Why ICP and Persona Clarity Drives Sales Performance with Eric Erston

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: Revenue Builders
Episode: Why ICP and Persona Clarity Drives Sales Performance with Eric Erston
Host(s): John McMahon, John Kaplan
Guest: Eric Erston (CRO of Regscale)
Date: March 15, 2026

This episode explores how precise understanding of Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) and Persona clarity directly impacts B2B sales performance. The discussion focuses on the traits and behaviors of top-performing sales teams, the evolution in understanding buyer personas, and the practical methods for mapping and leveraging this knowledge in sales strategy.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Critical Importance of Focus

• Top Performers are Always Focused (00:29)
  • Eric Erston opens by emphasizing focus as the distinguishing trait of high-performing sales teams:

    “Top performers are always focused. And that sounds so obvious, but lots of sales teams aren’t focused. Focused on what they sell, focused on what their weekly metrics are supposed to be, their monthly metrics, quarterly metrics, and really focus just around what does success look like.” (Eric Erston, 00:29)

  • He contrasts an acquired, highly disciplined team ("laser focused") against less structured organizations, illustrating the clear benefits of well-defined goals and processes.

Strategic Time Management in Sales

• Where to Spend (or Not Spend) Time (01:29)
  • John Kaplan prompts Eric to clarify how productive teams allocate their time:

    “What really hit me...was knowing where to spend your time and where not to spend your time.” (John Kaplan, 01:29)

  • Eric replies that successful qualification hinges on understanding both obvious sales factors (budget, timeframe, pain) and nuanced ICP/persona factors:

    “In order to know how to qualify out, we’ve got to know what success is…we got to understand a lot more about the ideal company profile and then the ideal contact themselves. So the human and the Persona profile.” (Eric Erston, 01:50)

  • He admits undervaluing the nuances of persona roles early in his career, assuming that accessing a “CISO” always meant a good fit.

Understanding the Modern Persona

• Beyond Surface-Level Persona Profiling (03:36)

  • Kaplan points out that while many teams define personas at a basic level, they rarely dig deeper into motivations and the underlying human factors:

    “We know how they’re measured typically, but we never go any deeper than that.” (John Kaplan, 03:36)

• Tech-Driven Persona Research (04:08)

  • Kaplan and Erston discuss advances in tooling and online research, including LinkedIn and panel appearances, to better understand a stakeholder's unique interests and values:

    “These days it’s so easy to Google, especially a C level person...and checking their LinkedIn and with industry organizations that they join, you can start to put a little bit of a profile together of who that person is and what excites them and what doesn’t.” (John Kaplan, 04:08)

  • Erston agrees and hints at modern sales technologies that provide deeper insights:

    “Some of the tooling that’s available to us that wasn’t available even 10 years ago…” (Eric Erston, 04:43)

Work Persona vs. Human Persona

• The Layered Persona: Role and Human (05:12)

  • John McMahon calls attention to the need for integrating “work persona” (how someone functions in their role) with “human persona” (their broader motivations):

    “There is a work Persona and a role Persona and there are certain value drivers and things like that, Eric, that I’d like you to comment on.” (John McMahon, 05:12)

  • Eric reinforces that early experience relied on intuition and hustle, but scaling a team requires tangible frameworks for persona understanding—so processes and teaching become essential:

    “All of a sudden you get given a budget and a whole bunch of headcount...so how do I get everybody else doing what I thought I was pretty good at myself? And that’s where the...appreciation of the importance of understanding all these nuances come to be.” (Eric Erston, 06:00)

Key Takeaways

• ICP and Persona Clarity Are Essential for Consistent Sales Success
• High-Performing Teams Are Disciplined and Hyper-Focused
• Buyer Personas Should Go Beyond Demographics—Understand Motivations, Influences, and Unique Value Drivers
• Modern Tools Allow More Robust Persona Research—Use Them
• Translating Individual Seller Instinct Into Team Strategy Is Key for Scale

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Top performers are always focused...they knew what good looked like and they knew where to spend their time and where not to spend their time.” (Eric Erston, 00:29)
• “In order to know how to qualify out, we’ve got to know what success is and what makes our deployments and our sales processes work really, really well...the Ideal Company Profile and then the ideal contact themselves...the human and the Persona profile.” (Eric Erston, 01:50)
• “I thought, oh, if you get to an exec...if you get to the CISO, you’re good. Well, maybe...sometimes the CISO doesn’t own what you’re selling...they may not be able to just make a decision.” (Eric Erston, 02:30)
• “These days it’s so easy to Google, especially a C level person...you can start to put a profile together of who that person is and what excites them.” (John Kaplan, 04:08)
• “That’s where the appreciation of the importance of understanding all these nuances come to be.” (Eric Erston, 06:00)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:29 — Defining the focus of top performers and disciplined teams
• 01:29 — Productive teams: where to spend/not spend time and why
• 03:36 — Moving beyond shallow ICP/persona profiling
• 04:08 — How modern research tools enhance persona development
• 05:12 — Distinguishing “work persona” vs. “human persona” in sales
• 06:00 — Scaling sales: teaching persona clarity across the team

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Conclusion

This episode provides practical, experience-based strategies and perspectives from seasoned CRO Eric Erston, urging sales leaders to invest in a disciplined, nuanced understanding of both ICP and persona. The blended focus on both technological enablement and “human-first” research stands out as a key element driving modern sales performance.

