Sales playbook
Decision
Section titled “Decision”Lead with Staffing Billing Control unless the account’s role, pain, and trigger clearly support Staffing Workers’ Compensation Control. Do not lead with generic Workflow Control or offer a candidate as a named service.
The first commercial objective is a paid Workflow Design Sprint, not a free solution design or premature Build estimate. Qualify with SPICED, confirm FZF’s boundaries, and advance only with a dated buyer action.
- Service rank: Portfolio prioritization
- Allowed proof and claim wording: Validation and evidence
- Scope, prices, terms, and Run boundary: Offer ladder
Qualification rule
Section titled “Qualification rule”An opportunity is qualified only when all of these are true:
- The company operates a recurring contingent-staffing workflow with material complexity or consequence.
- One primary buyer owns the pain or can bring the economic sponsor into the decision.
- The problem crosses systems, teams, end-client rules, evidence, waits, or exception paths.
- The buyer can describe a direct measure or will establish one during a Sprint.
- A credible reason exists to act in a defined period.
- The buyer can provide representative evidence and access to the people who run the work.
- Existing systems will remain in place, and consequential decisions will remain with authorized client parties.
- The buyer is considering control improvement—not SaaS licensing, open-ended developers, outsourced transactions, funding, factoring, collections, or payroll services.
Strong signals include a platform go-live with manual residue, a new client or VMS, branch growth, M&A, leadership change, rising exception or claim volume, a compliance deadline, or hiring for coordination work. A signal improves timing; it does not compensate for structural misfit.
Disqualify or redirect
Section titled “Disqualify or redirect”Disqualify when the buyer primarily wants:
- A new ATS, VMS, payroll, accounting, credentialing, claims, or other system of record
- A multi-tenant software subscription or off-the-shelf product
- Staff augmentation, an hourly development team, or unrestricted project capacity
- People to clear invoices, claims, onboarding cases, or another operating queue
- Payroll funding, receivables factoring, collections, outsourced billing, or payroll processing
- FZF to make credit, payment, write-off, medical, legal, claim, employment, accommodation, or compliance decisions
- Guaranteed ROI, DSO, claim cost, premium, rejection, headcount, or other outcomes outside FZF’s control
Also disqualify or pause if there is no operating owner, no material consequence, no representative evidence, no viable system access, or no willingness to establish a baseline. Redirect a genuine platform or BPO need to the appropriate category rather than stretching the offer.
SPICED opportunity model
Section titled “SPICED opportunity model”| Element | What to learn | Minimum evidence to record |
|---|---|---|
| S — Situation | Current workflow, systems, roles, clients, volume shape, rule variation, and recent changes | Concrete trigger-to-close description and system list |
| P — Pain | Where work waits, fails, repeats, becomes ambiguous, or depends on inbox and spreadsheet memory | Two or three specific failure examples with frequency or age where available |
| I — Impact | Cost, revenue, capacity, risk, client, or working-capital consequence | Buyer-owned consequence, direct measure, and clear attribution limit |
| C — Critical event | Why the decision has a date: go-live residue, client launch, payroll cycle, audit, renewal, staffing growth, or leadership mandate | Event, date, source, and consequence of missing it |
| D — Decision | Sponsor, participants, criteria, process, budget path, procurement, security, and authority boundaries | Named decision owner, next decision, required evidence, and target date |
SPICED is not a script. It is a completeness test. Missing information becomes the next discovery objective, not an invitation to invent urgency.
Discovery sequence
Section titled “Discovery sequence”1. Establish the situation
Section titled “1. Establish the situation”Ask:
- What starts this workflow, and what event means it is complete?
- Which systems, files, inboxes, portals, teams, branches, and external parties participate?
- Where do end-client or branch rules differ?
- What changed recently, and what has already been tried?
2. Reconstruct the pain
Section titled “2. Reconstruct the pain”Ask for recent records, not general opinions:
- Walk me through the last case that stopped or required senior intervention.
- Where did it wait, who knew, and how was the next owner found?
- What happens to healthy work when one record has a problem?
- How does the team know what succeeded after an interruption?
- Which rules or evidence live outside an authoritative system?
