THE SELLER PLAYBOOK.

You are not selling software development. You are selling a finished system that already runs, to a business that is currently running on paper, spreadsheets, or three apps that do not talk.

• The product exists today. You can open its landing page, its login, and its working interior on a call.
• Nothing is built for the customer. There is no scoping call, no timeline, no implementation risk to defend.
• You are replacing a spreadsheet and two notebooks, not competing with enterprise software.
• If a prospect needs something the catalog does not have, say so and move on. A bad fit costs you the account later.

Your first ten placements should come from businesses you already have a reason to call. Cold lists are the slowest possible start.

• Start with trades you have personally hired: the roofer, the HVAC company, the shop that fixed your truck.
• Owner-operators with 3–30 staff. Big enough to feel the pain, small enough that the owner decides alone.
• The signal to listen for: "we track that in a spreadsheet" or "I do that at night."
• Register the business before the first real conversation — the claim is exclusive while you hold it.

Fifteen minutes. You are diagnosing, not pitching. The demo is worthless until you know which part of their week is broken.

• Open: "What part of the job takes the most time that is not the actual work?"
• Follow with: "Walk me through what happens between the customer calling and you getting paid."
• Listen for the handoff that drops — the estimate that never got sent, the invoice chased twice.
• Only then open the product, and open it on the exact screen that fixes what they just described.
• Close on a trial, not a signature: "Let me set you up for ten days. If it does not save you the afternoon, we stop."

Your trial passes are the strongest tool you have, and the easiest to waste. A pass handed out without a reason to use it converts at close to zero.

• Never hand out a pass without agreeing what they will do with it in the first 48 hours.
• Best use: an influencer or operator with an audience of the same trade. One credible post beats fifty cold calls.
• Set the follow-up before you send the code. "I will call you Thursday" is the whole difference.
• Passes lapse if unredeemed, and lapsed passes return to your allotment — but a lapsed pass is a lost conversation.

Fifty percent of net revenue, every month the customer stays. Net means after card processing, and nothing else comes out.

• Card processing (2.9% + 30¢) comes off the gross first. The split is on what is left.
• Commission is recorded per paid invoice, clears once the charge is past refund risk, then pays out.
• A refund reverses the matching entry. A refunded sale earns nothing — that is the honest version.
• There is no clawback beyond the refund itself, and no cap on how long you keep earning.

Residual income is a retention business. The seller who checks in at day 30 keeps earning at year three.

• Call at day 7 and day 30. Not to sell — to make sure they actually turned it on.
• The most common churn reason is a customer who never finished setup, not one who disliked the product.
• You do not do support. Hand real problems to us and stay the relationship, not the help desk.
• One retained customer at $149/mo is worth more than three that churn at 60 days.