---
title: "Foundation Persona: Workbench Marketing Detailed Blueprints"
description: "Workbench Blueprints marketing persona for enterprise economic buyer evaluation and ROI justification."
artifact: persona
version: "1.0"
repo_version: "2.5.0"
skill_version: "2.5.0"
created: 2026-03-02
status: sample
thread: workbench
context: Workbench Blueprints marketing persona for enterprise economic buyer evaluation and ROI justification
---
<!-- PM-Skills | https://github.com/product-on-purpose/pm-skills | Apache 2.0 -->

## Scenario

Workbench is advancing three pilot-to-enterprise conversations simultaneously, and in each case the internal champion has secured operational buy-in but the deal stalls at VP-level economic review. The common pattern: the VP asks for ROI justification, total cost of ownership relative to Confluence, and a vendor risk assessment that addresses contract terms, data residency, and migration timeline. The PMM needs a detailed marketing persona for the economic buyer to ground pricing-page messaging, enterprise proposal templates, and sales-team coaching on executive objection handling.

**Source Notes:**

- Gartner enterprise buying research identifies the economic buyer as the stakeholder most likely to extend deal cycles when ROI methodology is unclear or when vendor risk documentation is incomplete.
- Forrester Total Economic Impact methodology provides a widely recognized framework for enterprise software ROI justification that economic buyers expect and evaluate against.
- MEDDIC qualification methodology treats the economic buyer as a distinct persona from the champion, with separate objections, evaluation criteria, and proof requirements.

---

## Prompt

```text
foundation-persona marketing detailed

Rachel V. to PM Skills agent:

> I need a detailed marketing persona for the Workbench Blueprints economic
> buyer. This is the VP who approves budget and signs contracts, distinct
> from Sandra (our internal champion persona).
>
> Context:
> - 3 active pilot-to-enterprise conversations, all stalled at economic review
> - VP asks: ROI vs. Confluence, total cost of ownership, data residency,
>   migration timeline, contract flexibility
> - Need this persona for: pricing page messaging, enterprise proposal
>   templates, sales coaching on executive objection handling
> - Typical profile: VP of Operations or VP of IT, $500K-2M departmental
>   budget authority [fictional], 200-1000 employee companies
>
> Full detail please. This is the persona that determines whether deals
> close or die in procurement limbo.
```

---

## Output

# Persona Dossier: Catherine Hsu, The Executive Who Approves What She Cannot Undo (Marketing)

## Layer 1: Narrative Persona Dossier

## Executive summary
- Catherine does not evaluate products; she evaluates risk, cost trajectory, and reversibility.
- She approves budget when the downside of inaction exceeds the downside of commitment.
- ROI frameworks that rely on vendor-supplied assumptions lose credibility instantly because she has seen them before.
- She does not attend product demos; she reads the executive summary and the pricing page, then asks three questions.
- Her three questions are always variants of: What does this cost over three years? What happens if it fails? Can we get out?
- She needs materials that answer finance and legal questions without requiring a follow-up call.
- She is not hostile to the purchase; she is hostile to incomplete justification that exposes her to audit risk.
- Her approval timeline is a function of documentation completeness, not product enthusiasm.
- She will approve faster when the champion delivers pre-built answers to her known objections.
- The vendor she trusts is the one that makes her approval defensible to her board, not the one with the best demo.

### 1) Opening scene
Catherine receives a Slack message from Sandra, her Director of Operations, forwarding a Workbench Blueprints proposal. Sandra writes: "The pilot team loves it. Can we get this approved for the department?"

Catherine opens the proposal, scans to the pricing section, and finds a per-seat monthly rate with no total cost of ownership projection. She scrolls to the contract terms and finds no data residency clause. She checks for a Confluence migration timeline and finds a vague reference to "professional services."

She replies: "I need a three-year TCO comparison, a data residency statement, and a migration timeline with rollback options. Let's talk when those are ready."

The deal pauses for three weeks.

### 2) Who this person is under the surface
Catherine is VP of Operations at a 650-employee [fictional] professional services company. She manages a $1.2M [fictional] annual departmental technology budget and reports to the COO. She has approved and rejected dozens of software purchases and has learned that the cost of a bad purchase is not the subscription fee but rather the organizational disruption of switching again.

She is not risk-averse as a personality trait. She is risk-literate as a professional skill. She knows which risks are acceptable, which are containable, and which are unrecoverable.

### 3) How the buying story actually moves
Catherine enters the buying process late, after the champion and operational team have completed their evaluation. She does not re-evaluate the product; she evaluates the purchase. Her decision framework separates product value (which the champion owns) from purchase risk (which she owns). The deal moves forward when purchase-risk documentation is complete, not when product enthusiasm peaks.

Her evaluation is document-driven, not meeting-driven. She reads proposals, reviews contracts, and consults with IT and Legal. She takes one meeting with the vendor only if the documentation leaves a material question unanswered.

