What are Personas & why are they so useful?

Personas are title sets for the top types of people or roles you prospect for in your target accounts, so that you can send targeted messaging about your value proposition custom made for the specific type of person you're speaking to in your target account. For example, CEO's tend to have different priorities than a CTO or Head of HR or Office Manager. So prospecting for these stakeholders intentionally and sending them into sequences written to address their individual priorities will increase your success enabling each contact with the information they need to commit to your offering. 

Instead of having to remember the various key terms in a single title set (i.e. Human Resources, Talent, Talent Management, Happiness, People, HR, and so forth), you can create and save comprehensive personas to use and re-use in your prospecting filters, standardizing your sales process and enabling your reps (and yourself) to have transparency into who your team is and is not reaching in target accounts. 

How to Build Personas that give you the most reach

1. Research 

Know what key terms most often apply to the roles in your target persona. For example, if you're looking for HR leaders there are various different key terms used in titles for this type of persona e.g. Human Resources, Talent, Talent Management, Happiness, People, HR, and so forth. So, do 2-5 minutes of research on titles in that specific vertical and write them down. 

2. Enter keywords into your title search

Navigate to the Prospect page and open your Title & Seniority filter

Use those keywords in your title search – only use the key term (not the entire title) in the title search. For example, 
Good > Human Resources
Bad > Human Resources Manager or Head of Human Resources
Not EVERYONE will have "Head of" or "Manager" in their title, so use the key terms instead

3. Enter acronyms into your title search

Enter your acronyms, too, especially if this is a very specialized role you're prospecting into. Enter for example, "hr" and "chro."

4. Select seniorities that apply

Now that you've specified the key terms to reveal in your search, you can refine that search by selecting for your seniorities – instead of getting every contact with those key terms, you can request the contact with the seniority to make buying decisions. 

5. Exclude terms that would be a bad fit

A CSO could be a Chief Security Officer OR a Chief Sales Officer. Exclude the term (security or sales, for example) that does not fit for your purposes. To avoid accidentally getting the wrong type of person with your key terms in your target accounts, you can exclude common pitfalls, like the one above, so you don't find and request the wrong person to contact. 

Then, you're ready to click save and name your persona.

Navigate to the Persona filter and check the box when you want to prospect in a target. You'll easily be prospecting all the appropriate stakeholders in your target accounts.

For a broader guide on Prospecting, you can review this tutorial video to review how to use all the filters in the Prospect page.