Most persona documents are demographic: job title, company size, reports to, tools used. None of that tells a rep what to say.
A persona is useful when it names a problem specifically enough that a message can be built from it. Everything below is aimed at that output.
Who has to be in the room
- Two or three reps who talk to this persona weekly. Non-negotiable. A
persona built without them describes who marketing wishes was buying.
- One AE, for what happens after the meeting.
- Someone from customer success, who knows what the problem looked like
after purchase, which is often different from how it was described before.
- A marketer to facilitate and write, not to supply the answers.
Half a day. Longer produces a longer document, not a better one.
The five questions
Per persona, in order. Answer with evidence, not opinion.
1. What is on their list this quarter? Not what our product does. What they were already trying to fix before we appeared.
2. What does the problem cost them, in their terms? Hours, headcount, missed number, personal risk. "Inefficiency" is not an answer.
3. What have they already tried? This is the most underused question. It tells you what to avoid sounding like, and a rep who knows the failed attempt can open with it.
4. Who else has to agree? And what does that person care about, which is usually something different.
5. What would make them do nothing? The status quo is the real competitor, and naming it is more useful than naming vendors.
Build from quotes, not adjectives
The single technique that makes the output usable: every claim on the persona needs a real quote behind it, from a call recording, a sales note, or a customer conversation.
Adjectives like "time-poor" and "data-driven" describe everybody. A quote like "I spend the first two hours of Monday rebuilding a list that should already exist" is a message angle.
If a claim has no quote, mark it as an assumption and test it. That column is usually longer than people expect, which is the useful part.
End with angles, not a document
The output that gets used is not a persona deck. It is a short list per persona:
| Element | Example shape |
|---|---|
| Trigger | The event that makes this problem urgent |
| Opening line | Names the problem in their words |
| Proof point | The evidence that we have solved it before |
| Likely objection | And the honest answer |
| Disqualifier | When this persona is not worth pursuing |
Five lines a rep can hold in their head beats forty slides nobody reopens.
Keep it alive
Personas decay. Re-run the five questions quarterly against recent call recordings and change what moved. A persona that has not changed in a year has not been checked.
Where this sits
This is the Market pillar of the Tenbound Pipeline Architecture Standard, and it feeds Message directly. It pairs with the ICP development workshop: ICP decides which accounts, personas decide who inside them and what to say.