3. Establish impact without overclaiming
Section titled “3. Establish impact without overclaiming”Ask:
- Which direct measure does your team already trust: elapsed time, held value, exception age, completeness, overdue actions, manual touches, or another definition?
- What cost, revenue, capacity, client, or risk consequence does leadership connect to it?
- Which outside factors also affect the result?
- What baseline and source could be shared during a Sprint?
Do not calculate savings from unverified assumptions during the call. Record a hypothesis and the data needed to test it.
4. Find the critical event
Section titled “4. Find the critical event”Ask:
- Why address this now rather than next year?
- Is there a client launch, payroll or billing cycle, platform go-live, audit, renewal, claim event, hiring plan, or leadership commitment with a date?
- What happens if that date passes with the current workflow unchanged?
If there is no critical event, set a specific evidence-gathering next step or move the opportunity out of the active pipeline.
5. Confirm the decision and authority
Section titled “5. Confirm the decision and authority”Ask:
- Who owns the operational result, and who can approve a paid Sprint?
- Who validates systems, security, finance, risk, legal, or compliance?
- What evidence and criteria will decide whether to Build?
- Which decisions must stay with Finance, Risk, medical providers, counsel, carriers, managers, or clients?
- What procurement or contracting steps affect timing?
6. Propose the next decision
Section titled “6. Propose the next decision”Recap the job, consequence, direct measure, critical event, system boundary, and retained authority. Then choose one next step:
- Evidence review with the operating owner
- Sponsor or technical-validator meeting
- Paid Workflow Design Sprint proposal
- Nurture until a dated trigger
- Disqualify or refer
Never end with “we’ll follow up” without an owner, date, and artifact.
Select the message by buyer
Section titled “Select the message by buyer”| Buyer | Lead with | Support with | Avoid |
|---|---|---|---|
| CFO / Controller | For billing: avoidable delay before a clean invoice reaches AP and the held value connected to it | Delivery time, held value, rework, and clear limits on DSO attribution | Guaranteed cash, DSO, factoring, funding, or collections claims |
| Billing / AR leader | Complete invoices continue while missing documents, mismatches, and delivery failures get explicit owners | Completeness, exception age, first-pass acceptance, duplicate-safe recovery | A broad finance-transformation pitch |
| COO / VP Operations | A few bad records should not stop the workflow; recurring coordination should not scale linearly with growth | Straight-through rate, overdue actions, manual touches, and throughput with quality guardrails | Generic efficiency or “replace your team” language |
| Risk / workers’ compensation leader | Every open claim has a current state, next action, owner, deadline, and evidence path | Follow-up timeliness, pending-action age, packet completeness, and retained judgment | Claim adjudication, medical advice, premium reduction, or autonomous decisions |
| Safety / compliance leader | Required evidence, training, qualifications, incidents, and deadlines remain reviewable and owned | Completeness, timeliness, branch patterns, and explicit legal-review boundaries | Certification, legal advice, or a standalone candidate service before promotion |
| IT / systems validator | Add controlled workflow around the current stack, with explicit access, recovery, audit, and human gates | Systems retained, integration seams, failure handling, and accepted scope | Leading with business ROI the technical buyer does not own |
Use the Positioning framework to adapt the message to the buyer’s actual alternative. Use only claims allowed by the claim register.
Service selection
Section titled “Service selection”| Evidence from discovery | Route |
|---|---|
| Approved time, invoice evidence, delivery rules, held value, AP friction, or post-platform billing residue | Staffing Billing Control |
| Injury intake, claim follow-up, work-status evidence, authorization age, return-to-work coordination, or claim packets | Staffing Workers’ Compensation Control |
| Timecards, onboarding, credentialing, incidents, or safety compliance without a fit to a current named service | Record against Candidate services; do not create a standalone offer |
| Multiple unrelated workflows with no agreed first consequence | Narrow to one Sprint decision or disqualify broad transformation scope |
CRM capture
Section titled “CRM capture”Use these fields as the canonical opportunity record. Unknown is acceptable; blank without a next action is not.
