Glossary

931 terms the SOPs use with a specific meaning, each with the page that owns it.

0–9

1-to-10 check: A question on the payment-plan ladder: how much do they want this, from one to ten? At eight or more, keep offering plans; at seven or less, find out why and switch to another product. Owned by SOP 70 — Work the payment-plan downsell ladder
30-60-90 plan: A new hire's written plan of what they will do by day 30, day 60 and day 90. In one company's version: learn the business, meet the team and finish core training; then take on projects and the team, with support; then fully own the role. Owned by SOP 270 — Onboard every hire against a written plan, then keep them growing
30-day cash collected: Cash a customer pays in their first month, compared with what it cost to win them. Covering that cost within 30 days is the goal. Owned by SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people
3PL: Third-party logistics provider; see that entry. Go to “Third-party logistics provider” → Owned by SOP 154 — Get granular financial data
70/30 split (ad budget): One team's most recent split of ad money: 70 percent behind ads already performing, 30 percent on fresh versions of the winners or on concepts not yet tried. The split changes over time; a separate learning budget is on SOP 42. Owned by SOP 275 — Judge each ad against your target cost, then cut it or scale it
80/20 analysis: Finding the 20 percent of customers who spend most, come back most, like the product best and are worth most over time, then building the business around them instead of the costly remainder. Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people

A

A or B: Asking which of two versions they prefer rather than whether they want one, so either answer is a sale. Any feature that varies can supply the choice. Owned by SOP 67 — Run the menu upsell
Accordion (more and better): The normal swing in the work between volume and quality: push output up, see what performs, cut back to fewer and better pieces, then push volume up again from the higher level. Owned by SOP 187 — Exhaust more before anything else
Accountability (management practice): One of the five management practices: following up on commitments with facts, not feelings, and having the conversation when someone falls short of what was expected. Owned by SOP 271 — Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
Acknowledge, compliment, ask: A three-part reply used in a fixed order: say back what they told you, praise it (ideally naming a trait of theirs), then ask a question that moves one step toward what you sell. Repeat as needed. Owned by SOP 14 — Reply with acknowledge, compliment, ask
Acqui-hire: Bringing in a whole working team, or a competitor's second-in-command with their contacts, by paying large bonuses instead of buying the company. Owned by SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product
Acquisition cost: Cost to acquire a customer; see that entry. Go to “Cost to acquire a customer” → Owned by SOP 196 — Answer the money question, starting with acquisition cost
Activation: Getting a customer to actually use what they bought. It is the thing most closely tied to lower churn; onboarding steers new customers toward it. Owned by SOP 157 — Optimize the business at twenty to forty-nine people
Activation behaviors (before purchase): The steps buyers took before they bought, such as working through two or more long pieces of content. In one business, getting cold prospects to take the same steps, so they became more like buyers, worked well by the owner's account. Owned by SOP 219 — Find the right customers, screen for them and capture data
Activation incentives: Rewards for acting like an ideal customer. One business's list: unlocked training, one-to-one calls after a set time or status, event tickets, access to higher-tier calls, and badges that mark someone as an insider. Owned by SOP 140 — Incentivize activation and time unlocks past churn points
Activation point (affiliate): The action that moves an affiliate up to the second commission tier, worked out from what your successful affiliates actually did. Because it is based on activity, the affiliate controls whether they reach it. Owned by SOP 48 — Design affiliate activation gates
Activation point (customer's first result): An early sign of who stays, written as: customers who do X or reach Y stay longer than those who don't. It is found by studying the top-spending customers who stayed three months or more and narrowing what they share to a few candidates; it differs by company. Owned by SOP 129 — Derive the activation point; also defined on SOP 7
Ad assembly: Another name for the ad assembly line; see that entry. Go to “Ad assembly line” → Owned by SOP 157 — Optimize the business at twenty to forty-nine people
Ad assembly line: Building ads from separate parts instead of in one piece: fifty hooks, one to three calls to action and three to five meats, mixed into 150 to 750 ads a week. Owned by SOP 119 — Assemble hook, meat and call to action; also defined on SOP 212
Ad buckets: Your best ads sorted into groups by theme, so you have a pattern for making new winners on purpose instead of a pile of one-offs. Owned by SOP 110 — Claim your proof from the data
Ad cap: Another name for the ad wall; see that entry. Go to “Ad wall” → Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Ad ceiling: Another name for the ad wall; see that entry. Go to “Ad wall” → Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Ad framework: A proven ad pattern that works for any business once you swap in your own product and benefits. You know one well when you can adapt it for consumers, businesses, services, software or physical goods. Owned by SOP 114 — Run the origin-story, prop-comedy, customer-story, show-don't-tell and long-term-result ad frameworks
Ad library: A platform's public, searchable collection of running ads. Use it to find the longest-running, most-engaged ads in your category. SOP 35 takes running time plus engagement as the sign of performance; SOP 119 finds it hard to tell from a library which ads perform. Owned by SOP 35 — Choose the first paid platform; also defined on SOP 119
Ad-to-page match: Keeping the landing page in step with the ad that sent people there: same wording, same colors, same person. Owned by SOP 37 — Lay out a landing page
Ad volume benchmark: A starting point rather than a rule: roughly 1 to 5 ads for each $1,000 of monthly spend in a national market and 5 to 10 in a local one, since local audiences tire faster. Search keywords are excluded. Owned by SOP 210 — Set ad volume and harvest the ads you already have
Ad wall: The spend level past which more money only loses money or stops converting. The view here is that the cause is usually weak or too-narrow ads, not a used-up market or a platform limit; the way to better ads is to make far more of them. Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness; also defined on SOP 34, SOP 212
Adjacent market: One of the five market directions: moving into a market that is close to yours but slightly different. Owned by SOP 93 — Choose a market direction
Ads-driven archetype: A business-to-business company whose cost to win each customer keeps rising, whose margins are squeezed, and whose churn is probably climbing because delivery has been watered down. Owned by SOP 206 — Run the B2B service and software playbook stack
Advanced compensation: Pay plans that vary by person and can be tuned to experience and to what the business needs from the role, whether that is attracting people, keeping them, or both. Owned by SOP 160 — Build advanced compensation plans
Advertise (stage 2): The stage where it is still just you, now doing the work with freelancers and part-time help. New customers arrive unevenly; you move up by getting more people to know what you sell. The last stage without employees. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 147
Advertising: Letting people, ideally strangers, know that what you sell exists. Branding is the message carried inside it; the two are separate jobs, so either can be strong while the other is weak. Owned by SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction; also defined on SOP 12
Advertising checklist: Ten blanks to fill in for the day's main action: who, what offer, which platform, which audience, when, why, how, how much, what follow-ups and for how long. Owned by SOP 52 — Set daily advertising volume and keep going until the goal is hit
Advertising claim: Any statement about your product that has happened, could happen or will happen. The most compelling tend to promise better results, sooner, for modest effort, and the more compelling the claim, the more the amount and quality of its proof matter. Owned by SOP 110 — Claim your proof from the data
Affiliate: A separate business that promotes your product to its own audience. It resembles a referral, but it is really a deal between two owners, set up so both come out ahead. Owned by SOP 47 — Price affiliate commission off acquisition cost
Affiliate (for hiring): Someone who runs a community of people with one skill, such as salespeople, and becomes your affiliate once you pay them to post your job opening. Owned by SOP 252 — Market for salespeople the way you market for prospects
Agency-as-teacher offer: Hiring an agency for six months at a premium on the condition that it explains each decision, then training your own team and dropping to cheaper consulting. Owned by SOP 45 — Engage an agency as a teacher
AI levels: Three levels of using AI: first, use the tools that exist; second, generate data only you have from your core operations; third, run the whole business on AI. The data has to come first. Owned by SOP 219 — Find the right customers, screen for them and capture data
Allocator of resources: Chief allocator of resources; see that entry. Go to “Chief allocator of resources” → Owned by SOP 185 — Allocate resources to the constraint and use leverage
Anchor: A far more expensive option shown before the main one. It has to sit 5 to 10 times higher; a small premium, or anything within 100 percent of the main offer, does not work. It only shapes the decision if it is offered in earnest. Owned by SOP 68 — Run the anchor upsell
Anchor upsell: Showing a premium version at 5 to 10 times the main offer's price first, letting the price sink in, then offering the main offer without the extras. The main offer looks like a better deal, and a few buyers take the premium. Owned by SOP 68 — Run the anchor upsell
Angle and format (ads): An angle is a distinct way of addressing the customer and can reach a new pocket of buyers; a format is a different way of saying the same thing. In one team's practice each gets its own test group, ideally holding one or two ads. Owned by SOP 275 — Judge each ad against your target cost, then cut it or scale it
Angry boat: The angry boat holds just one person. Get more upset about the customer's problem than they are, and they feel heard and tend to stop fighting. Owned by SOP 132 — Run the cancellation call; also defined on SOP 147
Annual inflation increase: A set yearly price rise written into every new contract. The steps start it at 5 to 15 percent; the list of all ten pricing plays puts it at 3 to 10. Raise it while filling in the paperwork, not during the sale. Owned by SOP 79 — Write an annual inflation increase into a contract
Anti-guarantee: An all-sales-final position stated with its reason: the value passes to the buyer the moment they see what you have, so it cannot be handed back. It suits closing opportunities and high-level services, and cannot be paired with another guarantee. Owned by SOP 7 — Choose and condition a guarantee; also defined on SOP 8
Anti-proof: Showing, one after another, the conditions that make the promised result seem unlikely. It keeps viewers curious and clears objections before the proof arrives. Owned by SOP 114 — Run the origin-story, prop-comedy, customer-story, show-don't-tell and long-term-result ad frameworks
Applicant tracking system: Software that holds every open role and where each candidate stands. It is to hiring what a sales pipeline is to customers, and the HR system often links to it or includes it. Owned by SOP 166 — Track candidates in one system and use specialist recruiters; also defined on SOP 173
Ascension: A customer buying more from you through upsells and cross-sells. Someone who has just bought again is the customer least likely to leave, so asking is worth it. Owned by SOP 143 — Build the four-milestone customer journey; also defined on SOP 197
Ascension path: A planned run of moments at which customers are offered the next thing to buy, so the team knows every point to ask. It rounds out customer service at the ten-to-nineteen-person stage. Owned by SOP 162 — Build an ascension path with five points to ask
Asset (personal wealth): On the wealth page, anything that pays you while you hold it, such as rent, dividends or distributions. Something that pays only when you sell it higher counts there as speculation, and your own house is a monthly cost. Owned by SOP 281 — Climb from earning to owning, one rung at a time
ATS: Applicant tracking system; see that entry. Go to “Applicant tracking system” → Owned by SOP 166 — Track candidates in one system and use specialist recruiters
Attention ratio: The one thing you want the audience to look at, divided by everything on the screen competing for their eyes. Keep it as close to one as you can: one idea per slide. Owned by SOP 280 — Build a talk around one problem and one named solution
Attention, affection and approval: The three things people are rewarded by, apart from money. In a reply, you give attention and approval before asking for anything; with reps, they show up as praise and being asked how they did it. Owned by SOP 14 — Reply with acknowledge, compliment, ask; also defined on SOP 88
Attitude versus aptitude: The old hiring contest between the candidate with the right attitude and the one with the right skills. The answer is that it depends on the role; for a low-skill role, attitude wins. Owned by SOP 192 — Hire for the smallest skill gap
Attraction offer: A free or discounted offer that turns strangers into customers and pays back what it cost to get them. Building a money model starts with one. Owned by SOP 59 — Assemble a money model from four prongs; also defined on SOP 209
Auction (for attention): Most platforms sell attention to whoever bids highest, so the business that can pay most per customer wins them. Making each customer worth more is what earns you the right to bid. Owned by SOP 55 — Compute lifetime gross profit and the ratio that gates spending
Autonomy (leadership practice): One of the leadership practices: training the team to decide for itself and trusting people to own results without asking first. At its best, people work at the dial of ownership's level four or five. Owned by SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it
Availability: How many appointment slots you open and how far ahead leads can reserve them. Days, hours per day and slots per hour together predicted attendance better than anything else. Owned by SOP 85 — Set availability as a show-rate lever
Avatar: The specific customer an offer or campaign is aimed at. Being clearer about it raises lead quality and, in turn, earnings; the messaging has to speak clearly to it and the targeting has to mirror it. Owned by SOP 229 — Sell to richer customers and rewrite what you measure; also defined on SOP 10, SOP 197
Avatar (best customers): Your top tenth to fifth of customers. What they did is their activation point. Owned by SOP 129 — Derive the activation point
Avatar (sticking point): Being unclear about whom you serve, very common in roughly the $1 million to $3 million range (SOP 149 puts its band of that size in revenue). Serving both high-end and low-end buyers leaves your price stuck in the middle. Owned by SOP 202 — Spot the seven sticking points and make the hard call
Avatar versions (sales video): Three levels of matching a sales video to one kind of buyer: one core video with mixed proof; the same core with that buyer's testimonials added at the end; or their proof worked into the main argument. Owned by SOP 282 — Place each sales video in the journey and match it to the buyer
Average stay: How many months the typical customer stays: one divided by monthly churn. Churn of 5 percent means 20 months. Owned by SOP 223 — Read the revenue ceiling off sales velocity

