If a sales rep is speaking with a specific person and discovers that the person doesn’t exactly match their assigned persona, what should the sales rep do?

  • Rely on the information in the persona and ignore apparent differences. Personas often contain information that people don’t know about themselves and should be trusted over anything the individual person says.
  • Focus on serving the person using the information they provide even if it doesn’t match the persona. If the same discrepancy comes up repeatedly, the persona might need to be updated.
  • Send the person back to marketing. Marketing will nurture the person until they’re more qualified for sales outreach and match their persona more closely.
  • Create a new persona. In order for personas to be as accurate as possible, your team may need to have almost as many personas as you have prospects, leads, and customers.