Templates / Buyer persona
Buyer persona template
Every field worth filling in, and one persona filled in all the way through, so you can see the difference between a real answer and a placeholder.
A persona is only useful if it changes what you write. Most personas do not, because they are full of demographics nobody acts on and adjectives anyone could claim.
The fields below are chosen for one reason: each one changes a decision. What you write, where you put it, which objection you handle first, and which people you deliberately do not chase.
Every field has an evidence column. If you cannot say where an answer came from, mark it as a guess and go find out. A persona built entirely from guesses is a mood board.
How to use it
- 01Interview five people who match the persona before you fill anything in. Customers if you have them, target buyers if you do not.
- 02Fill the identity and context blocks from what people told you, using their phrasing, not your marketing words.
- 03Mark every field with a source: interview, sales call, support ticket, survey, analytics, or guess. Leave the word guess visible so it stays uncomfortable.
- 04Complete the words they use block by copying exact phrases from calls and tickets. This is the block that changes your headlines fastest.
- 05Fill the disqualifiers block honestly. Naming who this is not for is what makes the rest of the persona usable.
- 06Share it as one page. If it needs a deck, nobody will open it again after the meeting where you presented it.
- 07Re-read it every quarter and change one thing. A persona that has not changed in a year is not being used.
The template
Block 1. Identity
Enough to picture one person. Stop when you could recognize them on a call.
Persona name: [ROLE BASED NICKNAME, for example Ops Lead Olivia]
Job title, as it appears on their profile: [TITLE]
Other titles this same person goes by: [TITLE], [TITLE]
Company size: [HEADCOUNT RANGE]
Industry or vertical: [INDUSTRY]
Reports to: [WHO]
Manages: [HOW MANY PEOPLE, OR NONE]
How long in this role: [RANGE]
Evidence: [interview / sales call / support ticket / survey / analytics / guess]
Block 2. The job they are actually doing
Not their job description. What lands on them on a Tuesday.
What a normal week looks like: [3 to 4 recurring responsibilities]
What they are measured on: [THE NUMBER OR OUTCOME THEIR BOSS ASKS ABOUT]
What makes a week a good week for them: [ONE SENTENCE IN THEIR WORDS]
Tools they open every day: [TOOL], [TOOL], [TOOL]
Where your product would sit in that stack: [BEFORE / AFTER / REPLACING WHICH TOOL]
Who else touches this decision: [ROLES]
Evidence: [source]
Block 3. Goals and pressures
Goals are what they want. Pressures are what happens if they do not get it.
Goal this quarter: [SPECIFIC, THEIRS, NOT YOURS]
Goal this year: [SPECIFIC]
What happens to them personally if they hit it: [PROMOTION, BUDGET, QUIET LIFE]
What happens if they miss it: [THE REAL CONSEQUENCE]
The pressure they will not say out loud: [ONE LINE]
Evidence: [source]
Block 4. Pains, in their words
Quote them. Paraphrasing is where personas start sounding like brochures.
Pain 1: [EXACT PHRASE FROM AN INTERVIEW OR TICKET]
What they currently do about it: [THE WORKAROUND]
What that workaround costs: [HOURS, MONEY, RISK]
Pain 2: [EXACT PHRASE]
Current workaround: [WHAT THEY DO]
Pain 3: [EXACT PHRASE]
Current workaround: [WHAT THEY DO]
The pain they will pay to remove first: [WHICH ONE, AND HOW YOU KNOW]
Evidence: [source]
Block 5. How they buy
This block decides your sales copy more than any other.
Who finds the tool: [THIS PERSONA / SOMEONE ELSE]
Who signs off: [ROLE, AND AT WHAT SPEND THRESHOLD]
Budget they control without asking: [AMOUNT]
Typical time from first look to decision: [RANGE]
What they need to see before a demo: [PRICING, SCREENSHOTS, A TEMPLATE, SECURITY DOC]
First objection, every time: [THE ONE THEY OPEN WITH]
The objection that actually kills deals: [THE QUIET ONE]
What they compare you against: [ALTERNATIVE, INCLUDING DOING NOTHING AND DOING IT IN A SPREADSHEET]
Evidence: [source]
Block 6. Words they use
Copy exact phrases from calls, tickets and reviews. This block rewrites your headlines.
What they call the problem: [PHRASE]
What they call the category: [PHRASE]
What they type into a search box: [PHRASE], [PHRASE]
Words that make them switch off: [JARGON THEY HATE]
Words they use that we do not: [PHRASE], [PHRASE]
Evidence: [source]
Block 7. Where they actually are
Only list places you have seen them, not places their demographic supposedly hangs out.
