Last week I met a B2B solopreneur who performs visual facilitation. She leads meetings and synthesizes group-think by illustrating discussions on a large mural, in real time. Julie's recent blog post is a perfect case study for B2B personas.

Julie describes the conundrum we all face, as marketers, to write with clarity and purpose while appealing to a diverse audience with multiple interests. But there's the wrinkle: that compelling temptation to satisfy as many people as possible in one stroke of the pen. That temptation makes writing weak.

A colleague asked me yesterday, "If we don't put all the business offerings on the home page of the web site, what about the people who might want any one of those services? Won't they pass us by?"

The answer is "yes." And that's what we want.

As Julie discovered, despite our temptations to appeal to the masses, we really only want one client--the client who gets our business, who sees the value in it (or has the aptitude to see it), and who will be a pleasure to do business with.

Julie doesn't want 10 clients asking for 10 offerings. She wants to clone the one client--her favorite client--with whom she really shines. That client is her persona. And now, Julie is writing to her, for her, as if that client were her only reader. (And the number of comments on her blog spiked on that post, incidentally.)

Are you listening, my reader?

Bonus track: this classic scene from the movie "City Slickers." One thing, just one thing.