- A header that separates buyer personas (who approves and pays) from user personas (who adopts daily), because the two need different evidence
- Role and title range, company profile, and the ICP fit in three lines
- Goals (what success looks like) and frustrations (what is broken today), each with a source column
- A current-tools table: what they use, what it does, where it breaks
- Decision criteria in ranked order, so sales knows what to lead with
- A day-in-the-life scenario written as a short narrative, not a bullet list
- A verbatim quote, with the call or interview it came from
- A jobs-to-be-done block linking functional, emotional, and social jobs to your product's capabilities
- Copy the template once per persona. Four buyer personas and three or four user personas is typical for a B2B product; more than eight means the segments are not distinct.
- Fill the frustrations from evidence before the goals. Frustrations come from call transcripts, support tickets, and churn interviews. Goals are what the persona would say on a panel. The frustrations are what they say at minute 38 of a discovery call.
- Fill the quote last, and make it real. A composite quote is fine if it is built from phrases that appear in transcripts; a quote written in a conference room is not.
- Name the sources. Every persona should list the number of calls, interviews, or tickets it draws on and the date range. A persona with no source column is an assumption with a name.
- Review every 90 days, or whenever a segment's frustrations shift in the call data. Personas built from live evidence change; that is the point.
- Feed the result into the messaging framework: each persona's hook and problem row should come straight from this page.
# Persona: [First name] — The [Role archetype]
> Type: [Buyer / User] · Version: [x.y] · Last revised: [YYYY-MM-DD] · Owner: [name]
> Sources: [N call transcripts, N interviews, N support tickets, date range]
## Role and title range
[Titles this persona holds, e.g. "VP of Sales, CRO, Head of Sales, Sales Director"]
## Company profile
- [Size range, industry, stage]
- [Team size and structure relevant to this persona]
- [Tool count or stack characteristics]
- [Revenue range or other ICP markers]
## Goals — what success looks like
| Goal | Metric they use | Source |
|------|-----------------|--------|
| [Goal 1] | [How they measure it] | [interview / call / inference] |
| [Goal 2] | [Metric] | [source] |
| [Goal 3] | [Metric] | [source] |
| [Goal 4] | [Metric] | [source] |
## Frustrations — what is broken today
| Frustration | What they say (verbatim where possible) | Frequency / source |
|-------------|----------------------------------------|--------------------|
| [Frustration 1] | "[quote]" | [N calls / ticket category] |
| [Frustration 2] | "[quote]" | [source] |
| [Frustration 3] | "[quote]" | [source] |
| [Frustration 4] | "[quote]" | [source] |
## Current tools and where they fall short
| Tool | What it does for them | Where it breaks |
|------|-----------------------|-----------------|
| [Tool / category] | [Job it does] | [Specific failure, from evidence] |
| [Tool / category] | [Job] | [Failure] |
| [Tool / category] | [Job] | [Failure] |
## Decision criteria — ranked
1. **[Criterion 1]:** [What they need to see to believe it.]
2. **[Criterion 2]:** [Detail.]
3. **[Criterion 3]:** [Detail.]
4. **[Criterion 4]:** [Detail.]
5. **[Criterion 5, optional]:** [Detail.]
## Day in the life
> [Two paragraphs, narrative form. A specific day, a specific task, the moment the current tools fail them, and what they do instead. Written from observation or interview, not imagination.]
## In their words
> "[Verbatim or composite-from-verbatim quote, two to four sentences.]"
> — [Role], [call or interview reference, date]
## Jobs to be done
| Type | Job statement | Current approach | Severity |
|------|---------------|------------------|----------|
| Functional | [What they are trying to accomplish] | [How they do it today] | [Critical / High / Medium] |
| Functional | [Job] | [Approach] | [Severity] |
| Emotional | [How they want to feel] | [Current state] | [Severity] |
| Social | [How they want to be seen, and by whom] | [Current state] | [Severity] |
## How our product maps to this persona
| Their criterion or job | Capability that addresses it | Status |
|------------------------|------------------------------|--------|
| [Criterion / job] | [Capability, customer-facing name] | [Shipped / Roadmap] |
| [Criterion / job] | [Capability] | [Status] |
## Known gaps in this persona
- [What the evidence does not yet cover, e.g. "no interviews from companies under 50 employees"]
- [Open question to validate in the next 10 calls]
## Change log
- [YYYY-MM-DD] — [what changed and the evidence that changed it]