What actually happens, from first call to running it without us
Seven stages. Not all of them apply to every program — a rep working through the self-paced training is not getting a comp plan modelled — but the logic is the same throughout: diagnose before prescribing, build the thing, install it with the people who have to run it, then measure it until it is habit.
The reason this is written down is that most coaching in this trade is not. You buy access to someone, calls happen, useful things get said, and six months later nobody can point at what changed. An engagement that cannot be described in stages cannot be held to, and one that cannot be held to is impossible to evaluate — which is exactly the conversation on our standards page.
So: here is the whole thing, including the part where we tell you what we need from you and what happens when it does not arrive.
Seven stages
Stages one to three are the same whichever program you end up in. Four onwards scale with how deep the work goes.
The fit conversation
A real conversation rather than a pitch. You describe the last few months — what sold, what did not, what broke, who left — and we ask the questions that separate a skill problem from a structural one. By the end, you get a straight recommendation about which of the four programs fits, and if the answer is that you do not need one yet, that is what gets said.
Nothing is bought at this stage. Whatever comes next arrives as a written scope with the duration and the fee on it, before any money changes hands.
The diagnostic
Before anything is prescribed, we look. That means your actual numbers — jobs sold, average job size, gross margin by job type, close rate by lead source, cycle time from sold to complete, collections — and it means the qualitative half: your CRM as it really looks, a read of the comp plan, and time with the team. Ride-alongs, listening to how the process runs in a driveway, and one-to-one conversations with reps and production.
What people say individually comes back as themes, never as attributed quotes. That is the only way anybody tells you anything true.
Findings and a written plan
You get the diagnosis in writing: what is working, what is broken, what is expensive, and specifically what the constraint is. Almost every company has ten problems and one constraint, and working on the other nine feels productive while changing nothing.
The plan that follows is sequenced, not listed. First change, second change, what has to be true before the third is attempted, and what we are deliberately not touching this quarter. You should be able to read it and disagree with it — that argument is part of the value.
Build
The artefacts get made, with you rather than for you. The sales process as stages with entry and exit criteria. The proposal and presentation standard. The comp plan, modelled against your real history before anyone sees it. The hiring profile, scored interview and 90-day ramp. The scoreboard and the meeting cadence.
"With you" is not a courtesy. A comp plan built in isolation gets rejected by the people it pays; one built alongside the owner and the manager who have to defend it survives the first uncomfortable conversation.
Install it with the people
This is the stage that gets skipped, and skipping it is why so many companies own a binder nobody follows. The team is trained on the new process directly: what changed, why, and what it means for their pay. Then it is practised — structured roleplay on the openings and the four objections that end most roofing deals, so reps make their mistakes on us rather than on customers.
Managers get trained separately, on coaching the process rather than rescuing the appointment. If the manager cannot coach it, the process lasts about three weeks.
Cadence and scoreboard
What gets measured weekly is what survives. We set the small number of metrics that actually matter for your situation, who owns each one, where they are looked at, and what happens when one goes red. Then the rhythm: the weekly sales meeting with an agenda, the one-to-one with a real structure, the monthly review that looks at margin and mix rather than only at revenue.
This is also where the drift gets caught. Every new process decays; a cadence is simply the mechanism that notices before the quarter is gone.
Handover
The engagement ends with your people running it and the documents in your hands — the process, the scorecards, the comp model, the interview guides, the onboarding plan. All of it is yours to keep and edit. The test of the work is whether it still runs three months after the last invoice.
Some companies then move to the mastermind or to lighter 1:1 for ongoing accountability. That is a choice, not a renewal built into the original scope, and nothing is sold as a "phase two" that was quietly assumed from the start.
What is expected of you
Every engagement that has ever failed did so for one of these reasons, so they are worth stating before you buy rather than after.
Real numbers, not a summary
Jobs, margins, close rates, cycle times and collections as they actually are, including the ones that are embarrassing. A diagnostic built on a tidied version of the business produces a plan for a company that does not exist. If the numbers do not exist yet, that is fine and it becomes the first piece of work — but it cannot be hidden.