B

B2B: Business-to-business; see that entry. Go to “Business-to-business” → Owned by SOP 206 — Run the B2B service and software playbook stack
Back-end product: A further, usually pricier product sold to existing customers, often about five times the core offer. It steadies revenue when new customers slow and grows it when they return; if around one in five buys, revenue can double. Owned by SOP 236 — Upsell more of it, more help with it, or better; also defined on SOP 152
Back-end upsell: Another name for a back-end product; see that entry. Go to “Back-end product” → Owned by SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people
Backfill: Before moving someone to a new channel, having them train a replacement who can hit the same numbers on the working one, so the work carries on. Owned by SOP 165 — Pick a second acquisition channel
Bad branding: Linking your business with something most of your audience dislikes. Owned by SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction
Banker audit: Asking investment bankers to list everything wrong with the business as an investor and a lender would see it. They hope to earn a commission selling it later, so the advice comes free. Owned by SOP 182 — Get the business sale-ready to reach new capital
Basic sales numbers: Seven figures tracked weekly by hand for the team and each rep: contact, schedule, cancellation, show, offer and close rates, plus cash collected. Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
BDR: An outbound sales role, named with the SDR, that reaches prospects by email, cold call or direct message. People in it turn over fast. Owned by SOP 253 — Run a group interview for high-volume roles
Being-lied-to ad: An ad framework: walk quickly toward the camera, tell viewers they are being lied to, expose the old way, show the new way with proof and a selfish reason why, promise speed, then give one next step. Owned by SOP 117 — Run the flying-prop, bribe, rumors-are-true, being-lied-to and data-stack ad frameworks
Belief and trust continuum: Belief and trust come in degrees. The real question is how far the prospect believes you, not whether; every way you back a claim, or fail to, moves them nearer or further from certainty. Owned by SOP 97 — Get permission before getting real; also defined on SOP 110
Belief in degrees: Another name for the belief and trust continuum; see that entry. Go to “Belief and trust continuum” → Owned by SOP 97 — Get permission before getting real
Best-case-worst-case close: Laying out the outcomes so that walking away is the one sure way to miss the goal: at best their life changes; at worst, in one version, they get time free and still end up closer. It comes in three variations; the third fits an offer with no guarantee. Owned by SOP 101 — Run the general closes
Big bet: A large investment in people, product or brand, made to break through a plateau and grow the company. Owned by SOP 175 — Capitalize the business at 250 to 500 people
Big hairy problem: The largest high-impact, high-cost item on the list, usually with many moving parts and touching two or three departments. It is often where you can stand apart; one practice tags it with what solving it would be worth. Owned by SOP 148 — Stabilize the business at one to four people
Big head, long tail: One large payment up front followed by a small monthly one. The large payment covers acquisition cost and commissions, and very few people cancel the small one. Owned by SOP 74 — Price continuity against upfront cash
Big three (closing too few): The three reasons you close fewer leads than you want: you don't reach them while they are curious, the reason to buy is unclear, and buying is hard once they decide. Owned by SOP 245 — Check sales is the constraint and fix the worst part first
Black box: Picture the business as a box with your money model inside, turning attention into money. Once it works, ask why you aren't putting in everything you can. Owned by SOP 195 — Put the marketing principles ahead of the tactics
Blended customer journey: Customer paths across several products, arranged so none conflict and each stays in its own lane. It moves customer service up at the 100-to-249-person stage. Owned by SOP 169 — Blend the customer journeys across products
Blended return on ad spend: Return measured across all spending, brand included, not just direct-response ads. A direct-response return of 20 to 1 may really be nearer 4 or 5 to 1. Owned by SOP 177 — Go brand-first, read blended return and cost a permanent customer
Bonus: An extra item added after the price is given. Each one targets a specific obstacle the buyer sees, is named for its benefit, and comes with proof and a stated value. Together they should outweigh the core offer in value. Owned by SOP 6 — Build and present a bonus stack
Bouquet: A way to picture a brand: products, values, experiences and people bound together like flowers. What goes in, its origin and its amount all change the brand you end up with. Owned by SOP 93 — Choose a market direction
Brand bet: Any change to the brand, seen as a wager that you will gain more followers than you lose, and that those you gain care a lot about what you sell. Owned by SOP 93 — Choose a market direction
Brand-first advertising: Leading with brand in every channel at once: give value first and ask later. It may take 18 months or more to pay back. Owned by SOP 177 — Go brand-first, read blended return and cost a permanent customer
Brand in six steps: Pick the ideal customer; list what they want and what they struggle with; show them how to get there; show that you have it, that you resemble them and that you have proof; ask them; repeat as often as you can. Owned by SOP 216 — Make content for the customers you want and build a brand
Brand loop: Good work gets people talking, demand rises and the price keeps climbing; the rising price itself signals that the work is good. Owned by SOP 203 — Fix over-expansion, pay, underpricing and a single product
Branding: Linking your business with two or more other things. Planned or not, it happens through what you say and do, what you appear next to and how you look. Owned by SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction
Bread-and-butter hooks: Hooks built each week from past winners, as opposed to experimental hooks aimed at new markets. Owned by SOP 119 — Assemble hook, meat and call to action
Break-even conversion rate: The rate of conversion at which a higher price earns the same gross profit per lead as the old one. For example, $12 per lead over $80 per sale gives 15 percent. Owned by SOP 128 — Test price with a step size and a cadence
Breaking a belief: Five moves: what you used to believe, why it is wrong, what is right, why it is right, and the proof. Owned by SOP 65 — Convert a free consumption asset
Breaking points by headcount: Where a growing team tends to break: up to 10 people, role clarity; 10 to 50, communication; 50 to 100, accountability; 100 and up, depth of leadership, which calls for whichever layer of leaders is short, executives, middle managers or both. Owned by SOP 265 — Find which corner of functions, people and operations breaks first
Breakup fee: A fixed exit price agreed and initialed at the start, for example two months to leave a 12-month agreement, whether in month one or month eleven. It gives you something to negotiate with when someone leaves. Owned by SOP 76 — Design cancellation terms and the waived-fee offer
Bribe ad: An ad framework that leads with the offer: ask for contact details up front, say what valuable free material they will get, compare it with what the market charges, and close with a call to action that echoes the hook. Owned by SOP 116 — Run the trend, value-anchor, bribe, underdog and prize-challenge ad frameworks
Broader market: One of the five market directions: widening to the whole category, such as every kind of senior-living center instead of one kind. Owned by SOP 93 — Choose a market direction
Budget, authority, need and timing: Four things to learn about every lead: can they pay, can they say yes, do they need it, and is now the time. Asked on a set call or an application form, and before outreach, in outbound reps' scripts. Owned by SOP 208 — Set prerequisites, raise lead quality and add friction; also defined on SOP 148, SOP 217
Built-in sales consultation: A selling moment sold as part of the offer's timeline, such as an onboarding call, a midpoint review or a yearly visit, where the customer can be offered more. Once it is sold, customers reportedly attend more, and are less likely to miss their result. Owned by SOP 231 — Build the next sale into the offer and anchor high
Burned-before objection: Blaming past bad experiences with other products, such as having tried something similar that failed. It belongs with the objections about other people, and is really about trust or doubt. Owned by SOP 111 — Handle I've been burned before
Business-to-business: Selling to other companies. Services and software sold this way are grouped together because the selling is almost the same; mostly the delivery differs. SOP 232 adds that selling to companies can raise the quantity each buyer takes. Owned by SOP 206 — Run the B2B service and software playbook stack; also defined on SOP 232
Buy or build (next product): The two ways to add the next product once the main one earns well: buy it through mergers and acquisitions, or build it in house through research and development. Owned by SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product
Buy or build (talent): Building means training someone into a skill: cheaper to hire, slower, and you pay for their mistakes. Buying means hiring the skill ready-made: usually dearer, but faster. Companies tend to buy more as they grow. Owned by SOP 44 — Buy or build talent
Buy X get Y free: The customer pays for something and gets more things free. More free items, and more valuable ones, work better: for three units, one paid and two free beats two paid and one free. Owned by SOP 63 — Design a buy-X-get-Y-free offer; also defined on SOP 209
Buyer-optimized campaign: An ad campaign set to find people who buy, not the most leads, wherever you can take a transaction. At one launch its leads cost several times as much, yet those campaigns still returned several times as much. Owned by SOP 197 — Solve a leads, sales or profit-per-customer problem; also defined on SOP 213
Buying continuum: The path a buyer travels until they know enough to decide. Marketing carries them part of the way and selling covers the rest; with enough information, no salesperson is needed, even for costly items. Owned by SOP 244 — Sell to what the buyer knows and lengthen the runway

