step 3 · build the sales engine

repeatable sales engine

You can have a sales engine that closes without you in every room. This is the work of turning the way you already win into a discovery and qualification process someone other than you can run, deal after deal.

is this you?

This is the offering for you if any of these describe your week:

• I'm the only one who can close.
• Conversations don't convert to pilots.
• Sales cycles run too long.
• We're getting the meetings, but few of them close.

why we start with a conversation, not a fix

Those four descriptions look identical from the outside, and they trace back to different things.

"I'm the only one who can close" can be a process gap (nobody has written down what you actually do when you sell) or a positioning gap (deals only close because you personally carry the message, and no script transfers that). "Conversations don't convert to pilots" reads the same whether the cause is qualification, the offer itself, or product-market fit that isn't there yet. Long cycles can come from the wrong ICP, from weak positioning, or from a real gap in how you qualify. Meetings that go nowhere can be a discovery problem, an offer mismatch, or price.

By our own method (Gap Selling, diagnosis before prescription), a symptom does not name its own cause. So we don't hand you a fix on day one. We start by inspecting your actual deals: the ones you won, the ones that stalled, what you said, where each one turned. The engine gets built around what that inspection shows, not around a guess made before anyone had looked at your pipeline.

deliverables

Five things you walk away holding, each a real artefact you can use, not a slide:

• Deal Inspection Protocol: the six-gate question set (current state, problem owned, cost of inaction, future state, decision process, economic buyer access) plus a scoring guide.
• Filed inspection records: on your own live deals, each scored across the six gates, with a verdict (advancing, stuck, or stalled) and a confirmed next action.
• Documented discovery and qualification process: built from what already works when you sell, the moves you make without thinking written down and made repeatable by someone who isn't you.
• Inspection rhythm: the McMahon cadence your team runs, so the process stays honest once someone other than you is working it.
• Objection & close playbook: closing set up right, not bolted on at the end. Done properly the close is the natural finish of the six gates — surface real pain, quantify the cost of inaction, secure economic-buyer access, and the ask is a formality. So an objection is read as signal that a gate was not actually closed, something to fix upstream rather than a wall to argue past at the table; and the buying process is built in from the start — forewarned that procurement and legal turn up late in any real deal, you plan for them early and arm your champion to sell it internally, so the deal is not stalled or repriced at the close.

Earned after the inspection, not promised before it: what we build reflects how you actually win, not a generic template dropped over the top. Sign-off is behavioural, it is done when you run a full inspection on a live deal solo, handle the objections and drive it to a decision, and it holds up.

built to run on your AI

The inspection protocol ships as motion.md — your six gates and qualification standard as an AI-loadable file. Loaded into your own Claude or equivalent, your AI can pre-score a deal against your own gates before you even open it, so the judgment you build in the sessions scales past the deals you personally inspect. You leave with a capability, not just a checklist.

how it works

Deal inspection. We go through your real deals with you, won and stalled, and find the pattern in how the good ones close.

Gap Selling discovery. We build a discovery script that closes the gap between a meeting and a decision, surfacing the cost of the status quo for the buyer rather than pitching features at them.

Skip Miller qualification. A qualification standard that tells your team when a deal is real, so they stop pouring hours into deals that were never going to close.

McMahon inspection rhythm. A regular cadence of inspecting deals against that standard, so the process stays honest once your team, and not you, is running it.

The close is set up, not bolted on. Set up right, the close is not a separate persuasion event — it is what a well-run process produces. An objection reads as signal that a gate was not truly closed, to fix upstream, not a wall to argue past; and the buying process is built in throughout, because in any real deal procurement and legal turn up late. Skip Miller's lesson: forewarned, you plan for them early and arm your champion to sell internally, so the close does not stall or get repriced the moment it leaves the room you were in.

where it fits

The sales-system build, and the leg where deals get won. The sales system runs in three parts: the Pipeline Inspection box builds the container, Prospecting & Outreach fills it, and this is what works the deals through to a close, deal by deal. It runs alongside or just after the pipeline build, and it feeds the advisory cadence once the engine is installed and someone other than the founder is running it.

who attends

The founder, plus anyone else who sells or will run inspections (a first sales hire, say). You lead it; bringing the next person in is how the process transfers beyond you.

how the engagement runs

A short diagnostic call first, then four coached sessions at least a week apart (deals need room to move between them). The £2,500 is fixed for the work, not billed by the session. The opening call is how we make sure we build the right thing.

• Diagnostic call: inspect your actual deals, name the real cause (process, positioning, pricing, or offer).
• Session 1: I lead, you observe. We inspect your most active deal against six gates (current state, problem owned, cost of inaction, future state, decision process, economic buyer access) and call it advancing, stuck, or stalled.
• Session 2: you lead, I coach. You run the inspection, I correct the misreads.
• Session 3: driving to decision. Not a separate close bolted on — the natural continuation once the gates hold. You work a qualified deal through its buying process: the price question, objections read as signals of a gate not truly closed, and procurement and legal planned in early so your champion carries it internally rather than it stalling at the end.
• Session 4: you solo, I observe. The independence test. Done is not four sessions attended, it is you running a full inspection on a live deal solo, handling the objections and driving it to a decision, and it holding up.

We run these about a week apart on purpose, so each outcome gets tested against your real deals before we build the next on top of it. If you already have a piece of this under control, we do not run that session for the sake of it. Working this way keeps the work sharp and built around where your business actually is, not where a plan assumed you would be.

what you need first

• A working pipeline with deals in it. The engine inspects live deals, so it needs the Pipeline Inspection box in place and deals actually moving through it, not an empty board. If the pipeline is empty, you fill it first (Prospecting & Outreach, or your inbound presence); with no pipeline at all, you buy both, we build the pipeline, then install the inspection on top. Budget for the foundation, not just this box.
• Real live deals to inspect, won and stalled, so the process is built from how you actually win rather than a generic template.
• The next person who will sell, if the point is to transfer it beyond you. Bringing them into the sessions is how the process leaves your head.
• Access to your CRM. We work from the deals as they actually stand, so we need to get into the system where they live (Attio, HubSpot, whatever you run).
• Access to your call transcripts. Deal inspection reads what was said in a deal and where it turned, so we need the recordings from whatever tool you record calls with (Granola, Fireflies, even Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Meet — most founders already have a source, so this is rarely a hurdle). If you are not recording calls at all yet, setting that up is the first move.

comes before

The advisory layer. Once the engine is installed and someone other than you can run an inspection, advisory is what keeps the rhythm honest over time. Build the engine first, then bring in the ongoing cadence that stops it going stale.