### 4) Trigger events that create urgency
- Trigger A: a compliance or operational failure makes the cost of the status quo visible to the board.
- Trigger B: the champion provides a complete proposal package that pre-answers finance, IT, and legal questions.
- Trigger C: a peer executive at another company shares a successful deployment, reducing perceived vendor risk.
- Trigger D: annual budget planning creates a window where new purchases can be justified as proactive rather than reactive.

### 5) Buying committee dynamics from her position
| Stakeholder | What Catherine asks them | What their answer means for the deal |
|---|---|---|
| IT/Security | "Is this safe to deploy in our environment?" | If IT raises unresolved concerns, Catherine blocks until documentation covers them. |
| Legal | "Can we exit this contract cleanly?" | If exit terms are unclear, Catherine requires contract negotiation before approval. |
| Finance/Procurement | "How does this compare to renewal of current tools?" | If TCO is ambiguous, Catherine requests a formal comparison before signing. |
| Champion (Sandra) | "Will your team actually use this?" | If adoption confidence is low, Catherine defers rather than risks shelf-ware. |

### 6) Objections and anxieties in executive review
- Objection 1: "What does this cost over three years?" This is not a negotiation tactic. She genuinely needs a multi-year cost projection that includes implementation, migration, training, and support tiers. She will build her own if the vendor does not provide one.
- Objection 2: "What happens if this does not work?" She wants to know the exit path: contract termination terms, data export guarantees, and migration rollback plan. A vendor that does not address this signals inexperience with enterprise procurement.
- Objection 3: "How does this compare to renewing Confluence?" She is not loyal to Confluence; she is loyal to known cost. A comparison that acknowledges Confluence's strengths while quantifying its governance gaps is more credible than one that dismisses it.
- Objection 4: "Where does our data live?" Data residency is a compliance requirement, not a preference. If the vendor cannot answer with specificity, the deal stops at Legal.

Proof needed to resolve objections:
- three-year TCO model with transparent assumptions she can modify
- contract flexibility summary: exit terms, data export SLA, and migration rollback commitment
- Confluence-to-Workbench comparison that includes governance and compliance gaps, not just features
- data residency statement with specific region, certification, and subprocessor transparency

### 7) Message architecture and channels
Core narrative:
- Workbench Blueprints reduces the organizational cost of document governance failures, not just the time cost of document creation.
- The purchase is defensible because the vendor provides transparent cost modeling, clean exit terms, and compliance-ready documentation.
- Approval is faster when the vendor equips the champion to answer executive questions before the executive asks them.

Message pillars:
- Cost transparency pillar: three-year TCO with editable assumptions; no hidden implementation fees
- Risk containment pillar: clean exit terms, data portability, migration rollback plan
- Governance pillar: compliance documentation, audit trail, data residency specifics

Channel guidance:
- Enterprise pricing page with TCO calculator and contract-terms summary
- Downloadable executive proposal template with pre-filled compliance sections
- One-page security and data residency fact sheet for IT and Legal forwarding

Messaging to avoid:
- Vendor-controlled ROI projections with optimistic assumptions she cannot verify
- "Schedule a call to discuss pricing" when pricing should be transparent on the page
- Feature-first positioning that ignores cost, risk, and governance concerns

### 8) Stage-by-stage executive engagement
| Stage | What she asks | What she distrusts | What wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proposal review | "Is this complete?" | Proposals that require follow-up calls to fill gaps | Self-contained proposal with TCO, terms, and compliance documentation |
| Stakeholder consultation | "What did IT and Legal say?" | Champions who bypass IT and Legal to accelerate | Pre-built stakeholder FAQ that the champion delivers proactively |
| Cost comparison | "How does this compare to what we have?" | Comparisons that ignore switching costs | Honest comparison that includes Confluence strengths and governance gaps |
| Contract negotiation | "Can we get out if this fails?" | Long-term lock-in without exit clarity | Standard contract with annual exit option and data export SLA |
| Final approval | "Is this defensible to the board?" | Purchases that rely on enthusiasm rather than documentation | Board-ready summary with quantified cost avoidance and compliance coverage |

### 9) If this persona wins, what changes?
Workbench stops losing deals in the gap between operational buy-in and executive approval. Enterprise proposals become self-contained approval packages that pre-answer finance, IT, and legal objections. Sales coaching shifts from "convince the VP" to "equip the champion to satisfy the VP."