C

CAC: Cost to acquire a customer; see that entry. Go to “Cost to acquire a customer” → Owned by SOP 196 — Answer the money question, starting with acquisition cost
Cadence (management practice): One of the five management practices: a steady, repeating rhythm of one-on-ones, team meetings and reviews. A team is never more disciplined than the rhythm its founder keeps. Owned by SOP 271 — Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
Calculator close: A way of selling that anchors the price on a calculator of the savings or earnings you create, where you can show the result and later prove it, as in accounting, tax, IT or security work. Owned by SOP 206 — Run the B2B service and software playbook stack
Call notes: What the setter records while qualifying a lead: everything that bears on whether they will buy. On the call you sound as if you know their business, and later you use them to pick proof that answers their objections. Owned by SOP 248 — Prep every call with notes and proof matched to the prospect
Call-out: The opening of an ad or hook whose one job is to make the right person think 'this is for me'. It can work with words or without them. Owned by SOP 32 — Call out the audience four ways; also defined on SOP 121
Call prep: Done the night before or that morning: look up the day's calls, work out the objections each prospect is likely to raise, then choose content and proof, one piece of each, to suit their avatar. Owned by SOP 248 — Prep every call with notes and proof matched to the prospect
Call to action: The part that tells people exactly what to do next: what, how, when, what they get and, if you like, what happens after. Clear beats clever, the action should be quick and easy, and a reason to act now helps. Owned by SOP 119 — Assemble hook, meat and call to action; also defined on SOP 13
Cancellation call: A call held before a customer is allowed to cancel, also called an exit interview. It is set up as an expectation during onboarding, triggered by the cancellation notice, and usually saves about half of those who take it. Owned by SOP 132 — Run the cancellation call; also defined on SOP 76, SOP 133
Cancellation video: For a high-volume, low-price business where calls do not pay: a short video that reminds leaving customers why they started and what they stand to lose. Owned by SOP 132 — Run the cancellation call
Cap usage: Limiting how much a customer can use, such as revisions or hours on an account, and charging for anything past the limit, so delivery costs stay under control. Owned by SOP 127 — Cut delivery cost nine ways; also defined on SOP 201
Capitalize (stage 9): The 250-to-500-person stage. The owner acts as chairman and division leaders drive revenue; growth has plateaued and the next driver is unclear. You move on by making a big bet on the future, such as buying or building. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 175
Card on file (appointment hold): In the setter's second script, a card that holds the appointment and reserves the discount. Three prepared answers to pushback are used in order; the second asks only for the first four digits. Owned by SOP 53 — Run the setter scripts
Card on file (menu upsell): Closing by asking whether to use the card they already paid with, which spares them a second decision at payment. The fastest close there is. Owned by SOP 67 — Run the menu upsell
Career path (progress matrix): Several title tiers for one repeated role, such as junior, standard and senior, with small pay steps between them. The pace is put both at a step about every 12 weeks and at about six months a leap; SOP 134 instead allows at most one raise a year, barring promotion. The titles themselves are placeholders. Owned by SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps
Cash conversion cycle: The time from putting money out to getting it back from the sale with profit; in one case, cutting it from 90 days to 30 was put to the owners as enough to triple revenue. SOP 57 uses it as another name for the payback period. Owned by SOP 221 — Move faster: run the five-step process, then commit; also defined on SOP 57
Cash cow: A product with a large share of a market that is growing slowly. It earns reliably, and changing it now makes it worse, even though the business needs new things to keep growing. Owned by SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product; also defined on SOP 175
Cash-flow constrained: The last money problem: cost to win a customer is fine and profit is good, but cash arrives too slowly to spend more, as with ninety-day terms, or a customer who cost $1,000 to win paying $100 a month. Owned by SOP 196 — Answer the money question, starting with acquisition cost; also defined on SOP 198
Cash-flow problem: Another name for being cash-flow constrained; see that entry. Go to “Cash-flow constrained” → Owned by SOP 198 — Accelerate cash flow when profit does not come fast enough
Categorize (stage 7): The 50-to-99-person stage, where the owner is an executive, often with three layers of leadership below; the first executives are hired, though the executive team is usually not fully built out. Systems are swamped and disorganized; you move on by sorting everything into its own bucket. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 164
Category of one: Priced so far above the field that buyers conclude you are a different kind of thing altogether and stop comparing. A small premium won't get you there; the distance has to be visible. Owned by SOP 2 — Set a price from the value gap, not from competitors
Ceiling (affiliate commission): The most you will pay to win one customer. At a three-to-one ratio of lifetime profit to cost, it is a third of gross profit, and each commission tier is a share of it, never of the sale. Owned by SOP 47 — Price affiliate commission off acquisition cost
Chief allocator of resources: The owner's job at higher stages: moving money, time, energy and people to where they return the most, as an investor would. It depends on good data. Owned by SOP 185 — Allocate resources to the constraint and use leverage; also defined on SOP 154
Chief recruiting officer: The founder's role at 250 to 500 people: personally finding and winning the top people who ignore ordinary recruiters, and selling them on the company's growth and vision. Owned by SOP 181 — Recruit top talent as the founder
Chunk up a level: Selling to an organization that holds a steady stream of your end customers, so their churn falls on its books while it stays with you; in one example, a tutoring business partnering with schools that refer students each year. Owned by SOP 283 — Find or attach a compounding vehicle to a one-time sale
Chunking: Breaking an idea down into the smaller skills it is made of. The view here is that instructions often fail because they use terms too chunked up, each hiding many skills. Owned by SOP 193 — Treat hard as a skill you lack and chunk it down
Churn: The share of customers at the start of a period who are gone by the next; customers who join during the period don't count. For a business under a year old, a quick version compares last month's customers with this month's. Owned by SOP 55 — Compute lifetime gross profit and the ratio that gates spending; also defined on SOP 149, SOP 223
Churn point: A point in a customer's stay when many leave, such as after month 3. Owned by SOP 140 — Incentivize activation and time unlocks past churn points
Churn treadmill: What you land on if the product gets worse while you keep advertising: customers pour out the back and it is hard to step off. Owned by SOP 54 — Climb the seven levels of advertising
Circumstance objection: Blaming something outside the prospect's control, such as time or money. The answer shows they are letting circumstances choose for them, which means they can choose differently. Owned by SOP 105 — Handle time and resourcefulness objections
Claim your proof: Gather data first, see which claims it already supports, and make those claims, instead of hunting for proof of the claims you wish you could make. Owned by SOP 110 — Claim your proof from the data
Clarify step: The opening questions of discovery: their situation now, their reason for coming, what prompted a response and what got them in the door, then the result they want. Owned by SOP 239 — Build pain before the ask and clarify why they came
Classic upsell: Selling what has to go with what the customer came for, since nobody wants X without Y: a burger without fries, a fish without a bowl. Owned by SOP 66 — Run the classic upsell and choose the moment
Close rate: The share of people who hear the offer and say yes, not the share of all leads; SOP 189 works it as sales over shows. Owned by SOP 224 — Set fractal price tiers and read price off the close rate; also defined on SOP 189
Close-rate benchmarks: Reference rates by way of selling: 15 percent of social-ad leads is great for a local service; a webinar converting 2 percent of opt-ins, typically 5 to 15 percent of attendees; about 35 percent in person, or about one in three by phone. SOP 225 instead puts in person at about 30 percent and webinars at 10 to 15 percent of good attendees. Owned by SOP 245 — Check sales is the constraint and fix the worst part first
Close-rate price bands: Closing 80 percent or more likely means 3 to 4 times underpriced; 60 to 80, 2 to 3 times; 50 to 60, 1.5 to 2; 40 to 50, 1.25 to 1.5; 30 to 40, about right; under 30, sell better first. SOP 245 reads a rate a little above about 35 percent as a hint to raise. Owned by SOP 224 — Set fractal price tiers and read price off the close rate
Closing drill: Daily team practice on the most common obstacle until it improves, then on whichever obstacle the team now struggles with most, with training carrying on after the numbers recover. Owned by SOP 108 — Drill a team on closing
CMO: The executive in charge of marketing, whose shift of spending toward brand drove the turnaround in the example. Owned by SOP 177 — Go brand-first, read blended return and cost a permanent customer
Cohort: A group of customers who signed up in the same period, such as everyone who joined in July. Comparing cohorts shows what changed when churn rose. Owned by SOP 158 — Diagnose churn by cohort
Cohort-based urgency: Using the fixed start date of the next group as the deadline, which gives a buyer a reason to decide on any day of the week. Owned by SOP 9 — Split scarcity from urgency
Cohort grid: Cohorts laid out by month of customer life, first, second, third and on, so you can see where customers fall away, such as a sharp drop between months four and five. Owned by SOP 158 — Diagnose churn by cohort
Cold outreach: Contacting strangers privately, one at a time, by text, email, calls or knocking on doors, about what you sell. It builds on warm outreach, which comes first. Owned by SOP 27 — Build a cold list; also defined on SOP 147
Commission on cash collected: Paying commission on the cash collected up front. In one owner's teams, it is the one pay change said to reliably improve the quality of closes and pull cash forward. Owned by SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps
Commodity: An offer so like its rivals that buyers simply take the cheapest. A trade everyone can name and picture counts as one unless you play the game well. Owned by SOP 233 — Become the most expensive and stop selling a commodity
Common-factors analysis: Ask several experts about a problem, collect every answer, then solve for what their answers share; asking many people strips out individual bias. Applied to customers, what they share becomes a candidate activation point. Owned by SOP 133 — Run the five retention habits and expect the first-month rise
Communication (management practice): One of the five management practices: regular feedback that flows up as well as down between you and your reports. Owned by SOP 271 — Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
Community linking: Tying members to one another, not only to you, since several deeper ties hold better than a single tie to the group. Owned by SOP 141 — Connect members to each other
Compensation (sticking point): Pay set too low, so good people can't be found, or too high, such as profit share for front-desk staff. Of the seven sticking points, it is called the least common. Owned by SOP 203 — Fix over-expansion, pay, underpricing and a single product
Competitor-based pricing: Charging the average of what others charge. It is simple and may be near what the market pays, but it rests on other firms and their customers instead of your own. Owned by SOP 82 — Set price from the pricing rules and the three models
Competitor-price objection: Pointing to someone who supposedly offers something similar for less. It is one of the ways money is used to avoid deciding, and counts as a circumstance objection, not a request for a discount. Owned by SOP 102 — Handle the competitor-price objection
Completely unaware: The lowest level of awareness: they have no idea they have a problem or a need. Hooks for them usually run on curiosity. Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Compliance process: A review that all marketing passes before release, including emails, content, ads and phone scripts, set up at 250 to 500 people once platform and regulatory risk matter. A list drawn up after counsel's audit is ticked off before anything goes out. Owned by SOP 176 — Install a compliance process for marketing
Compliant opening line: The same first line on every call, covering who is calling, from which company, what it is about, and that the line is recorded, with that notice folded into the introduction. Owned by SOP 238 — Open every call the same way and keep the script short
Compounding: Putting in the same effort and getting more out over time, so the business grows while you do the same work. Leverage happens once; compounding keeps building. Owned by SOP 199 — Build a compounding vehicle
Compounding vehicle: Something in the business that makes growth feed itself, also called a flywheel or virtuous cycle. Almost every business should look for one; reputation is the everyday case. Owned by SOP 199 — Build a compounding vehicle
Condition for value: The part of a hook that promises value for paying attention. Sometimes it is spelled out (if you do this, you get that); sometimes it is only implied. Owned by SOP 121 — Write a hook
