Sarah Boehm-Emard

Why this persona fits the audience

Runs new-business for a 14-person agency with a 4-person sales function, tracking outreach, booked calls, and follow-up tasks in Pipedrive and spreadsheets. Uses Aircall for calling and checks weekly pipeline numbers with remote contractors.

• Age: 38
• Location: Manchester, UK
• Occupation: Founder and sales director
• Income: £78k salary equivalent + profit share
• Education: Master's degree in communications
• Company size: 14 employees total (4 in sales)
• Years in role: 5 years as founder, 12 years in B2B sales

“I don't care about the shiny new thing; I care about whether it stops me from doing my own data entry for an hour.”

Sarah Boehm-Emard is the architect of her own success story, having pivoted from a senior account management role at a London consultancy to founding her own B2B lead generation agency in Manchester five years ago. With a Master's in Communications, she leveraged her background in narrative building to craft compelling sales scripts, eventually growing her team to 14 employees. Despite her success, she remains grounded by a deep-seated skepticism toward the 'growth at all costs' mentality prevalent in the startup world. Her office is a blend of chaotic creativity and rigid structure; whiteboards covered in strategy maps sit alongside neatly labeled filing cabinets. She wears her exhaustion lightly, viewing long hours as a temporary investment rather than a lifestyle choice. Recently, she made the difficult decision to reject a lucrative acquisition offer to maintain full control over her company's culture and data privacy standards. Her financial strategy is conservative; she reinvests profits into technology upgrades and talent retention rather than luxury assets. Sarah is currently navigating the friction of scaling her operations, finding that her current reliance on manual spreadsheet reconciliation is becoming a bottleneck. She is actively exploring ways to streamline her workflow but remains wary of solutions that promise automation without guaranteeing data security or integration ease. Her life is a calculated balance of aggressive business ambition and a fiercely protected personal sanctuary.

Background & daily life

A day in their life

Sarah wakes at 5:30 AM for a run, returning by 6:45 AM to shower and prepare a healthy breakfast. By 7:30 AM, she is logged into her dual-monitor setup, checking overnight leads and updating the master spreadsheet before the team arrives. At 9:00 AM, she holds a stand-up with her sales team to review yesterday's call metrics and set daily quotas. Lunch is a quick sandwich eaten at her desk while reading industry updates. The afternoon is split between two hours of live prospecting calls on Aircall and a 45-minute strategy session with her remote contractors regarding lead qualification criteria. At 5:30 PM, she closes her laptop, drives to pick up her dog, and spends the evening cooking dinner and disconnecting from work notifications, ensuring she remains present for her partner and household responsibilities.

Lifestyle

Sarah lives in a renovated Victorian terrace in Didsbury, prioritizing comfort and proximity to the city center. Her routine is rigid: 5:30 AM wake-up, 45-minute run along the Mersey River, followed by a strict breakfast of oatmeal and black coffee before work. She is financially disciplined, maximizing her pension contributions while keeping personal debt minimal, viewing savings as a buffer against market volatility. Socially, she maintains a tight-knit circle of local entrepreneur friends who meet monthly for dinner rather than large gatherings. She values her independence highly, often working late from home to ensure family time is protected, and avoids high-maintenance social obligations that don't offer genuine connection or professional value.

Work life

As both founder and sales director, Sarah splits her day between high-level strategy and hands-on execution. Mornings are dedicated to deep work: reviewing Pipedrive pipelines, auditing spreadsheet data for discrepancies, and crafting cold outreach scripts. Afternoons involve Aircall sessions with prospects and coaching her four-person sales team on call techniques. She manages three remote contractors who handle lead research, requiring constant synchronization via Slack and Zoom. The pressure is relentless; missed targets directly impact her quarterly profit share. She relies heavily on spreadsheets to bridge gaps where Pipedrive lacks specific reporting features, often spending evenings manually reconciling data to ensure her clients receive accurate performance reports.

Relationships

Sarah is married to a structural engineer who provides emotional grounding and practical advice on long-term planning. They rely on each other for distinct support roles. Her closest friends are fellow small business owners in Manchester, forming a peer group that shares resources and venting space. She has a mentor, a retired sales VP, who reviews her strategic plans once a quarter. Her influence comes less from status and more from her reputation for reliability and blunt honesty; people trust her because she admits what she doesn't know immediately.

How they decide

Sarah is a cautious, evidence-based decider who resists impulse purchases. She prefers a 'test-and-learn' approach, often running free trials or pilot programs with small teams before committing funds. She heavily weighs peer recommendations and case studies that demonstrate tangible ROI, particularly those from similar-sized agencies. Data integrity is paramount; if a tool cannot provide clear, exportable analytics, she will discard it regardless of feature richness. She consults her operations manager for technical feasibility but makes the final call based on long-term operational fit rather than short-term sales pitches.

How they sound

Her speech is clipped, efficient, and devoid of filler words. She speaks with a sharp Mancunian accent that softens slightly when discussing complex strategy but remains direct. She avoids corporate jargon like 'synergy' or 'circle back,' preferring terms like 'deliverables,' 'pipeline velocity,' and 'clear next steps.' She tends to ask probing questions early in conversations to gauge competence. In writing, her emails are structured with bullet points and clear deadlines. She never apologizes unnecessarily but will admit quickly when a process needs fixing.