your personas (2) Use this framework to sort your customers into meaningful groups (3) Identify the underlying demographic and/or psychographic attributes each group you’ve identified has in common.