Conditional guarantee: A guarantee with terms, meant to be worth more than a refund, stating the result promised, the time allowed and what the buyer gets if it fails. Ten forms are listed; with pay-later offers, the buyer earns the right to cancel by meeting the conditions. Owned by SOP 7 — Choose and condition a guarantee; also defined on SOP 64
Congruence: Every step from first seeing the ad to paying fits the picture set up before it. Anything that jars raises a red flag and loses the prospect; it matters most for premium offers. Owned by SOP 243 — Control the conditions, keep every step congruent and clear
Constraint: The one thing that sets how fast the business can grow right now. There is only ever one; effort anywhere else changes nothing until it is solved, so confirm it before choosing a fix. Owned by SOP 184 — Find the one constraint with six questions; also defined on SOP 40
Constraint (funnel step): The step in the funnel where adding the same number of percentage points gives the biggest percentage rise in leads; that always picks the lowest-rate step, usually one near the front. SOP 220 instead works on the step lowest against its benchmark. Owned by SOP 41 — Run one test a week
Consultant frame: Selling by showing up as the expert. It adds authority and makes buying likelier, but turning 100 reps into experts is very hard, so a process built on learning about the prospect scales better. Owned by SOP 238 — Open every call the same way and keep the script short
Container word: The word in an offer's name that tells you what kind of thing it is, such as challenge, blueprint, system, makeover, fast track, intensive or giveaway. Owned by SOP 10 — Name an offer with the five naming slots
Content unit: The smallest complete piece of content, doing three jobs in order: hook, retain, reward. Long content is many units in a row; an image or meme can be a whole unit. Owned by SOP 20 — Build the content unit — hook, retain, reward
Continuity: Ongoing value that customers keep paying for until they cancel. It raises each customer's worth, steadies cash flow and leaves one more thing to sell, but brings in less cash now, so it usually comes last in the money model. Owned by SOP 74 — Price continuity against upfront cash; also defined on SOP 59
Continuity bonus: Something valuable given free for signing up to the ongoing service today, usually worth more than the first payment. Advertise the bonus, not the membership. Owned by SOP 74 — Price continuity against upfront cash
Continuity discount: Free product or service time in return for committing to buy for longer, such as two months free for signing up for a year. Decide how you will apply it, and your cancellation terms, before offering it. Owned by SOP 75 — Apply a continuity discount and the three-plus-twelve rule
Continuity that starts automatically: A stripped-down, low-cost version of what you sell, priced at a fraction of the main product and agreed at the start, that begins on its own once the front-end period ends. Owned by SOP 77 — Run the ten pricing plays that add profit now
Contrast (decoy offer): The gap between the lesser and premium versions. If the free version keeps winning, widen the gap; the aim is 70 to 80 percent choosing the premium. Owned by SOP 62 — Design a decoy offer
Contrast (visual call-out): Anything that stands out in the first few seconds, such as a bright color, an attractive person or movement. Each nearly always draws more attention than its plain or still opposite. Owned by SOP 33 — Call out without words
Control: The version you are running now. A new version has to beat it to take its place. Owned by SOP 220 — Run two-round concept testing and promote to control
Controlling the conditions: Treating a sale as the product of its surroundings: shape as many of the things that make a qualified lead likelier to buy as you can, knowing nobody controls them all or can promise every sale. Owned by SOP 243 — Control the conditions, keep every step congruent and clear
Conversion-rate optimization: Regular split tests at each stage of the funnel, judged on show, offer and close rates. Several small gains can double throughput. Owned by SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people
Conviction: A rep's belief in the product, in the view here the main way to fix their tone. It comes from proof and, on this view, gets used up, so fresh customer results top it up every day. Owned by SOP 256 — Run ongoing daily and weekly training for sales reps
Copy before you change: Copy what already works before improving it: a new rep copies the best performer exactly, doubles their inputs and changes nothing until they beat those numbers; a new advertiser copies competitors until matching their performance, then gets clever. Owned by SOP 29 — Set outreach volume; also defined on SOP 35
Core offer: The main thing you sell and the terms you sell it on; of all the offers in a business, the one that earns the most. SOP 6 shows it apart from its bonuses so the buyer counts several items, not one; SOP 230 would show fewer items, since each takes room in the buyer's head. Owned by SOP 13 — Choose and build a lead magnet; also defined on SOP 6, SOP 231
Cost of acquiring talent: Cost to acquire talent; see that entry. Go to “Cost to acquire talent” → Owned by SOP 252 — Market for salespeople the way you market for prospects
Cost of change: The dip in performance, about 20 percent in one owner's businesses, that a change usually brings at first, most of all when people are involved. A rule of thumb, not a law. Owned by SOP 188 — Apply the cost-of-change rule
Cost of delivery: Delivery cost; see that entry. Go to “Delivery cost” → Owned by SOP 226 — Set a gross margin goal and close the gap three ways
Cost of goods sold: Delivery cost; see that entry. Go to “Delivery cost” → Owned by SOP 234 — Audit delivery by who values what, then cut its cost
Cost of inaction: What not deciding has already cost the prospect. The close reminds them that people regret what they didn't do, not what they did. Owned by SOP 107 — Handle I need to think about it
Cost per engaged lead: Total pay for the team that produces leads, divided by the engaged leads it produced in the same period. For paid ads, add media spend to pay before dividing. Owned by SOP 42 — Cost an engaged lead off payroll and set the learning budget
Cost-plus pricing: Adding a margin on top of your costs. It is easy and covers costs, but earns nothing extra from buyers who would pay more, and buyers neither see nor care about your costs. SOP 206 calls it the worst way to price. Owned by SOP 82 — Set price from the pricing rules and the three models; also defined on SOP 206
Cost to acquire a customer: Everything it takes to win one new customer, not just the ad bill: media, pay for the people who buy ads and make creative, software, commissions, sales pay and managers. Add up a period's spending and divide by new customers. Owned by SOP 56 — Define and compute what a customer costs to acquire; also defined on SOP 42, SOP 196
Cost to acquire a permanent customer: What it costs to create one customer who stops churning. If one trial in three converts and one customer in three stays for good, that is nine trials each. Owned by SOP 177 — Go brand-first, read blended return and cost a permanent customer
Cost to acquire talent: What it costs to find and hire one person, the hiring version of acquisition cost, weighed against the gross profit that hire will bring. Paying staff for referrals keeps it low. Owned by SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people
Cost to win a customer: Cost to acquire a customer; see that entry. Go to “Cost to acquire a customer” → Owned by SOP 42 — Cost an engaged lead off payroll and set the learning budget
Coverage (sales): How many hours a day and days a week sales is open for calls; the biggest throughput gap between two otherwise similar businesses. Owned by SOP 164 — Categorize the business at fifty to ninety-nine people
CPA (tax professional): The tax professional who tells you what to put aside for the quarterly tax bill. Choose one who stays above board. Owned by SOP 150 — Set up the finances stage by stage
Cradle to grave: Deciding at the start what suits each type of prospect and keeping them there. In one practice, a qualified prospect who turns down the $10,000 offer is not then offered something lesser; SOP 70 and SOP 73 instead downsell after a no. Owned by SOP 228 — Weigh a downsell against raising the core price
Crazy eight: Raise prices, lower costs, sell more purchases, cross-sell, sell more quantity, sell better quality, and downsell to fewer or to worse. One pass through all eight probably takes two minutes. Owned by SOP 232 — Drill the eight ways to raise what customers are worth; also defined on SOP 72, SOP 152
Create flow, monetize, add friction: The order for a new offer: first get people saying yes even if delivery is hard, then make money from it, then shift toward offers that are harder to sell but easier to deliver, which is how you scale. Owned by SOP 5 — Cut costly pieces from an offer and bundle the rest
Creative (body of an ad): The part of an ad that delivers on the hook; another name for the meat. See Meat. Owned by SOP 120 — Use the five ad meat formats
Creative (images and footage): The pictures and video in an ad. Swapping them is the cheapest refresh and the first one to make; it typically moves every seven days. Owned by SOP 11 — Refresh a promotion in order of operational drag
Credibility: Proof: things that really happened and back up what you say, such as awards and figures. It is best shown through other people or screenshots. Owned by SOP 211 — Build status, power, credibility and likeness through content
CRM: Customer relationship management system; see that entry. Go to “Customer relationship management system” → Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
Cross-department call review: A weekly 60- to 90-minute meeting, run by the head of sales, where marketing, sales and customer success watch one recorded call together at 1.5x speed and agree on one thing to act on. SOP 152 instead runs it with product attending, from twice a day while a problem is live to every other week, and has each department name its own fix. Owned by SOP 135 — Run the cross-department call review
Cross-sell: Selling something different alongside the main item, such as matching chairs and bowls with a table, or a case, insurance and apps with a phone. Owned by SOP 232 — Drill the eight ways to raise what customers are worth
Culture (as a system): How a company enforces standards, recognizes people and hands out consequences. What it reinforces and enforces counts; posters and lists of values count for very little. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
Culture (the rules that get reinforced): The rules that decide which behavior in a business counts as good and gets reinforced: do this and you get a reason to do it again. They are said to number in the hundreds, mostly unspoken, covering what is allowed, praised and tolerated. Owned by SOP 257 — Name the rules your sales culture reinforces and tolerates; also defined on SOP 88
Culture audit: A three-minute exercise: list the three most common behaviors, good or bad; name the systems pushing each one along or against it; set your stated values beside both. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
Culture of execution: A culture that rewards behavior keeping a team quick, available, persistent and personal, and pushes back on behavior that makes it slow, unavailable, fragile and boring. Owned by SOP 88 — Pay and rank reps on show rate
Culture, skill or will: The three kinds of fit people are let go for. Low skill or will usually leaves little to cover; in the view here, the one you feel is the rarer case of a highly effective person who fits the culture badly. Owned by SOP 153 — Fire without surprise and plan who covers the work
Customer acquisition cost: Cost to acquire a customer; see that entry. Go to “Cost to acquire a customer” → Owned by SOP 138 — Keep value above price to hold customers
Customer relationship management system: The system holding tracking, key numbers and notes from every customer touch point, so the whole company can act almost as one brain. An early one is probably built for sales and is later extended so every customer is tracked. Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
Customer satisfaction score: A five-point rating from very dissatisfied to very satisfied, asked right after one part of the offer, such as support or onboarding, has delivered value. Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
Customer service playbook: Ready-made replies to the most common questions in the three to five categories that make up most support requests, so a given question always gets the same answer. It comes before the empowerment wheel. Owned by SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people; also defined on SOP 161
Customer story (ad): An ad framework: a testimonial built on six points: life before, personally and at work; their doubts; why they acted; life after, both ways. It cuts from hard times to a turning point to the dream outcome. Owned by SOP 114 — Run the origin-story, prop-comedy, customer-story, show-don't-tell and long-term-result ad frameworks
Customer surplus: The gap between what customers pay and what they get, which some call goodwill. Its size usually decides how much word of mouth and repeat buying you get. Owned by SOP 82 — Set price from the pricing rules and the three models; also defined on SOP 284
Customer video flywheel: Customers keep making clips, the clips run as ads, the ads bring customers, and the new customers make more clips, so you are no longer the one producing. Owned by SOP 38 — Turn the best organic post into an ad
Cut rule (ads): One team's only rule for switching an ad off: once it is getting traction, cut it if each qualified lead from it costs about three times your target. With good early signs and no sale yet, it lets the ad run to about three times the target cost of a customer before deciding. Owned by SOP 275 — Judge each ad against your target cost, then cut it or scale it