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Transcript

[John McMahon]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast with John McMahon and John Kaplan. This podcast is brought to you by Force Management Forces Solutions help companies meet the revenue goals that drive funding, higher valuations and stockholder value. Today, a segment from our episode with Eric Erstin, longtime sales leader, currently the CRO of regscale. Here they talk about what top performers do.

[Eric Erstin]

Yeah, so top performers are always focused. And that sounds so obvious, but lots of sales teams aren't focused. Focused on what they sell, focused on what their weekly metrics are supposed to be, their monthly metrics, quarterly metrics, and really focus just around what does success look like. So many teams get out there and we use that term unconsciously competent. So so many teams are really unconsciously competent. And when you find the, the one team. I remember acquiring a company back at RSA and you know, many of these guys because both of you gents have mentored many of these sellers. But boy, they were laser focused. They had their metrics, they had their process, they knew what good looked like and they knew where they, where to spend their time and where not to spend their time. And when you come from an organization that perhaps isn't that focused and then suddenly you, you look at one that is, it's a stark contrast.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah. Talk a little bit about what really hit me in all the things you said, a number of them. But the one that really hit me the hardest was knowing where to spend your time and where not to spend your time. I know that goes to focus, but talk a little bit about some of the things that the productive teams spend their time on versus not spending their time on.

[Eric Erstin]

Well, this is where I think that the old measure twice cut once approach to sales management is really important because in order to know how to qualify out, we've got to know what success is and what makes our deployments and our sales processes work really, really well. And there's some obvious ones that work in any sales cycle. We got to get to budget and we've got to understand time frame and pain and all of that stuff. But there are nuances. You know, the ends and the nuances really, really matter. So I think that, you know, as we look at qualifying out, we got to understand a lot more about the ideal company profile and then the ideal contact themselves. So the human and the Persona profile. And that's something that in my earlier years I think I just took for granted back to that unconscious competence thing. And I didn't really spend nearly enough time thinking about the role of the human. I thought, oh, if you get to an exec. I've been in cyber a long time, so if you get to the ciso, you're good. Well, maybe. And that's a pretty safe bet. It's. If you're going to bet on one Persona, that's a good one, but you sell insecurity. But there are a lot of different scopes of ciso. Sometimes the CISO doesn't own what you're selling. We sell a platform today that CISO sometimes owns but generally doesn't own exclusively. So they may not be able to ubiquitously just make a decision. They're often just a key stakeholder in a platform and they may not own the whole thing. So that level of understanding of the role of the Persona and how they fit into the company because different industries, it works differently as well. I don't think I appreciated that fully for many years.

[John Kaplan]

I think a lot of people, to your point, they'll, they'll actually figure out their ideal customer profile and who that Persona is. But to your, to your point, they never really dig deep on the profile of the Persona themselves. Yeah, that's really important. I mean we're dealing with humans and you have to really understand what drives that person. We know how they're measured typically, but we never go any deeper than that.

[Eric Erstin]

Yeah.

[John McMahon]

What are some of the things you guys would expect to see in that profile of the Persona?

[John Kaplan]

Well, these days I think if you can, it's more about trying to understand who the person is than expecting things. Like these days it's so easy to Google, especially a C level person who's probably talking on panels, probably is given maybe done some blogs and trying to, and, and, and checking their LinkedIn and with industry organizations that they join, you can start to put a little bit of a, of a profile together of who that person is and what, what excites them and wasn't, what doesn't excite them can start to make some sort of judgments at least.

[Eric Erstin]

I think a ping for that later is just some of the, some of the tooling that's available to us that wasn't available even 10 years ago. But yeah, I really, I agree with that a lot. In Cap, when you ask that question, I'm assuming you're going into, you're thinking of some of the med pick and some of the criteria around. How are we helping to understand what role this person really does?

[John McMahon]

Well, I like both things that you guys have hit on because I want you to go there and then I want you to follow up on John's point of just there is a work Persona and a role Persona and there are certain value drivers and things like that, Eric, that I'd like you to comment on. But then also with the technology that we have today and the access to information, we can even go deeper into the human Persona of the individual, which is what you and Johnny were both talking about. Bring those two worlds together for us. Eric, you started it with, hey, early on in my career, I didn't really think about the Persona, the profile. Talk about how that's evolved for you.

[Eric Erstin]

Yeah, well, I think I have to take another half step back to give that one real context. And I learned a lot of this stuff from you gents around sales process and steps in the process and the relationship between the messaging, the sales process, the qualification methodology, the forecasting methodology, and how you bring all those components together is a lot more technical than just meets the eye. But I don't think I appreciated sort of the nooks and crannies as much in my earlier days as you do until you build it yourself. And so the reason I share that is as a seller, if I could get meetings, I'd just keep pulling the thread and I'd get around and I'd network and I could figure out how to just get a deal done. I don't know that I could necessarily teach it too well, but I could do it pretty well. And then all of a sudden you get given a budget and a whole bunch of headcount. You say, yeah, I know, by the way, by June you need to sell X. And you're like, oh, okay, so how do I get everybody else doing what I thought I was pretty good at myself? And that's where the understand the appreciation of the importance of understanding all these nuances come to be.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.