Playbook

What's Happening

In 10 calls across 9 deals, pricing was mentioned exactly once — "$5K/month" to Patrick Girouard, buried in a sentence, with no scope or timeline attached. He didn't respond because it wasn't an offer. The other 4 qualified prospects have never heard a number.

The Result

- Taylor has been on a free beta with no end date - Geoffroy has pricing deferred to the "tail end" of an 8-month engagement - Justin had 130 minutes of conversation across 2 calls with zero commercial discussion - Kristina was never even shown the product

Solution

Prospect-Specific Moves

What's Happening

Multiple prospects describe Magiq as Giancarlo's consulting practice with an optional tool: - Patrick: *"I'm more interested in your experience and your way of thinking... versus the tool"* - Kristina referred Giancarlo to a competitor (Solvrays), describing Magiq as *"the process side"* - Bobbie (Solvrays): *"You're the process. We're the technology arm."* **Why it matters:** - Consulting is priced by the hour. Platforms are priced by value. - Consulting doesn't scale. You can only sell as many hours as Giancarlo has. - Referrals go to other consultants and competitors, not to potential customers. - The longer Giancarlo leads with advisory, the harder it becomes to introduce the product as the thing they're buying.

Solution

What's Happening

Giancarlo is excellent at getting prospects to open up. Prospects describe their pain in detail — $11M in premium, 50% efficiency targets, 11,000 ticket backlogs, broker rejections. But after hearing the pain, Giancarlo tells stories instead of asking "what does that cost you?" **The numbers:** - 0 out of 10 calls included an implication question ("If this continues, what happens?") - 0 out of 9 deals included an ROI calculation tied to the prospect's specific situation - 8 out of 9 deals: Giancarlo responded to prospect pain with OD/Coverwell stories instead of probing deeper **Why it matters:** Pain without consequences feels manageable. When Patrick says "we don't route referrals well," that sounds like a 3/10 problem. But if Giancarlo asks "how many referrals did you drop last quarter, and what's the average premium on those?" — suddenly it's a $200K problem. The pain is already there. It just hasn't been quantified for the prospect.

Solution

What's Happening

4 out of 9 deals were unqualified — 175+ minutes spent with zero pipeline generated. Examples: - 24 minutes with a 5-person team that has no SOPs and no pain (Xan, Deal #8) — half the call was helping him configure RingCentral for a different client - 53 minutes with the wrong PestShare stakeholder (Paul, Deal #6) — a referral that should have been pre-screened - 14 minutes with a competitor (Bobbie, Deal #9) — a referral from Kristina who misunderstands what Magiq does **Why it matters:** Every hour spent on a non-deal is an hour not spent proposing to Taylor, Patrick, Geoffroy, Justin, or Kristina.

Solution

What's Happening

In multiple deals, the prospect was more ready to buy than Giancarlo was to sell: - Justin (Deal #7, Call 1): *"I'd love to have another conversation... see if there's some form of engagement we can keep working on."* — By Call 2, no engagement was proposed. - Taylor (Deal #4): Sold Magiq to his own team on the call. Assigned team members. Started using it. Still paying $0. - Geoffroy (Deal #5): *"What would it look like to work together?"* — Asked unprompted. Giancarlo's answer deferred pricing to "the tail end." - Patrick (Deal #10): *"I'm confident you could help us."* — Giancarlo's response: "I'll send you some high-level thoughts."

Solution