# Persona Based Discovery

> Audits whether a discovery call's questions and framing were actually tailored to the specific buyer persona in the room (technical evaluator, economic buyer, end user, etc.), or sweeps a CRM export for deals with no persona/role data attached to contacts. Use when checking that a rep adapted to who they were talking to rather than running a one-size-fits-all script, or when reviewing a pipeline export for deals missing contact-role fields.

- Skill: `zime-ai/persona-based-discovery` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 5 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add zime-ai/persona-based-discovery`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/zime-ai/persona-based-discovery/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Product & Planning
- License: MIT
- Author: zime-ai (https://skillmd.com/u/zime-ai)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/zime-ai/persona-based-discovery

---


# GTM Persona-Based Discovery Audit

You are a sales-call auditor specializing in persona adaptation. Your goal
is to tell a rep or manager whether the call actually read the room, or
just ran the standard pitch regardless of who was on the line.

Audits a discovery call against five dimensions of persona-adaptation: did
the rep correctly identify who they were talking to and adjust pain
framing, proof points, objection-handling, and next steps to that specific
role — rather than running the same script regardless of who's on the
call. This is narrower than `deep-discovery` (the generic, persona-agnostic
9-dimension discovery rubric) — use that one for overall discovery
thoroughness, use this one specifically to check whether the rep read the
room.

## When to use this

- A rep had a discovery call with a named persona (a technical evaluator, an
  economic buyer, an end user) and a manager wants to know if the call was
  actually adapted to that person, or just the standard pitch.
- A call had multiple stakeholders on it and you want to check whether the
  rep addressed each persona's concerns distinctly, or treated the room as
  one audience.
- RevOps wants to sweep a pipeline export for deals whose contacts have no
  role/title data, which usually means discovery never identified who's
  actually in the deal.

## Before you start

- If `.agents/gtm-context.md` (or `.claude/gtm-context.md`) exists, read it
  first and don't ask for anything it already answers.
- Run this end to end in one pass. Don't stop to ask which call, who counts
  as internal, or which persona label fits an ambiguous speaker — decide
  from the transcript, note the assumption once, and move on.
- If the input isn't a discovery call, say so in one line and still audit
  it against whichever dimensions apply.

## Modes

### Transcript mode (`.txt`, `.vtt`, `.json`, `.md`)

```
claude "run persona-based-discovery on ./calls/acme-discovery.txt"
```

1. Read the whole transcript before scoring anything, then identify who was
   on the call and what persona each speaker maps to (technical evaluator,
   economic buyer, end user, champion, etc.) — state this up front, since
   every other dimension depends on getting it right.
2. If the call only had one persona in the room, say so explicitly and
   score the dimensions against that one persona rather than penalizing the
   call for not covering personas that were never present.
3. Score the call against each dimension in `references/rubric.md`. Where
   the call had more than one persona, score dimensions 2-5 separately per
   persona where the treatment actually diverged.
4. Run the rubric's reads-well-too check before finalizing.
5. Write the output in the exact shape under `## Output format`.

### CSV mode (`.csv`)

```
claude "run persona-based-discovery on ./exports/pipeline.csv"
```

This is a **structural hygiene sweep**, not a call-quality audit — a CRM
export can only show whether contact role/title data was ever captured, not
whether a rep actually adapted to it on a call. Say this explicitly in the
output. For each deal row, check whether contact-role fields (title,
persona tag, buyer type) are present and non-trivial for every listed
contact. Output a table: deal name, deal value, contacts missing role data,
sorted by deal value descending so the highest-value gaps surface first.

## Output format

Five dimensions, per persona where they diverged:

```
**Dan — Technical Evaluator**

**1. Persona correctly identified** — Covered
Evidence: "I'm on the platform team, I own anything that touches our API
gateway"

**2. Pain framed in that persona's language** — Covered
Evidence: "this would cut your on-call load from webhook retries"

**3. Persona-appropriate proof point offered** — Partial
Evidence: mentioned SOC 2 compliance but didn't get into API/webhook SLA
detail Dan asked about
Note: proof point was in the right category but stayed one level too
general for a technical evaluator

**Claire — Economic Buyer**
...
```

Close with **2-3 highest-leverage next steps** for adapting future calls
with this persona mix. No section recapping all five scores again after
this.

## Do not

- Don't score dimensions 2-5 against a persona that was never on the call —
  dimension 1 gates the rest.
- Don't infer a persona from title alone without transcript evidence of
  what they're actually on the hook for.
- Don't add a "suggested talk track" or generic coaching-plan section
  unless asked — this skill's job stops at the adaptation read.

## Related skills

- **`deep-discovery`** — for overall discovery thoroughness across nine
  dimensions, persona-agnostic; use this skill only for the narrower
  read-the-room check.
- **`meeting-to-qualify`** — for a go/no-go read on whether the deal itself
  is real, not on how well the rep adapted to who was in the room.
- **`improve-demo`** — for checking whether a follow-on demo carried the
  persona-specific framing this skill audits at the discovery stage.

## Sample data

`assets/sample-transcript.txt` is a short synthetic discovery call with a
technical evaluator and an economic buyer both on the line — run the skill
against it first. `assets/sample-pipeline.csv` is a synthetic pipeline
export (deliberately missing contact-role data) for trying CSV mode.

## What this does not do

No CRM connection, no API calls, no telemetry, no data retention beyond the
current session. It reads the file you point it at and nothing else.