Account and people
Section titled “Account and people”| Field | Capture rule |
|---|---|
| Account and staffing segment | Legal/common name, US staffing model, primary vertical, locations or branches, and source |
| Primary buyer | Name, role, authority, relationship, and whether they own the consequence |
| Economic sponsor | Name, role, access status, and approval responsibility |
| Operating and technical validators | Workflow owner, Finance, IT/security, Risk/legal/compliance, procurement, and other required participants |
| Source and trigger | Direct, signal, referral, inbound, or existing client; include source URL or note and observed date |
SPICED fields
Section titled “SPICED fields”| Field | Capture rule |
|---|---|
| Situation | Trigger, completion state, volume shape, systems, teams, external parties, rule variation, and recent change |
| Pain | Specific failures, examples, frequency, age, workaround, current owner, and current alternative |
| Impact | Lead owner value, direct measure, contextual measure, current estimate, and attribution caveat |
| Critical event | Event, date, evidence source, consequence of missing, and confidence |
| Decision | Criteria, process, sponsor, budget path, procurement, security review, decision date, and competing alternatives |
Scope, evidence, and control
Section titled “Scope, evidence, and control”| Field | Capture rule |
|---|---|
| Service hypothesis | Billing, workers’ compensation, candidate working label, or no fit |
| Workflow boundary | Start event, completion event, included path, excluded path, and systems of record |
| Representative evidence | Available sample records, process artifacts, reports, logs, and access owner |
| Baseline | Measure, exact definition, source, period, owner, quality, and availability date |
| Authority boundary | Automated actions, required approvals, and decisions FZF must not make |
| Claim used | Exact claim or proof asset shared; link to its entry in Validation |
| Proof permission | Private only, anonymized candidate, public candidate, approved, or declined; include approver and date |
Opportunity control
Section titled “Opportunity control”| Field | Capture rule |
|---|---|
| Stage | Use the stage definitions below; do not advance from optimism |
| Qualification result | Qualified, nurture, disqualified, or needs evidence; include reason |
| Offer and amount | Link to the approved proposal and canonical Offer ladder; do not store an unexplained custom number |
| Next step | One buyer action, one FZF owner, a due date, and the artifact or decision expected |
| Risk and blocker | Highest current blocker, owner, resolution action, and review date |
| Loss or stop reason | Buyer language, alternative selected, timing, price/scope issue, boundary conflict, or no decision |
Stage and next-step rules
Section titled “Stage and next-step rules”| Stage | Entry condition | Required next step | Exit condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identified | Account and relevant role fit the basic service hypothesis | Verify account, role, and real trigger | Discovery accepted or account moved to nurture/disqualified |
| Discovery | Buyer agrees to examine a specific workflow problem | Complete missing SPICED fields and request representative evidence | Qualification decision recorded |
| Qualified | Qualification rule passes; buyer, consequence, event, evidence path, and decision path are credible | Agree Sprint objective, participants, inputs, and decision date | Sprint proposal requested or opportunity paused |
| Sprint proposed | Buyer accepts the decision problem and receives a scoped paid proposal | Resolve scope, contracting, access, and sponsor approval | Signed, lost, or paused with a dated reason |
| Sprint active | Contract and kickoff requirements are complete | Produce the decision pack and schedule the investment decision | Build, measure-more, stop, or external implementation decision recorded |
| Build proposed / active | Sprint or equivalent pack defines fixed scope and acceptance | Follow the approved implementation and acceptance plan | Accepted, changed by written control, or stopped |
| Run proposed / active | Build identifies an ongoing control owner and valid Run responsibility | Agree tier, SLA, reporting, boundaries, and start | Signed and operating, declined, or returned to Build scope |
Non-negotiable next-step rules
Section titled “Non-negotiable next-step rules”- Every active opportunity has a buyer action, FZF owner, due date, and expected decision or artifact.
- Do not send a Sprint proposal when the buyer cannot state the workflow decision it will unlock.
- Do not send a Build proposal from a generic discovery call; require an accepted decision pack.
- Introduce Run during Sprint and Build design, but do not promise a tier before control scope and client authority are clear.
- Move opportunities without a critical event or buyer action to nurture; do not preserve false pipeline.
- Disqualify boundary conflicts immediately and record the buyer’s requested alternative.
- After a win, loss, or completed Sprint, update the evidence question in Validation and any score input in Prioritization through their owners.