The decision-maker in the room
Whoever can change the comp plan, the pricing and the org chart has to be present, not briefed afterwards. Sending a delegate to a change that requires authority is the most reliable way to spend money and move nothing. For an owner-operator that is you; in a larger company it means the owner and the sales leader together.
Time between sessions
The work does not happen on the call. The call decides what happens; the change happens in your company during the week. Two or three protected hours, defended against the day-to-day, is usually the difference between a plan that lands and a plan that gets discussed monthly for a year.
Willingness to be briefly unpopular
Structure always annoys whoever benefited from its absence: the rep who has been quietly discounting, the veteran who has never used the CRM, the person whose job description was "whatever comes up." If those conversations are off the table, most of the useful work is too.
Telling your team the truth
Change communicated as "we're bringing in a consultant" reads to a sales team as "someone is about to be fired." Communicated as "here is what we are fixing, here is what it means for your pay, here is what stays the same," it reads as investment. We will help write it. You have to say it, in your own voice, before anyone hears it secondhand.
A season's worth of patience
A sales process installed in March shows up in cycle times before it shows up in a bank balance, and a comp plan needs a full quarter before you know whether it changed behaviour or just annoyed everybody. Anyone promising you next week is selling something. So is anyone who cannot tell you what to look for in the meantime.
What you can hold us to
The same list appears on our standards page, where it sits alongside the questions you should be asking any coach before you pay them.
- Scope, duration and fee in writing before you pay. Nothing added later without your written agreement, and no fee that depends on you not reading carefully.
- A written diagnosis before a prescription. You will never be sold a solution before anyone has looked at your numbers.
- The artefacts are yours. Every document built for your company stays with you, editable, after the engagement ends.
- Your information stays private. No case studies, screenshots or figures from your business anywhere without written permission.
- No recruiting from you. We do not hire, poach or refer away the people we meet inside your company.
- Nothing that puts your licence at risk. No tactic that depends on misrepresenting damage, coaching a homeowner's statements to an adjuster, or handling a deductible.
- An honest no. If a program does not fit, or the timing is wrong, you will be told on the first call rather than sold the nearest available thing.
About the engagement
Is the work done remotely or on site?
Both. Coaching and group sessions run on video, because a recurring rhythm beats an occasional visit and nobody should be driving three hours for a conversation that works fine on a screen.
Diagnostic work and the first training sessions are much better in person, which is one of the reasons this stays regional. Being in Florida means being able to sit in your office, look at the whiteboard, and ride along with your reps rather than only reviewing what you report about them.
How long does an engagement take?
It depends on what is being changed. A sales process rebuild is a different length from a comp redesign that has to be modelled, communicated and then survived through a full quarter. The duration is agreed in writing before anything starts.
The honest constraint is rarely the work itself. It is how much change your people can absorb in a quarter without the whole thing being resented, which is why the plan is sequenced rather than delivered all at once.
Will you talk to my sales reps directly?
Yes, with your agreement. A diagnostic run only from the owner's chair produces a plan that fixes the owner's version of the problem, which is usually a partial one.
What individuals say comes back to you as themes, not as attributed quotes. Reps who think their answers will be repeated with their name on them tell you what they think you want to hear, and then the whole exercise is theatre.
Who owns the documents you build?
You do — the process documents, scorecards, comp models, interview guides and onboarding plans built for your company are yours to keep, edit and use after the engagement ends.
That is not generosity, it is the design. The measure of the work is whether it still runs three months after the last invoice, and that is impossible if the artefacts leave when we do.
What happens to our numbers?
They stay between us. Your financials, close rates, pricing, comp structures and customer information are not used as marketing material, not discussed in group sessions, and not shared.
No case study, screenshot or figure from your company appears anywhere without your written permission. You will notice there are no client numbers anywhere on this site, and that is the reason.
What if we stall halfway through?
It happens — a storm lands, a key person leaves, or the change turns out to be bigger than the appetite for it. The response is to say so plainly and work out whether the constraint is capacity or commitment.
If it is capacity, the plan gets re-sequenced around a smaller first win. If it is commitment, the honest move is to pause. What will not happen is billing against a plan nobody is executing and calling that an engagement.
Stage one is just a conversation.
Describe the last few months. You will get a straight read on whether the problem is skill or structure, and which program — if any — is the right one to start with.