D

Daily test (speed): At least once a day a lead should remark on how fast you reached them; if none does, you are not calling leads fast enough. Owned by SOP 90 — Reach a new lead fast
Data (sticking point): Having no numbers and feeling you can afford neither to get them nor to decide without them. Act on incomplete data, think in directions, and make getting the data the priority if you can. Owned by SOP 202 — Spot the seven sticking points and make the hard call
Data-stack ad: An ad framework: open on a half-written board of numbers, fire off your most striking figures, say how many people are already interested, and state real limits to create scarcity. Owned by SOP 117 — Run the flying-prop, bribe, rumors-are-true, being-lied-to and data-stack ad frameworks
Day-one-to-14 checklist: A list of what a new customer must do in their first two weeks, since that is when people fall away. It aims them at activation. Owned by SOP 235 — Get customers to buy again: make it good, onboard, remind
Decentralized IT: Moving from one central technology team serving every department to technology staff inside each department, such as marketing technology, sales operations and revenue operations. Owned by SOP 170 — Decentralize technology into the departments
Declared values: The third layer of culture: the principles you claim, usually three to five, describing how the mission will be reached. They are empty unless they match the two layers beneath. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
Decoy (menu upsell): An added third option, priced the same as the dearer of two products, that makes buying both together feel like getting one free. Owned by SOP 67 — Run the menu upsell
Decoy offer: Advertising a lesser free or discounted version of your premium offer, then showing both side by side when the lead responds, so the premium shows its own value. All the money is in the upsell. Owned by SOP 62 — Design a decoy offer
Delivery cost: What it costs to provide what you sell. Lowering it is one of the eight routes to a more valuable customer, and every saving becomes gross profit. It can only fall as far as zero. Owned by SOP 127 — Cut delivery cost nine ways
Delivery grid: A thinking aid that runs each solution through six dimensions (group ratio, effort level, support, consumption type, speed and convenience, and the 10x to one-tenth test) and combines them to list every way to deliver it. Owned by SOP 4 — Generate delivery options from a grid of choices
Delivery ratio: How many customers you can serve with what you have, such as clients per rep or covers in a restaurant. Raising it, for example from five to 10 clients per rep, can raise throughput. Owned by SOP 190 — Check whether the market is really too small; also defined on SOP 201
Demand-constrained: Having the capacity to serve more and needing more customers. Owned by SOP 184 — Find the one constraint with six questions
Demonstration ad: One of the five meat formats: showing the product in use or people reacting to it, unboxings, comparisons such as before-and-afters, or high-production hero ads. Owned by SOP 120 — Use the five ad meat formats
Deprivation: The unmet want that drives a purchase. People act on what they have least of, so place the offer while the want is still open and make plain what not acting costs, rather than selling just after it is satisfied. Owned by SOP 239 — Build pain before the ask and clarify why they came; also defined on SOP 39
Depth then width: Get the most quality and volume out of one platform before adding the next. Probably better when resources are short or you are new, at the cost of relying on one channel. Owned by SOP 25 — Sequence platforms and widen a niche
Developers: In the values-performance grid, people whose values fit but whose results are low. Coach them, set clear goals and give time and resources; they can grow into stars, and their loyalty runs deep. Owned by SOP 259 — Sort the team by values and performance, and act on each box
Dial of ownership: A five-level scale of how much a person owns decisions: wait to be told; ask what to do; recommend, then act; act, then inform; act independently. Showing it to the team makes expectations objective. Owned by SOP 266 — Set each role's level of ownership and train people up the dial
Dial twice: Another name for the double dial; see that entry. Go to “Double dial” → Owned by SOP 53 — Run the setter scripts
Differentiated (feature): High value that nobody else delivers your way. It is what gives you pricing power. Owned by SOP 168 — Specialize the business at 100 to 249 people
Direct-message funnel: A post asks viewers to comment or message a keyword; an automation tool sends the offer, they reply, and it sends the link. It builds a second list and moves people into conversations, where the sale happens. Owned by SOP 204 — Run the influencer playbook, one constraint at a time
Direct-response ads: Ads that ask for an action now. They reach more of the audience you already have but don't grow it the way branding does; over a long enough stretch, branding is said to return more. Owned by SOP 204 — Run the influencer playbook, one constraint at a time; also defined on SOP 95
Direction (leadership practice): Telling people again and again where the company is heading and why it matters, so each person sees how their daily work adds up to the long-term vision. Owned by SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it
Direction (of a brand): Whether the behavior a brand causes moves people toward it or away. It varies by audience; a single brand can pull one group closer while pushing another away. Owned by SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction
Discovery: The part of a sales call that finds the prospect's problems, in a nine-step loop repeated until the problems found can carry the offer. It opens with an introduction and labeling the prospect with one or more problems. Owned by SOP 239 — Build pain before the ask and clarify why they came
Do it yourself, done with you, done for you: Three levels of how much work falls on the buyer: they do it with what you hand over, you guide them through it, or you do it for them. Each step up can usually carry about ten times the price, depending on the field. Owned by SOP 4 — Generate delivery options from a grid of choices; also defined on SOP 236
Do, talk, repeat: The default way to find topics: do things, share what you did, and keep going. Running out of topics means you are not doing enough. Owned by SOP 22 — Source content topics
Document, demonstrate, duplicate: Three steps for handing off a job: you do it and write the steps down, ideally from footage of yourself; you do it while they watch; then they do it while you watch. Owned by SOP 43 — Document, demonstrate, duplicate
Done for you to done with you: Moving from doing the work for customers to doing it alongside them, so each employee can serve far more customers. It can be very profitable if the switch costs only a small cut in price. Owned by SOP 127 — Cut delivery cost nine ways; also defined on SOP 201
Double dial: Calling a lead back at once when the first call gets no answer. The lead gave permission, and many phones screen a first call from an unknown number but let a second through, and people are far more likely to pick up the second call. Owned by SOP 91 — Run the first-contact channel stack and the double dial; also defined on SOP 53
Down market: One of the five market directions: moving to serve smaller customers, such as at-home and mobile care providers. Owned by SOP 93 — Choose a market direction
Downsell: What you offer after a no: meet their budget through the payment terms or the contents, never by selling the identical thing for less, which is discounting. Its job in the money model is turning a no into a yes. SOP 228 instead warns against offering a qualified prospect anything lesser after a no. Owned by SOP 70 — Work the payment-plan downsell ladder; also defined on SOP 59, SOP 232
Downsell ladder: An ordered list of smaller offers, each made only after the one above it is turned down. For a service, it runs from selling to the goal down to a free orientation. Owned by SOP 59 — Assemble a money model from four prongs
Downsell qualification rule: On one reading, cheaper versions, whether less quantity or lower quality, go only to prospects who don't qualify for the main offer, and one practice forbids salespeople to sell them to anyone who does. On another, SOP 70's, anyone who says no to the main offer can be offered a downsell, a cut-down product included. SOP 228 holds that where people do the selling, downselling the unqualified is not worth it: screen them out instead. Which reading is right is not settled. Owned by SOP 72 — Generate tiers and downsells from the quality vectors
Downward cycle: The common pricing loop: average what competitors charge, go a little under, add a little more, and repeat until the profit is gone. Owned by SOP 2 — Set a price from the value gap, not from competitors
Dream outcome: How much the end result matters to the buyer. It sets the price ceiling for the category, so solving costlier problems is how you earn more. Owned by SOP 3 — Diagnose an offer on its value drivers
Dream outcome sentence: One specific sentence naming the result, how long it takes, and what the buyer most fears or hates, which the offer will avoid. Nothing later can be built if it is vague. Owned by SOP 4 — Generate delivery options from a grid of choices

E

Earnings per click: What each click pays you once price, churn and conversion are combined. The view here is that it, not lifetime value, is the real target for a business selling online, since it sets how much you can bid for attention against rivals; raising gross profit per customer raises it. Owned by SOP 225 — Pick your war and check lifetime value is the constraint; also defined on SOP 227
Earnings per view: The added money made per person who lands on a page; the measure for judging a change to a funnel. Owned by SOP 219 — Find the right customers, screen for them and capture data
EBITDA: A standard profit measure. A target stated in it is the example of a money goal that moves only the founder, and so is not a vision. Owned by SOP 262 — Write a vision so big your team's own visions fit inside
Education ad: One of the five meat formats: explainers, how-to or list videos, and strong organic content. Filmed in a teaching setting, such as at a whiteboard, it reads as value and authority and suits complex, new or pricier offers. Owned by SOP 120 — Use the five ad meat formats; also defined on SOP 115
Effort and sacrifice: Everything the buyer must do, spend or give up beyond the price, risk included. Push it toward zero; larger operations put most of their effort here. Owned by SOP 3 — Diagnose an offer on its value drivers
Eight value elements: The four value elements, each paired with its opposite: dream outcome and nightmare, likelihood and risk, speed and delay, ease and effort. The first of each pair is what buyers want more of; the second, less. Owned by SOP 39 — Write what an ad says, who says it, and when
Eight ways to make a customer worth more: Another name for the crazy eight; see that entry. Go to “Crazy eight” → Owned by SOP 232 — Drill the eight ways to raise what customers are worth
Eighty percent rule: A rule of thumb that a service business, especially a knowledge-based one, should run a gross margin of 80 percent or more, since scaling below that is very unlikely. Other kinds of service may set a different goal; no floor is given for manufactured goods. Owned by SOP 55 — Compute lifetime gross profit and the ratio that gates spending; also defined on SOP 226
Eleven proof elements: An ordered list of kinds of proof: your own result, results of people like them, number of reviews, credentials, statistics, expert backing, new against what failed before, a celebrity, a guarantee, describing their pain exactly, and a live demonstration. Owned by SOP 15 — Decompose perceived likelihood
Elite tier: A small top tier for perhaps five or ten private clients, who get something like direct access to the owner. It lifts how everything below it is seen; on a first try, cap it at five. Owned by SOP 231 — Build the next sale into the offer and anchor high
Email revenue share: For most businesses that take email seriously, the claim is that about 25 percent of revenue should come from it, reportedly fairly normal, and sometimes 40 or 50. Since email costs nothing to send, that revenue goes straight to the bottom line. Owned by SOP 254 — Nurture by email and book the next meeting months out
Employee empowerment wheel: A diagram that splits a rep's decisions between ones needing sign-off, such as contracts, legal, regulatory or major operational matters, and ones a rep may make alone, such as credits, refunds, discounts or bonuses. Owned by SOP 161 — Give customer service reps an empowerment wheel
Employee lifetime value: What an employee is worth over their whole time with you, grown the same way you grow a customer's lifetime value. Owned by SOP 267 — Build a hiring funnel as strong as your customer funnel
Employee referral fee: Employee referral pay; see that entry. Go to “Employee referral pay” → Owned by SOP 252 — Market for salespeople the way you market for prospects
Employee referral pay: Paying staff for hires they refer; referred people are said to stay 70 percent longer. SOP 152 suggests half an agency's fee of about 20 percent of the role, and up to the full cost of acquiring talent; SOP 252 matches a recruiter's fee, part up front, more at month six. Owned by SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people; also defined on SOP 252
Employer brand: Your reputation as a place to work, shown in how you treat applicants: a slow reply signals disorder, a fast one a well-run business. Owned by SOP 267 — Build a hiring funnel as strong as your customer funnel
Energy (team communication): The first of three parts a team's communication is graded on: how many exchanges members have and what kind, verbal or not. How fast people reply tracks it most closely. Owned by SOP 136 — Grade a team's communication and raise its weakest part
Enforcement gap: The distance between the values you declare and the behavior you see. When words and actions disagree, the problem is enforcement, and closing the gap is the work ahead. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
Engaged lead: Someone you can reach who has shown interest in what you sell, for example by taking a lead magnet; the real output of advertising. SOP 196 asks of them whether they have the problem you solve and the money to solve it. Owned by SOP 12 — Run the four-channel grid; also defined on SOP 196
Engagement (team communication): The second part a team's communication is graded on: how evenly its energy is spread across members. The more members speak up while a decision is made, the better the decision tends to turn out. Owned by SOP 136 — Grade a team's communication and raise its weakest part
Enhancer: The free item or large discount on top of an offer that moves interested people to act. The view here is that mild discounts of 10 or 20 percent seldom do much; in most businesses the enhancer stays the same from one refresh to the next. Owned by SOP 11 — Refresh a promotion in order of operational drag
EPLI: An insurance usually wanted at this size, covering claims such as sexual harassment, since a company this big gets sued. Owned by SOP 168 — Specialize the business at 100 to 249 people
ERP: A full, highly customizable company-wide system that replaces a CRM the business has outgrown and can serve every department and product. Past a certain size it is weighed against building small custom tools at the edges. Owned by SOP 175 — Capitalize the business at 250 to 500 people; also defined on SOP 219
Exit interview: Another name for the cancellation call; see that entry. Go to “Cancellation call” → Owned by SOP 132 — Run the cancellation call
Expansion hooks: Experimental hooks aimed at colder, larger audiences, written for each level of awareness once spend has stalled and fresh creative has not helped. They carry ads into new markets. Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Expectations (management practice): One of the five management practices: defining success as specific, measurable outcomes rather than tasks, so each person knows what they answer for. Owned by SOP 271 — Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
Expense cleanse: A regular review, named as monthly but run about quarterly, in which finance asks each department whether each subscription, and each role, is used as much as it is paid for. Owned by SOP 171 — Cleanse expenses, re-shop vendors and move cash into yield accounts
Exploration (team communication): The third part a team's communication is graded on: contact with people outside the core team, in other teams and departments. It multiplies the other two and is worked on once they are right. Owned by SOP 136 — Grade a team's communication and raise its weakest part

