Personas

Salesably has two kinds of personas, and which one a scenario uses depends on who the AI is playing.

• Buyer personas are the customers your reps sell to. They power Discovery, Messaging / Pitch, Outbound & Inbound, Objections, and Plays, where the AI plays the buyer and the human is the salesperson.
• Other personas are the salespeople and colleagues a manager coaches. They power the Management module, where the AI plays a member of the team and the human is the manager. They are covered in the last section of this page and only appear when the Management module is enabled.

Most of this page is about buyer personas, since they drive five of the six scenario types.

Why buyer personas matter

A buyer persona is more than a reference document. It is the brain behind the AI customer. When a salesperson runs a Discovery call, fields an objection, or delivers a pitch, the persona's pain points, goals, decision criteria, and hidden concerns shape what the AI customer says, how skeptical it is, and what it cares about.

That means persona quality directly drives practice quality. A thin persona produces a generic, easy customer. A detailed, opinionated persona produces a realistic one who pushes back, asks hard questions, and rewards reps who do real discovery.

• Realistic practice. Reps rehearse against the buyers they will meet, not a generic stand-in.
• Shared language. Your whole team aligns on who the customer is, what keeps them up at night, and what wins them over.
• Faster onboarding. New hires meet every buyer type they will encounter before they ever talk to a live prospect.
• Reusable across modules. One buyer persona can anchor Discovery, Pitch, Objections, Plays, and Outbound & Inbound scenarios, so the same buyer shows up consistently across your training.

The Buyer personas page is your central library. Everything you build here becomes available when you create scenarios and assignments in other modules.

To open the library

1. Open the Admin menu and go to Studio Settings.
2. In the left sidebar under Module configuration, choose Personas.

What the library shows

Personas are split into two groups: Active personas (in use) and Archived personas (set aside but preserved). Each row shows the avatar, persona name, Class (the job title or role), and any Labels you have applied.

How to organize it

• Sort by lets you order the list by Custom order, Class, Name, or Date created (newest or oldest).
• Custom order is drag-and-drop. Use the handle on the left of each row to set the exact order reps and admins see. This only applies when Sort by is set to Custom order.
• Filter by label narrows the list to personas carrying the labels you select, which is useful once your library grows across segments, industries, or regions.

Per-persona actions

Each row has Edit, Duplicate, and Delete. Use Add persona (top right) to create a new one, and Suggest with AI to have Salesably propose buyer types you may be missing based on what is already in your studio.

A good persona gives the AI customer enough to reason like a real buyer. You do not have to fill every field, but the more you describe their world (their role, what is in their way, what they are trying to achieve, and what would make them say yes) the more challenging and useful your simulations become.

Click Add persona and pick how you want to start. You can edit every detail afterward regardless of the method you choose.

Four ways to start

• Start from scratch. Open a blank form and fill it in yourself. Best when you know the buyer well and want full control.
• Generate with AI. Enter a job title or role (and optionally a company name to tailor it), and Salesably drafts a complete persona for you to refine. The fastest way to get a solid first draft.
• Import from LinkedIn. Paste a public LinkedIn profile URL and Salesably populates the persona from that profile. Useful for modeling a real prospect or a representative buyer.
• Import a JSON file. Upload a persona you exported earlier (see Importing and Exporting Personas) to restore or copy it.

The fields that matter most

When you fill out the form, these are the choices that shape the practice experience:

• Job title or role (Class). Who this buyer is. It anchors the persona and groups it in the library.
• Voice (required). The voice the AI customer speaks with during spoken simulations. Use the preview button to hear it before saving. A persona cannot be saved without one.
• Name and Avatar. Give the buyer a name and a face so reps engage with a person, not a label. You can generate a tailored headshot or pick a stock avatar.
• Profile and motivation. Role and influence, backstory, decision criteria, the path to power and influence, and hidden concerns. This is the narrative the AI reasons from. Hidden concerns are especially powerful: they are the things the buyer will not volunteer, so a rep has to earn them through good discovery.
• Challenges and goals. The pain points, risks, and blockers the buyer faces, plus the objectives and goals they are chasing. These give the AI customer something real to push on.
• Persona questions. Common questions this buyer asks and the answers they expect, so the AI can respond in character.
• Discovery questions. Questions a rep should be asking this buyer, which can be surfaced as practice targets.
• Messaging and context. Where this buyer gets trusted information, the key messages that resonate, and industry-specific challenges.
• Labels. Tags for filtering and organizing the library by segment, industry, region, or anything else you choose.

When the form looks right, click Create persona.

A note on gender. When you generate a headshot you can choose a gender so the image matches the persona, but gender is not a saved persona field. It only influences image generation at the moment you create the picture.

Personas are living profiles. As you learn more from real calls (a new objection, a sharper sense of what this buyer values, a better backstory) update the persona so every future simulation reflects it.