---

## Layer 2: Operational Appendix

### A) Request Context
- **Mode:** marketing
- **Mode alias used:** none
- **Detail profile:** detailed
- **Artifact or task context:** Blueprints enterprise economic buyer evaluation and ROI justification
- **Domain context:** enterprise collaboration software with multi-stakeholder procurement process

### B) Depth Guidance
- **Product detailed:** ~350-900 lines (soft target)
- **Marketing detailed:** ~340-850 lines (soft target)
- **Brief profile (either mode):** ~170-360 lines (soft target)
- **Brief profile:** prioritize decision snapshot and immediate actions
- **Detailed profile:** include richer tradeoffs, constraints, and edge conditions
- **If user asks comprehensive/best-in-class:** target upper half of selected range

### C) Completeness Floors (Soft)
- **Product detailed:** 8+ substantive sections, 2+ tables/matrices, 5+ scenario-tailoring entries
- **Marketing detailed:** 8+ substantive sections, 2+ tables/matrices, 4+ scenario-tailoring entries
- **Brief profile:** 6-10 executive-summary bullets and 3+ scenario-tailoring entries
- **All outputs:** sections must be decision-usable; do not ship placeholder-level bullets

### D) Includes / Excludes
- **Includes:** executive cost evaluation, ROI justification methodology, contract and exit-term objections, data residency requirements, Confluence comparison framing, champion-to-executive handoff materials
- **Excludes:** end-user product design decisions, operational workflow UX, consumer acquisition strategy

### E) Scenario tailoring
- For `launch-checklist`: verify enterprise pricing page, TCO calculator, contract-terms summary, data residency fact sheet, and downloadable proposal template are complete before GTM launch.
- For `release-notes`: frame Blueprints updates in governance and compliance terms that support executive justification, not feature-list formats.
- For GTM planning: separate champion-enablement materials from executive-approval materials; both are needed but serve different stakeholders.
- For sales enablement: coach sales team on economic-buyer objection handling as a distinct conversation from champion product discussions.
- For competitive positioning: build Confluence comparison that acknowledges strengths while quantifying governance gaps, not a feature-superiority argument.

### F) When not to use this persona
- Product UX design for document authors and reviewers
- Consumer self-serve acquisition and onboarding
- Internal champion enablement (use Sandra champion persona instead)

### G) Assumptions and Confidence
- **Key assumptions:**
  - The economic buyer is the primary deal-velocity bottleneck, not the champion or the operational team.
  - Document completeness determines approval timeline more than product enthusiasm.
  - TCO transparency and exit-term clarity are the two highest-leverage objection resolutions.
  - The economic buyer reads proposals and pricing pages but rarely attends product demos.
- **Confidence:** Medium
- **Confidence rationale:** Pattern aligns strongly with enterprise buying research and current pipeline stall data, but economic-buyer objection frequency has been observed in only three active deals and has not been validated at pipeline scale.

## Evidence Trail

### User-provided inputs
| ID | Resource | Type | Used for | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| U1 | Workbench pipeline stall data at VP economic review stage | user prompt | opening scene and objection framing | 3 active deals noted |
| U2 | VP profile and budget authority context | user prompt | persona sizing and decision-model framing | budget figures marked `[fictional]` |
| U3 | Request for detailed economic-buyer marketing persona | user prompt | depth profile and sales-enablement orientation | distinct from Sandra champion persona |

### LLM-discovered references
| ID | Resource | Type | Access method | Used for | Reliability notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L1 | Gartner enterprise buying research | research summary | browse/search | economic buyer as deal-cycle extender | widely used enterprise buying model |
| L2 | Forrester Total Economic Impact methodology | methodology | browse/search | ROI justification framework expectations | standard enterprise evaluation tool |
| L3 | MEDDIC qualification methodology | methodology | browse/search | economic buyer as distinct persona from champion | standard enterprise sales framework |

### Evidence gaps and follow-up questions
| Gap ID | Missing support | Impacted claims/sections | Confidence impact | Follow-up question |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| G1 | Economic-buyer objection frequency ranked by deal stage | objection prioritization and material sequencing | Medium | Which objection most frequently extends deal cycles beyond 90 days? |
| G2 | TCO calculator usage and completion-to-approval correlation | pricing-page design confidence | Medium | Do enterprise prospects who complete the TCO calculator approve faster than those who do not? |
| G3 | Contract-term negotiation patterns by company size | exit-term messaging calibration | Medium | Which contract terms generate the most negotiation friction in the 200-1000 employee segment? |

### Claim mapping
| Claim ID | Claim summary | Evidence IDs | Confidence | Assumptions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Document completeness determines approval timeline more than product fit | U1, U3, L1, L3 | Medium | economic buyer delegates product evaluation and owns purchase-risk evaluation |
| C2 | TCO transparency is the highest-leverage objection resolution | U1, U2, L1, L2 | Medium | economic buyers build their own cost models when vendors do not provide them |
| C3 | Exit-term clarity reduces deal-cycle extension at the contract stage | U1, L1, L3 | Medium | lock-in anxiety is a real concern, not a negotiation tactic |
| C4 | Self-contained proposals close faster than proposals that require follow-up | U1, U3, L2, L3 | Medium | economic buyers prefer document-driven evaluation over meeting-driven evaluation |