Communities and forums: [NAME], [NAME]
Newsletters they read: [NAME]
Events they attend: [NAME]
Who they trust for recommendations: [ROLE OR COMMUNITY]
Where they last found a tool like yours: [CHANNEL, from an interview answer]
Evidence: [source]
Block 8. Not this person
The block most templates skip. It is the one that saves the most money.
Company size that is wrong for us: [RANGE, AND WHY]
Role that looks similar but is not our buyer: [TITLE, AND THE TELL]
Situation where we should say no: [SITUATION]
Signal on a call that means walk away: [SPECIFIC SIGNAL]
Worked example: Ops Lead Olivia, a 20 person creative agency
Generic example for a made up project management app. Yours should be this specific.
Persona name: Ops Lead Olivia
Job title: Operations Manager. Also seen as Studio Manager, Head of Delivery.
Company size: 12 to 30 people. Industry: creative and marketing agencies.
Reports to: the founder. Manages: two project coordinators.
In role: 2 to 4 years, usually promoted from account management.
Normal week: staffing the next two weeks, unblocking three late projects, building the monthly client reports, sitting in every kickoff.
Measured on: projects delivered on budget, and whether the founder has to get involved.
A good week: nobody escalated anything to the founder.
Tools open daily: email, a spreadsheet of who is on what, a chat tool, a time tracker nobody fills in on time.
Where we would sit: replacing the staffing spreadsheet, next to the time tracker.
Goal this quarter: stop the Friday scramble to work out who is free on Monday.
Miss it and: the founder starts doing resourcing again, which reads as Olivia not coping.
Pain 1, her words: I do not find out a project is late until the client tells me.
Workaround: a Friday round of chat messages asking everyone for status. Costs about half a day a week and it is always out of date by Monday.
Pain 2, her words: everyone tracks time in a different way so the reports never add up.
Workaround: she fixes the numbers by hand before sending them.
Pain 3, her words: I cannot say yes to new work with any confidence because I do not know what we actually have free.
Pays to fix first: pain 1. It is the one that reaches the founder.
Who finds the tool: Olivia. Who signs off: the founder, above about the price of a monthly subscription she can expense.
Time to decision: two to six weeks, faster if a project has just gone wrong.
Needs before a demo: pricing on the site, screenshots of the actual product, and something she can try without a call.
First objection: my team will not use another tool.
The objection that kills it: nobody wants to migrate the spreadsheet.
Compared against: staying on the spreadsheet, which is the real competitor.
Calls the problem: resourcing. Types into search: agency resource planning, who is working on what template.
Switches off at: synergy, platform, solution, end to end.
Found in: two agency owner communities, one operations newsletter, and recommendations from other agency ops people.
Not this person: agencies under five people, where the founder does resourcing in their head and will not pay to change that. In house marketing teams, which look similar but have no client billing.
Evidence log. Fill this in as you go.
One line per claim you made above. If a line says guess, that is your research to do list.
Claim: [WHAT YOU WROTE] | Source: [interview with 3 customers, Mar 2026] | Confidence: [high / medium / guess]
Claim: [WHAT YOU WROTE] | Source: [12 support tickets tagged onboarding] | Confidence: [high]
Claim: [WHAT YOU WROTE] | Source: [guess] | Confidence: [guess] | Next step: [ask on the next five sales calls]
Where this usually goes wrong
- Filling in a stock photo, an age and a favorite coffee order. None of those change a sentence you write. Cut them and spend the time on the words they use block.
- Writing the pains in your own marketing language. If the persona says lacks visibility into resourcing rather than I find out things are late from the client, you have lost the only thing that made it useful.
- Building four personas at once before validating one. Do one properly, use it for a quarter, then add the second.
- Skipping the not this person block, then spending three months of sales time on companies you were never going to serve well.
- Treating it as finished. A persona is a working document. If nothing in it has changed after a year of customer calls, nobody is reading it.
Common questions
How many buyer personas should we have?
One per genuinely different buying situation, and most companies have fewer than they think. If two personas would read the same landing page and have the same objections, they are one persona.
How many interviews do I need before this is trustworthy?
Five conversations gets you the shape. Ten gets you the language. What matters more than the count is that they are real conversations rather than a survey, because the exact phrasing is the part you cannot get from a form.
What if we have no customers yet?
Interview the people you want as customers, and mark every field as a guess or as an interview finding. A pre launch persona is legitimate as long as it does not pretend to be built on usage data you do not have.
Should the persona include a name and a photo?
A role based nickname helps people refer to it in meetings. A stock photo does not, and it quietly pushes teams toward assumptions about age and gender that never came out of an interview.
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