Getting the right person in a room
The model needs one conversation with whoever decides which leads get called. That is a diary problem rather than a design problem, and it is usually the longest wait in the project.
The full sequence
By stage four, nobody reaches your diary without a score attached
Four stages. Each one ends in something you can read, argue with and keep, and you can stop at the end of any of them. This page is the whole sequence, including the parts that are your job.
Not open yet. When it is, all you need to hand is roughly what you spend on traffic each month.
The one hard stop
Stage 1 ends in a one page scoring model, and nothing gets designed until you have signed it.
Whoever decides which leads get called reads that page and argues with it. If the document is wrong, everything built on top of it is wrong, so it is the only stage with a gate on the end.
The sequence
Every stage ends in a document, not a status update
Four stages, in this order, because each one is built on the thing the last one produced.
Agree what a good lead is
Four or five factors separate a prospect worth calling from one worth a sequence, and they are rarely the fields already in your CRM. We draft them. Whoever owns the sales number argues with them. The version that survives that argument is the model.
Ends with: the scoring model, one page, signed.
Build the instrument
The model asked out loud. Anything that does not move the score comes out, because a question that changes nothing costs you a completion. The bands and the report your prospect walks away with get written here too.
Ends with: the question set, the bands and the report, live.
Build the funnel around it
Entry pages for the channels you already buy, follow-up written against what somebody answered rather than the ad they clicked, and routing into your CRM so your sales team opens a record and sees answers instead of a traffic source.
Ends with: entry pages, sequences and CRM routing, live.
Run it and read it
Real responses tell you which question people abandon and which band is filling up. Bands get rewritten, questions get cut, routing gets tightened. This is the stage that decides whether the whole thing makes money.
Ends with: a monthly read on the responses and the changes it caused.
Stop at the end of any of them and you keep everything that stage produced. Nothing gets held back to make you buy the next one.
What you own
Seven things exist at the end, and all seven are yours
This is the list a buyer forwards to whoever signs it off, so it is written to be forwarded.
The scoring model
One page. The factors, the weights, and what each band means. Signed before anything is designed.
The question set
Every question with its scoring logic attached, so you can see why an answer moves the number and argue with it.
The result pages
One for each band, written honestly. The lowest band is genuinely unflattering, which is the only reason anyone believes the top one.
The report
A document with their name on it. Most of the buying group never speaks to you, so it has to survive being forwarded to people you will never meet.
The follow-up
Sequences written against the answers rather than the traffic source. A high scorer and a low scorer read different emails.
The routing
Which score gets a calendar, which gets a sequence, and the CRM fields your sales team actually opens before a call.
The build itself
Configured, live, in your account. You own the licence, you pay for it directly, and we tell you the number before you commit to anything.
None of it is locked to us. If you stopped working with us the week after launch, every item above still runs and the leads it scores still arrive in your CRM.
Yours and ours
Two decisions in this project are not ours to make
What counts as a good lead, and who gets called first. Everything else we can carry.
If your sales team cannot say what separates a lead worth calling from one worth a sequence, that argument is the project. It is worth having whether or not you ever hire us, and we cannot have it for you.
What we need from you
- One conversation with whoever decides which leads get called. Not the marketing team. The person who owns the number.
- Read access to your ad accounts and your recent form fills.
- A decision on the scoring model. We draft it, you sign it or you send it back.
- One person who can approve copy without assembling a committee.
- Whoever administers your CRM, for the routing.
What we do
- Write the model, then defend it or change it in front of you.
- Design the questions so the score means something and people still finish.
- Write the bands, the report and the follow-up.
- Build it, wire the routing, and check it against real responses.
- Tell you when a scorecard is the wrong instrument for the problem you have.
Timing
Three things set the pace, and two of them are yours
The build is rarely the slow part.
Whether your CRM has a queue
If someone else owns the CRM and changes go through a change queue, stage 3 moves at the speed of that queue and not at ours.
How many people approve copy
One approver and the result pages are done in a pass. Four approvers and they are done in four, and the bands get blander with every one.
The instrument
How cold the traffic is decides which instrument you get
A scorecard is the default and it is not always the right answer.
The Atlas censused 13 interactive formats before we built anything. Most B2B businesses need one of four, and which one depends entirely on where the reader is standing when they land.
Cold, curious, in a hurry
Paid social and cold outbound. A scorecard about their own business, because it is the only thing somebody answers before they know who you are.
Mid-research, comparing
Organic search and content. A benchmark, because what they want at that moment is to know where they sit against everyone else in their sector.
Late, building an internal case
Anyone who has to justify the spend to somebody else. A calculator that returns a number they can put in front of a board without translating it first.
Picking the wrong one is the expensive mistake, because it is invisible until a few hundred people have already answered. That choice happens in stage 1, next to the model, before any of your spend goes near a build.
After they finish
A finished response is worth more to your sales team than a form fill
Three things happen in the seconds after the last answer, and the second one is the one most builds never wire up.
It scores
Four bands, not ten. A band your sales team can hold in its head beats a number ranked against nothing, and four is about the limit of what anyone acts on.
It routes
A high score puts a calendar in front of them while they are still reading. Everyone else goes into follow-up written against their answers. Most builds skip this, and it is the part that decides whether the spend pays.
It hands over
Your sales team opens the record and sees the answers, the score and the band. The first call starts from what the prospect already told you rather than from the beginning.
A low score is not a rejection. The report tells them what to fix first, and most of that they can do without you.
That is the whole commercial argument. You are not buying more names. You are buying the first part of every call, the part your team currently spends working out who they are talking to and whether the budget is real.
Questions
What people ask before they commit to the first stage
The build is rarely the slow part. Three things set the pace and two of them are yours: getting the person who owns the lead definition into one conversation, your CRM change queue, and how many people approve copy. Every stage gets a date in the scope document, agreed before you sign anything.
Your turn
The fastest way to judge a sequence is to run one
Ours scores your funnel on the four things that decide whether traffic converts, and it is built the way yours would be. You get the score and the report at the end, whether or not you ever talk to us.
Not open yet. The report is yours whatever the score says.
If you would rather just ask how a stage works, ask.