F

Faceless ad: One of the five meat formats: ads with nobody presenting, such as screenshots of what customers wrote, plain text, picture sequences, animation, cartoons or visual effects. Owned by SOP 120 — Use the five ad meat formats
Fast-cash campaign: A time-limited, high-priced offer sent to current and past customers and engaged leads, promoted for seven days or less with capped spots, on top of what they already pay. Run about once a quarter, or two to four times a year. Owned by SOP 81 — Run a fast-cash campaign
Feature downsell: Cutting the price by altering the package: less of it, lower quality, a cheaper substitute, or an optional part taken out. Remove something, drop the price, and ask how about now. Owned by SOP 73 — Feature-downsell customers before they cancel
Feedback loop: A small reward or consequence that follows a behavior and shapes it, like a treat for a dog that sits or shooing off one that jumps up. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
Fifth practice (development): In the leadership rating, growing your people's capacity: formal development plans, regular promotion from within, and time spent coaching, not only managing. Owned by SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it
Fifth practice (rest): In the list of leadership practices, protecting your physical, mental and emotional capacity so you lead with a clear head, good judgment and calm rather than from burnout. Owned by SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it
Financial dashboard: A view of every department's money, cost against return, plus gross profit and lifetime value against acquisition cost for each product line, then by traffic channel and customer group. Owned by SOP 154 — Get granular financial data
Financial operations: Finance joined with operations so the business can be seen in much finer detail, down to what each product and department costs and returns. Owned by SOP 154 — Get granular financial data
First activation point (upsell moment): The customer's first good result by your service's own measure, such as a first sale or a finished first phase, when they are excited and the loop is still open. A moment to upsell; it need not be the end goal. Owned by SOP 222 — Script the upsell at each point of greatest deprivation
First-contact channel stack: Reaching a new opt-in on several channels at once (social messages, text, a call, email), then carrying on wherever they reply first. Over time the conversation moves toward a phone call, a video call or a meeting. Owned by SOP 91 — Run the first-contact channel stack and the double dial
First-contact speed: How long you take to call or message a lead once they show interest. Five minutes or less is the standard, with extra credit for under 60 seconds; it tends to slip as a business grows. Owned by SOP 90 — Reach a new lead fast; also defined on SOP 149
Five meat formats: Demonstration, testimonial, education, story and faceless: the formats that worked across industries, though not necessarily the only ones. Mixing them is encouraged. Owned by SOP 120 — Use the five ad meat formats
Five milestones (wealth): A second version of the climb to wealth: active income above monthly expenses; assets worth at least a year of expenses; passive income above expenses; passive income at twice expenses; money no longer driving your choices. SOP 281 flags it against the four rungs. Owned by SOP 281 — Climb from earning to owning, one rung at a time
Five moments: Five upsell moments; see that entry. Go to “Five upsell moments” → Owned by SOP 222 — Script the upsell at each point of greatest deprivation
Five naming slots: The parts an offer's name can carry, in order: a reason why, the avatar named outright, the goal, a time interval and a container word. Aim for at least three or four; all five is ideal, not required. Owned by SOP 10 — Name an offer with the five naming slots
Five P's: Proof, promise, pain, plan and picture: the five things the opening of a video sales letter is made of. Whether they carry a set order is left open; the worked example runs promise, pain, proof, plan, picture. Owned by SOP 207 — Build a video sales letter
Five points to ask: Five upsell moments; see that entry. Go to “Five upsell moments” → Owned by SOP 162 — Build an ascension path with five points to ask
Five practices of leadership: The leadership half of the operating system: direction, resources, autonomy, long-term thinking, and a fifth practice, named rest in the list and development in the rating. Owned by SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it
Five retention habits: Track attendance, reach out twice a week, send handwritten cards, hold member events, and hold an exit interview. They came from studying gyms with under 3 percent monthly churn for 6 months. Owned by SOP 133 — Run the five retention habits and expect the first-month rise
Five service standards: What every support contact is held to: concern, courtesy, one and done, educate and empower, and timeliness. Reps are trained on them first, then graded by customers. Owned by SOP 144 — Hold support to five service standards and grade each rep
Five stages of a venture: A curve in five steps: uninformed optimism, informed pessimism, the valley of despair, informed optimism, then achievement. Many people circle the first three and start over. Owned by SOP 202 — Spot the seven sticking points and make the hard call
Five-star service survey: A survey sent after each support contact with one item per service standard plus an overall item, each scored 1 to 5, taking about 60 seconds or less. Owned by SOP 144 — Hold support to five service standards and grade each rep
Five-step process: The order for fixing any process: ask why it is done, delete it if it has no point, optimize what is left, speed it up, then automate it. Owned by SOP 221 — Move faster: run the five-step process, then commit
Five-to-ten person: Someone great at growing and improving what already exists, who may grow anxious and doubtful when asked to build something new. Owned by SOP 165 — Pick a second acquisition channel
Five topic lenses: Where topics come from: the far past (what life has taught you), the recent past (your calendar), the present (notes made in the moment), trends you truly know about, and experiences you go out and create. Owned by SOP 22 — Source content topics
Five upsell moments: Where upsells go: at once; next, 24 to 48 hours later (SOP 222, SOP 162) or usually 24, 48 or 72 hours (SOP 57), a difference those pages leave open; at the first activation point or big win; halfway through; and as a last chance on the way out. Use all five; most owners ask at only one. Owned by SOP 222 — Script the upsell at each point of greatest deprivation; also defined on SOP 57, SOP 162
Flying-prop ad: An ad framework: the person on camera catches a prop in midair, jokes to tie it to the offer, piles up what went into it, then hints at a secret that only the next step reveals. Owned by SOP 117 — Run the flying-prop, bribe, rumors-are-true, being-lied-to and data-stack ad frameworks
Flywheel: Another name for a compounding vehicle; see that entry. Go to “Compounding vehicle” → Owned by SOP 199 — Build a compounding vehicle
Focus (sticking point): Chasing too many things at once, such as two unrelated businesses, which splits your energy, time, talent and money. The hard call is choosing which one survives. Owned by SOP 202 — Spot the seven sticking points and make the hard call
Founder ceiling: A company levels off where its founder's emotional capacity, decision-making, leadership and self-awareness run out. A perfect culture under a broken founder tops out at about $10 million at most; it matters more the smaller the business. Owned by SOP 263 — Find where you are the ceiling, then fix what your team mirrors
Founder rate: A discount presented as being for business owners. It converts better and keeps customers longer; 50 percent is a good start if gross margin holds. Owned by SOP 76 — Design cancellation terms and the waived-fee offer
Four boxes (reasons): A grid for the reasons to act: more good and fewer bad things if they act, fewer good and more bad things if they do not. One column is the promise, the other the pain, and every box gets filled. Owned by SOP 277 — Give one action and many reasons to take it
Four branches: The four shapes the money problem takes, asked in order: leads are too expensive, too few of them close, each customer earns too little, or profit comes in too slowly. Owned by SOP 196 — Answer the money question, starting with acquisition cost
Four rungs (wealth): One version of the climb from earning to owning: income above spending; a set share invested before you spend; assets that pay you while you hold them; passive income starting to cover expenses. SOP 281 flags it against the five milestones. Owned by SOP 281 — Climb from earning to owning, one rung at a time
Four-channel grid: The four ways you, working alone, can let people know about you: warm outreach, cold outreach, free content and paid ads, split by whether you reach one person or many and whether they know you. Also called the four lead channels; hiring uses the same four. Owned by SOP 12 — Run the four-channel grid; also defined on SOP 252
Four delivery mechanisms: How a lead magnet is handed over: software (a tool), information (teaching), services (doing the work free) or physical products. Crossed with the three solution types, they give twelve combinations. Owned by SOP 13 — Choose and build a lead magnet
Four layers of culture: What makes a culture, from the base up: observable behaviors, rituals and systems, declared values, purpose or mission. Build from the bottom, and all four must be there. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
Four-letter test (budget, authority, need and timing): Budget, authority, need and timing; see that entry. Go to “Budget, authority, need and timing” → Owned by SOP 217 — Run outreach as an assembly process
Four-letter test (situation, timing, authority, resources): STAR (qualification test); see that entry. Go to “STAR (qualification test)” → Owned by SOP 98 — Qualify with the four-letter test
Four levels of other people's products: Using partners' products as bonuses, rising in value: simply given away; with negotiated discounts or free periods; plus a commission to you; plus exclusive features or licenses. Aim for all four with each partner and settle for no fewer than two or three; getting all four is uncommon. Owned by SOP 6 — Build and present a bonus stack
Four levers (show rate): The main drivers of whether booked leads show up: availability, speed to contact, personalization, and how many attempts you make to reach them. Owned by SOP 85 — Set availability as a show-rate lever
Four market variables: Four tests a group of buyers must all pass before you go after it: they badly need the result, those with the need hold the money, you can reach them with a message, and the group is growing. Owned by SOP 1 — Pick the market before the offer
Four-milestone customer journey: Four milestones every customer should hit: activate, give a testimonial, refer, and ascend. Activation comes first; the other three can come in whatever order suits the customer and the business. Owned by SOP 143 — Build the four-milestone customer journey
Four performance categories: Where leadership and HR place each teammate for pay rises: standard performance (1 to 3 percent), consistent and reliable (4 to 5), excellence or extra duties (5 to 10), promotion or major new duties (10 to 20). Owned by SOP 134 — Set pay increases
Four phases of onboarding: A new rep's first stages, each adding one thing and ending in a test: memorize the script; perfect delivery, then recaps; delivery, recaps and looping end to end; then meet the standard for live calls. Owned by SOP 255 — Onboard a new rep in phases, with a test to pass each
Four prongs: The four kinds of offer in a money model, each with one job: attraction, upsell, downsell and continuity. They show up in the highest-earning businesses but are not all required; one or two can carry a business. Owned by SOP 59 — Assemble a money model from four prongs
Four Rs: What you want from a customer over time: a review, a referral, retention (ideally free turning into paid) and a resale of something bigger. Early on, free work is traded for them. Owned by SOP 145 — Run the business at level zero — improvise
Four-step brand method: Work out who the ideal customer is, find out what they like, link what you sell with those things, then keep tuning: drop what they dislike and add what they like, for the most profit. Owned by SOP 94 — Pair the brand with what the ideal customer likes; also defined on SOP 93
Four-step customer journey: Another name for the four-milestone customer journey; see that entry. Go to “Four-milestone customer journey” → Owned by SOP 129 — Derive the activation point
Four-way fit: Testing a candidate on expectations, culture, skill and potential. For senior roles each goes to a different person, often a recruiter on expectations, two leaders on culture and skill, and the founder or chief executive on potential. Owned by SOP 163 — Head-hunt and interview for higher-level roles
Four ways money is used to avoid deciding: Not seeing enough value, truly being unable to afford it (the far rarer case), pointing to someone who does it for less, and haggling for a discount. Owned by SOP 96 — Answer a discount request and capture payment
Four-week billing: Charging every four weeks instead of monthly, so a year holds 13 bills, not 12: 8.3 percent more revenue, with take rates unchanged in experience rather than as a rule. Show the price per week and bill every four weeks or longer. Owned by SOP 78 — Switch to twenty-eight-day billing and collect a second card
Fractal customers: The 80/20 rule applied repeatedly: the top 20 percent bring 80 percent of revenue, the top 4 percent about 64, the top 1 percent about 51. About a fifth will pay five times more. In the view here, it holds only if customers have a way to pay more. Owned by SOP 224 — Set fractal price tiers and read price off the close rate; also defined on SOP 152
Fractional expert: Someone who does one function for another business, as a consultant or hands-on worker, because they are better or faster at it. Owned by SOP 145 — Run the business at level zero — improvise
Frame change: A pause once a talk's opening has set out the problem, to ask the room what has resonated so far. Owned by SOP 280 — Build a talk around one problem and one named solution
Free consumption asset: Something free a prospect has to sit through, often running from 20 minutes to 5 days: a clip, document, event, challenge, webinar or call. It gives value while breaking the beliefs that stop them buying; one that only pitches is a bad one. Owned by SOP 65 — Convert a free consumption asset
Free value (feature): What prospects get before they buy: for business buyers, real monetary value such as tools or training; for consumers, often entertainment tied to the brand. Owned by SOP 168 — Specialize the business at 100 to 249 people
Freeze your spending: One practice: hold monthly spending where it is while income rises, so that the money milestones come sooner. Owned by SOP 281 — Climb from earning to owning, one rung at a time
Friction: Steps that slow or filter people before they reach your calendar, such as a video to watch, a written pitch, proof, a stated price or a delay. Used when too many poor appointments come in. Owned by SOP 208 — Set prerequisites, raise lead quality and add friction; also defined on SOP 85
Front fee: A one-time initiation, onboarding, enrollment or activation fee charged at signup; you can pick the label. Since nothing is delivered for it, the whole fee is gross profit and pays down acquisition cost at once. Owned by SOP 57 — Compute the payback period and shorten it
FTC: The US regulator, raised for anyone advertising in the US: one reading is that ads that came out of a competition or incentive must disclose it. Owned by SOP 210 — Set ad volume and harvest the ads you already have
Fully loaded: Acquisition cost with every wage, commission and tool added to media spend, on any channel. Keeping both this and the media-only figure is called wise rather than required. Owned by SOP 56 — Define and compute what a customer costs to acquire
Function (area of the business): One area of the business looked at in each stage: sales, marketing, product, customer service, technology, finance, recruiting and HR. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it
Functions (corner): One corner of the triangle with people and operations: what work has to happen and what results it needs, settled before anyone is hired. They differ by kind of business. Owned by SOP 265 — Find which corner of functions, people and operations breaks first