To edit a persona

1. On the Buyer personas page, find the persona and click Edit.
2. Update any fields in the form.
3. Click Save changes.

Helpful tools on the edit page

• Smart persona builder. An AI assistant that can flesh out or rewrite this persona from a source you provide (studio content, an uploaded document, a website URL, or pasted text). Review the draft before applying it.
• Assignments using this persona. If the persona is already used in assignments, they are listed here so you can see the impact of your edits and jump straight to any scenario.

Changes apply going forward to new simulations. They do not alter results reps have already completed.

Archiving retires a persona from active use without destroying it or its history. Reach for it when a buyer type is no longer a focus but you may want it back, or when a persona is tied to existing assignments and results that you do not want to lose.

To archive a persona

1. Open the persona's Edit page.
2. Turn on the Archive switch near the top right.

The persona moves to the Archived personas group at the bottom of the library and is marked with an Archived badge, so it stays out of the way of day-to-day work.

To restore a persona

1. Find it in the Archived personas group and click Edit.
2. Turn the Archive switch back off to return it to active use.

Archived personas keep all of their linked assignments, results, and other related records intact. Archiving is the safe alternative to deletion whenever a persona has history worth preserving.

Duplicating is the fast way to build a family of related buyers. When two personas share most of their world but differ in one or two dimensions (a CFO versus a VP of Finance, or the same role across two industries) start from a copy instead of a blank form.

To duplicate a persona

1. On the Buyer personas page, click the Duplicate (copy) icon in the persona's row.
2. Salesably creates a copy and opens it in the edit form.
3. Adjust the fields that should differ from the original.
4. Click Save changes.

This keeps your library internally consistent: shared messaging and context stay aligned across variants, while you change only what truly sets each buyer apart.

Deletion permanently removes a persona. Because personas can be wired into assignments and results, Salesably protects you from breaking that history.

What happens when you delete

1. On the Buyer personas page, click the Delete (trash) icon in the persona's row.
2. Salesably checks what the persona is linked to and shows you the result in the confirmation dialog.

• If the persona is linked to assignments or other records, it cannot be deleted. The dialog lists the linked assignments and offers to Archive it instead, which hides it from active use while preserving everything.
• If the persona has no blocking links, you can delete it permanently. The dialog warns you of any persona-specific records (such as FAQ entries) that will be removed with it. This cannot be undone.

When in doubt, archive. Deletion is only for personas you are certain you will never need again and that carry no history worth keeping.

Import and export let you move a persona between studios or keep a backup outside the app. A persona is exported as a single JSON file that captures its full definition.

To export a persona

1. Open the persona's Edit page.
2. Open the Import/Export dropdown near the top right.
3. Choose Export JSON. The file downloads to your computer.

To import a persona

You can import into a new persona or an existing one.

• On the New persona page, choose Import a JSON file and upload the file (click to browse or drag and drop).
• On an existing persona's Edit page, open the Import/Export dropdown and choose Import JSON.

The form fills in with the imported details. Imported personas come in as new entries in the current studio (identifiers from the source are not carried over), so review the fields and then click Create persona or Save changes. This is the simplest way to share a well-built persona with another studio without rebuilding it by hand.

Management scenarios flip the usual roles: the human is the manager and the AI plays a member of their team. That calls for a different kind of profile, so those scenarios use Other personas (also called seller personas) instead of buyer personas.

Where a buyer persona models a customer's needs and buying psychology, an Other persona models a colleague's working and coaching psychology: their experience, what motivates them, how they take feedback, and where they need to grow. That is what lets the AI play a believable rep in a one-on-one or a performance conversation, including how they react when a manager pushes.

Other personas only appear when the Management module is enabled. You will find them under Module configuration > Other Personas (/workspaces/admin/data/seller-personas).

What an Other persona captures

• The basics: name, job title, voice, and avatar, just like a buyer persona.
• Sales background: years in sales, experience, strongest skills, and development areas.
• What drives them: primary motivators, top personal goals, and where they draw energy.
• Working style: DISC style, domain knowledge, key stress triggers, resilience, and how coachable they are.

Together these decide how the AI rep behaves when the manager pushes: whether they get defensive, deflect, or genuinely engage, and what kind of coaching lands.

Creating one

On the Other Personas page, click Create New Persona and choose how to start:

• Start from scratch for full control.
• Generate with AI by describing the rep you want.
• Import from LinkedIn to base it on a real profile.

You then attach an Other persona to a Management scenario, which is how the AI knows who the manager is sitting across from.

Buyer vs Other at a glance

	Buyer personas	Other personas
Who the AI plays	A customer	A salesperson or colleague
Used in	Discovery, Messaging / Pitch, Outbound & Inbound, Objections, Plays	Management
Models	Buying needs, pain, decision criteria	Sales psychology, coachability, growth areas
The human is	The salesperson	The manager