G

Game tape: Reviewing recorded sales calls with the script in hand: the rep says first what they would do better, then colleagues point out what went well. Start specific and widen as the script is mastered; it only works if the team sticks to the script. Owned by SOP 250 — Memorize the script, then drill it in role play; also defined on SOP 108, SOP 157
Gap (discovery): The distance between where the prospect is now and where they want to be, which the clarify questions pin down before the pain cycle begins. Owned by SOP 239 — Build pain before the ask and clarify why they came
Gated interview steps: Five interview steps in order, the first four each able to end the process on a no: screen (15 minutes, or 15 to 30), culture (30), skill (60), alignment (30) and close (30). Folding alignment and close into one call is said to leave three steps, though merging two of five leaves four; the page leaves this open. Owned by SOP 268 — Gate each interview step, then sell at the close
General closes: Closes that work whatever the prospect blames, also called the 80/20 closes. Run in order after a no, asking for the sale after each: an opening question, their main concern, the reason close, the hypothetical, zoom out, one to ten, best case and worst case. Owned by SOP 100 — Run the reason close; also defined on SOP 249
Generalize, then specialize: Businesses tend to keep adding kinds of customers and tasks until they serve everyone. At the five-to-nine-person stage, the call is to narrow instead. Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
Getting real: Telling a prospect a hard truth during a close. It always follows asking their permission. Owned by SOP 97 — Get permission before getting real
Give in public, ask in private: Post only value in public and hold sales conversations in private messages, so your public reputation rests on giving alone. Owned by SOP 24 — Set the give-to-ask ratio
Give-to-ask ratio: How much you give for each time you ask for something. Mature channels earn at about 3.6 to 1 (television) or 4 to 1 (a mature feed); while you are growing, lean further toward giving. Owned by SOP 24 — Set the give-to-ask ratio
Giveaway: A contest that advertises a chance at something substantial in return for contact details. One entrant wins; the rest are offered the same thing at a price. Also called a sweepstakes or scholarship. Charging to enter is named as an illegal lottery; confirm the law where you run it. Owned by SOP 61 — Run a giveaway as an acquisition offer
Good branding: Linking your business with something most of your ideal audience likes. Owned by SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction
Good product: The result the buyer wants with the suffering removed: everything they have to do, sacrifice, wait on and risk along the way. Take away all the risk and make it easy and immediate, and the product is amazing. Owned by SOP 235 — Get customers to buy again: make it good, onboard, remind
Graduate: To clear the constraint holding the business, or one of its functions, at its current stage, so it can progress to the next one. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 145
Grandfathering: Locking existing customers into an old price. The first rule is not to do it, nor to sell lifetime deals, because value and price should rise together. Owned by SOP 83 — Write the price-raise letter with a vanishing discount
Greatest-hits list: The content and customer results that convert, each tagged by who is in it, the problem it solves and the objection it answers, handed to reps so they can send the best-fitting proof before or during the sale. Owned by SOP 248 — Prep every call with notes and proof matched to the prospect; also defined on SOP 38
Gross margin: Gross profit as a percentage of the price: an item that costs $5 and sells for $20 has a 75 percent gross margin. It is what funds everything else. For a service, hold it at 80 percent or higher. Owned by SOP 55 — Compute lifetime gross profit and the ratio that gates spending; also defined on SOP 5, SOP 226, SOP 227
Gross margin target: A margin, worked out from headcount, pay, software cost and customer reach, that profit-center leaders are held to; any purchase that would drop them below it is refused. The floor is 80 percent; it could sit at 87, 92 or wherever the math supports. Owned by SOP 227 — Hold the margin line with targets, not industry averages
Gross profit: What is left of the price after the cost of delivering, counting only costs that rise with each extra sale; rent, admin, utilities, insurance and breakages are left out. It is a dollar amount, and it is not net profit. Owned by SOP 55 — Compute lifetime gross profit and the ratio that gates spending; also defined on SOP 227
Gross profit (profit-share deal): In a profit-share deal, the profit on the added sales rather than on the whole account. It pays differently from a share of all profit, so the contract has to say which one is meant. Owned by SOP 8 — Stack, name and price a guarantee
Gross profit margin: Gross margin; see that entry. Go to “Gross margin” → Owned by SOP 227 — Hold the margin line with targets, not industry averages
Group interview: A first interview run with many people at once, for example twenty at a time with sixty seconds each, including a short role play and feedback. The best get a one-on-one follow-up. Needed at around twenty or fifty people in one role. Owned by SOP 253 — Run a group interview for high-volume roles
Growth moves: The three growth moves for the next effort: more volume of what works, better results from the same effort through testing, or a new placement, platform or method. Below roughly a million a year in profit, go more first; above it, better usually leads. Owned by SOP 40 — Choose the next growth move; also defined on SOP 187
Growth path (in skills): Where a person starts, the job they hold, the job they aim for and the skills needed to reach it, set out in skills rather than as a ladder of titles. SOP 251 gives reps a ladder of titles instead; the two pages leave the choice open. Owned by SOP 270 — Onboard every hire against a written plan, then keep them growing
Growth-share grid: A four-box sort of products by how fast their market grows and how much of it you hold: star (growing market and share), cash cow (big share, slower market), question mark (bets) and dog (low share, no growth). Owned by SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product
Guarantee closes: Closes for a prospect who says they can't decide yet, said to work only when a guarantee is on offer; whether that holds for all four closes or only the first, the one that names the guarantee, is left open. They rest on the point that not buying carries more risk than buying. Owned by SOP 106 — Run the guarantee closes
Guarantee name: A vivid image wrapped around a guarantee so buyers remember it, chosen last, once the outcome, time window and consequence are fixed. The terms underneath stay as specific as ever. Owned by SOP 8 — Stack, name and price a guarantee

H

Half salary, half commission: The preferred pay split for reps who close leads you generate. The base covers basic needs and the variable half pays for their lifestyle, so one bad month doesn't upend them. Owned by SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps
Health score (member community): A second view of customer health for a community that tracks every member: account signals such as tier, payment and join date, and activity signals such as posts, comments and courses started, sort each member as a champion, steady or at risk, the same green, yellow and red under other names. Owned by SOP 273 — Score every customer red, yellow or green each week and act on the color
Hidden costs: Everything an offer costs someone apart from money, such as a weekly call, learning your system, driving 40 minutes or the work an affiliate must do to sell it. Asking why people won't buy uncovers them; removing them makes the offer better, not just cheaper. Owned by SOP 18 — Work warm outreach end to end; also defined on SOP 48, SOP 145, SOP 146
High-information and low-information buyers: Buyers differ in how much information they need before deciding, not in emotion versus logic. They sit on a continuum, far more need more information, and clear teaching can shift the whole curve toward buying. Owned by SOP 244 — Sell to what the buyer knows and lengthen the runway
High-volume role: A role many people hold and many leave, such as outbound SDRs. It needs interviewing all the time, not in bursts, with a group format for the first screen. Owned by SOP 253 — Run a group interview for high-volume roles
Hire experience, not potential: At senior level, hire someone who has already done the exact job more than once and understands it better than you. Years of experience often count for more than years of age. Owned by SOP 44 — Buy or build talent; also defined on SOP 54
Hiring funnel: Five stages for bringing people in, each paired with a customer stage: applicants with lead generation, candidate care with nurture, interviews with closing, onboarding with fulfillment, and development and retention with retention and ascension. Owned by SOP 267 — Build a hiring funnel as strong as your customer funnel; also defined on SOP 200
Home-services stack: The order for a home-service business: put a sales process in first, then raise the price to slow the extra demand, then spend the freed cash on higher pay, referral bonuses, recruiting and ads. Owned by SOP 205 — Run the home-services playbook stack
Hook: Whatever grabs the audience's attention first: the opening seconds, first line, sound or image. It gives a reason to keep watching and gets most of the preparation time: of ten hours on an ad, the first eight. Owned by SOP 121 — Write a hook; also defined on SOP 20, SOP 119
Hook, retain, reward: The three jobs of a content unit; see that entry. Go to “Content unit” → Owned by SOP 20 — Build the content unit — hook, retain, reward
HRIS: Human resource information system; see that entry. Go to “Human resource information system” → Owned by SOP 173 — Choose a human-resource information system
Human resource information system: Software that treats your team as its customers: it holds staff records, payroll and benefits, time and attendance, recruiting and onboarding, and performance management. Owned by SOP 173 — Choose a human-resource information system
Hump (the): The point in a customer's time with you where many drop away. Incentives placed one to two months before it push people over. Owned by SOP 158 — Diagnose churn by cohort
Hundred actions a day: Do a hundred primary actions every day for a hundred days: reach-outs for outreach, minutes of making for content, dollars for paid ads, and only the ad figure may come down. SOP 147 reads the hundred for ads as time spent on them, at $10 to $100 a day. As a rule of thumb, nothing counts as done enough until done a hundred times. Owned by SOP 52 — Set daily advertising volume and keep going until the goal is hit; also defined on SOP 147, SOP 187
Hyper-specialization: Roles narrowed so far that one person handles a single kind of ticket all day, possible only at large volume. Labor tends to get more productive the more specialized it is. Owned by SOP 179 — Plan the workforce and map responsibility
Hyperactive buying state: A short window when someone is primed to buy a lot, between long stretches when they are not. Miss it and the money goes to a competitor. Owned by SOP 57 — Compute the payback period and shorten it
Hypothetical close: Ask if a perfect version would get a yes, then what separates perfect from this one. Fix a small real detail and close; if they name nothing, ask what they are afraid of. Owned by SOP 101 — Run the general closes

I

Ideal affiliate: A business whose warm audience looks just like your customer base. Find them with warm outreach, from a list built on what your customers buy, where they go, what they enjoy and where they work. Owned by SOP 50 — Choose an affiliate integration model
Ideal customer: The narrower group you choose to serve so each gets more value. It has to pass four tests: the market is growing, has enough money, is easy to target and is in pain. Owned by SOP 94 — Pair the brand with what the ideal customer likes
Impact-and-investment grid: A four-box sort of work by impact against investment. High impact, low investment goes first if there is any; high impact, high investment matters most, so do it better, not more; low-impact, low-cost work is handed off once the team is big. Owned by SOP 148 — Stabilize the business at one to four people
Implied guarantee: A performance or revenue-share deal in which the buyer pays nothing if the result doesn't happen. It needs hard qualifying and a steady ability to deliver. Owned by SOP 7 — Choose and condition a guarantee
Improvise (stage 0): The first stage: no company yet, just you with an idea, and no product, customers or staff. Your role is researcher; you move on once people are trying what you have for free. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 145
Industry standards: Unless physics rules them out, treat them as limits that competitors accept and grade themselves against, not as advice or law. Average means half of companies do better, and the average business makes almost no money. Owned by SOP 227 — Hold the margin line with targets, not industry averages
Inflection (rising voice): A voice that rises at the end, as with a question or a name. All it signals is that the person talking wants a reply. Owned by SOP 237 — Mark a script for tonality
Influence: The chance that seeing a brand, or a person, changes someone's behavior; one of the two measures of branding. For a person, status, power, credibility and likeness each raise it. Owned by SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction; also defined on SOP 211
Influencer (business): A business that gets customers mainly through organic content. Owned by SOP 204 — Run the influencer playbook, one constraint at a time
Integrated ask: A short sales message placed inside a piece of content, following a moment of value or closing it, like a commercial break. Owned by SOP 24 — Set the give-to-ask ratio
Integration models: The three lasting shapes an affiliate deal can take after the launch: the affiliate gives your lead magnet away with their own sale; sells their offer, then your paid entry offer; or sells your core offer, alone or bundled, for a share. Owned by SOP 50 — Choose an affiliate integration model
Interest group: A community built around an interest. Among the best cold leads, since members already know they have a problem and are looking for a fix. Owned by SOP 27 — Build a cold list
Intermittent ask: A separate piece that carries the offer, placed between pieces that only give. Better for short content; the spacing might be ten giving pieces to one ask, or fifty to one. Owned by SOP 24 — Set the give-to-ask ratio
Internal financial audit: Reviewing your own financials on a set rhythm, not necessarily with an outside firm, to confirm they are sound. It guards against loss and theft, which is said to come most often from inside. Owned by SOP 172 — Audit internally and review the financial statements each month
Interview litmus test: A strong candidate knows the work better than you. Teaching them things in the interview, or learning nothing from them, marks the wrong hire. Owned by SOP 44 — Buy or build talent; also defined on SOP 54
Interview panel: Several interviewers with set roles, such as two or three on culture and two on technical skill, including people in no hurry to fill the seat, so standards hold. Owned by SOP 174 — Standardize selection and the founder's final interview
Interview rubric: A simple score sheet: the top five skills and each core value, each rated 1 to 5, so hiring turns objective. Owned by SOP 174 — Standardize selection and the founder's final interview
Introduction ask: Instead of making the offer to the person, asking whether they know anyone with their struggle who wants your result free, using the four value drivers, a limit, a reason why, a guarantee and two testimonials. Owned by SOP 19 — Ask for introductions
Invest first: Splitting each paycheck as income minus investments, with lifestyle paid from what is left. It is rated best here, ahead of a well-known pay-yourself-first method and of paying yourself last, where savings are whatever remains. Owned by SOP 281 — Climb from earning to owning, one rung at a time
Involuntary churn: Customers lost when a card changes, expires, maxes out or lacks funds although they meant to stay. On recurring payments it runs 1.2 to 1.7 percent a month. Owned by SOP 78 — Switch to twenty-eight-day billing and collect a second card
IT as internal vendor: The technology team acting like an in-house supplier, with an agreed list of what it works on and a triage order so it isn't buried in low-value requests. Owned by SOP 175 — Capitalize the business at 250 to 500 people
It's-too-much objection: The first way people use money to avoid deciding: they have the money but don't yet see enough value. Read 'the price is too high' as 'the value is too low'. Owned by SOP 103 — Handle the it's-too-much objection

J

Job ad as sales copy: A job ad written as advertising: a hook about their dream job, why the values matter, the main activities and top three duties, then pay, benefits and setting. The title is its headline, and weak interest means a weak ad. Owned by SOP 148 — Stabilize the business at one to four people; also defined on SOP 252, SOP 267
Job post as sales page: Another name for a job ad as sales copy; see that entry. Go to “Job ad as sales copy” → Owned by SOP 267 — Build a hiring funnel as strong as your customer funnel
Job scorecard: A role written as the outcomes a person owns rather than tasks, such as owning customer retention above 90 percent. One company sets it out under role, responsibility, result and requirement, and the result is said to be what most people leave out. Owned by SOP 265 — Find which corner of functions, people and operations breaks first

K

Keep-one and remove-one survey: Twice a year, list everything you provide and ask customers which one thing they would keep if the rest went, then which they would least mind losing. Expand what they value and remove the rest. Owned by SOP 131 — Run the keep-one and remove-one survey
Knowledge-based and time-based services: Two kinds of service: knowledge-based, where you do what others can't, like building a website; time-based, where others could but would rather not, like mowing a lawn. Owned by SOP 145 — Run the business at level zero — improvise
KPI: A key performance indicator: a main measure someone is held to. At the weekly marketing meeting it is reviewed first, with lead counts and qualified leads; at 50 to 100 people, such measures are set so someone answers for each result. Owned by SOP 220 — Run two-round concept testing and promote to control; also defined on SOP 265

L

Label (call-out): A word or phrase that puts people in a group by feature, trait, title or place. It works best when ideal customers identify with it; a label they would not use about themselves collects nobody. Owned by SOP 32 — Call out the audience four ways; also defined on SOP 121
Label (in discovery): Matching the specific pain a prospect described to the broader kind of problem it points to, for example saying it sounds like a marketing issue or a model issue. Owned by SOP 240 — Label the problem and run the pain cycle
Label (set of skills): A word that covers a whole set of skills, such as marketing or baseball. The view here is that nobody gets better at the label itself, only at the skills under it. Owned by SOP 279 — Map a process as actions someone can be seen doing
Ladder of new: New moves ranked by how much they change: a new placement on a current platform, then a new platform with similar media, then a new method among the four ways to advertise. Change as little as you can. Owned by SOP 40 — Choose the next growth move
Landing page: The page someone reaches after clicking an ad. Its job is to collect contact details, so the click becomes an engaged lead you can reach again. Owned by SOP 37 — Lay out a landing page
Launch (affiliate): The usual way to get a new affiliate advertising: a campaign in phases into their audience that makes a big early win and excitement, then leads into a lasting arrangement. Owned by SOP 49 — Launch through a partner's audience
Launch phases: The three launch phases in order: early hints build curiosity with short, spaced teasers; previews reveal the product and date and start showing value; the open announcement is the call to action, sent more and more often as the date nears. Owned by SOP 49 — Launch through a partner's audience
Lay-downs: Prospects who buy no matter what because the thing is worth so much to them. The advertising already closed them; you only show up and take payment. Owned by SOP 98 — Qualify with the four-letter test
Layaway: The customer finishes paying before receiving the product, so the risk sits with them and they want to finish paying quickly. It works wherever a start or delivery can wait; work may begin once payment is complete, or once half is in. Owned by SOP 70 — Work the payment-plan downsell ladder; also defined on SOP 198
Layers (price tiers): Levels of offer stacked over the years, each usually priced 5 to 10 times the one below. Not every business needs all five, and layers can be skipped. Owned by SOP 224 — Set fractal price tiers and read price off the close rate
Lead: A person you can contact. The definition is deliberately narrow: an ad click only counts if contact details come with it. Owned by SOP 12 — Run the four-channel grid
Lead bucket: A group of fixes for getting cheaper leads within one method: ads, organic content or outreach. In all three, the offer and lead magnet bucket comes first. Owned by SOP 209 — Pick a lead bucket, starting with the offer and lead magnet
Lead magnet: A free or heavily discounted offer that fully solves one narrow problem for the customers you want, in return for contact details. It should reveal a further problem that only your core offer solves. A quote request is not one. Owned by SOP 13 — Choose and build a lead magnet; also defined on SOP 209
Lead routing: Sending the leads likeliest to buy to the reps likeliest to close, and taking unlikely leads off the calendar. Owned by SOP 84 — Score and route inbound leads
Lead scoring: Rating each lead by how qualified they are, on a 1 to 5 scale or as red, yellow and green, with questions drawn from what your best customers do, who they are and where they came from, so top leads reach top closers. Owned by SOP 84 — Score and route inbound leads; also defined on SOP 152
Lead-generating employee: Someone in your business you have trained to get leads by any method you use: ads, content, or warm or cold outreach. Owned by SOP 43 — Document, demonstrate, duplicate
Leadership score: Rating each leadership practice from 1 to 10 for a total out of 50: under 30, you are probably managing rather than leading; 30 to 40, you lead unevenly; above 40, turn to developing other leaders. Owned by SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it
Leading indicator (ready to buy more): A sign that a customer is ready to be asked for the next purchase, such as saying they would love the next product, giving a glowing testimonial, or earning back what they paid. Owned by SOP 162 — Build an ascension path with five points to ask
Learning budget: Money set aside in advance, maybe 5 or 10 percent of monthly ad spend or a fixed monthly sum, for ideas you are fully allowed to fail at. Most do nothing; now and then one takes off. Owned by SOP 42 — Cost an engaged lead off payroll and set the learning budget
Levels of awareness: Five stages from warmest and smallest to coldest and largest: most aware, then product-aware, then solution-aware, then problem-aware, then completely unaware. Treated as a sliding scale rather than neat steps. Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Levels of selling: Level one, you can sell; level two, you can teach one person to sell; level three, you can teach a whole team. The aim is level three. Owned by SOP 238 — Open every call the same way and keep the script short
Leverage: The gap between what you put in and what you get out; ideally high, so the same input returns more. Add speed and it is output per unit of time. It is never absent, only low, middling or high. Owned by SOP 185 — Allocate resources to the constraint and use leverage
Lifecycle ad: A montage cut from one customer's recorded calls across their journey: the before from sales calls, the during from support calls, the after from later calls, made once they report a win. The calls happen anyway, so nothing new has to be captured, though its editing takes the most effort of the proof streams. Owned by SOP 123 — Run the standing proof streams; also defined on SOP 210
Lifetime discount at the churn point: A permanent lower rate customers earn by staying past the month the typical customer leaves, announced at the start with reminders as it gets close. Owned by SOP 75 — Apply a continuity discount and the three-plus-twelve rule
Lifetime gross profit: All the gross profit one customer brings across their whole time with you: lifetime revenue times gross margin, so $1,000 at 85 percent gives $850. Also met as lifetime value; the gross-profit name is preferred because it names margin, not revenue. Owned by SOP 55 — Compute lifetime gross profit and the ratio that gates spending; also defined on SOP 223
Lifetime gross profit to cost ratio: Lifetime gross profit divided by the cost to acquire the customer: the ratio the business is run against, and how ads are judged. Three to one is the stated minimum, and above it is called room to scale hard, from experience; ten to one is one owner's own target, not a general rule. Owned by SOP 55 — Compute lifetime gross profit and the ratio that gates spending; also defined on SOP 42, SOP 114
Lifetime profit to cost ratio: Lifetime gross profit to cost ratio; see that entry. Go to “Lifetime gross profit to cost ratio” → Owned by SOP 47 — Price affiliate commission off acquisition cost
Lifetime revenue: For a subscription, price divided by monthly churn: $100 a month at 10 percent churn gives $1,000. A rough figure that leaves cohorts out. Owned by SOP 223 — Read the revenue ceiling off sales velocity
Lifetime value: Another name for lifetime gross profit; see that entry. Where it is worked as price divided by churn, with no delivery cost taken off, it is lifetime revenue. Owned by SOP 55 — Compute lifetime gross profit and the ratio that gates spending
Likeness (influence): Being like your audience in looks and values, and close to the avatar; one of the four things that raise influence. Being yourself draws more people like you. Owned by SOP 211 — Build status, power, credibility and likeness through content
Likeness (visual call-out): Showing the label instead of saying it: putting people and settings on screen that look like the ideal customer, not like you, because people respond to what is familiar. Owned by SOP 33 — Call out without words
List (content): Items on one theme given one after another in any order; say the count up front. Even partly consumed, it still gives value. Owned by SOP 23 — Retain with lists, steps and stories
List broker: A business that builds and sells contact lists to your criteria, usually with a sample to test. Not automatically better or worse than software. Owned by SOP 27 — Build a cold list
Live demonstration: Letting the prospect get the result before buying, or showing it happen in front of them. The strongest proof there is, since it is hard to doubt what already worked for you, and the hardest to arrange. Owned by SOP 109 — Check proof against the thirteen comparisons; also defined on SOP 15
Local market ceiling: The most a local area could ever pay you: the number of people times their salary, if every one of them gave you all their money. Owned by SOP 190 — Check whether the market is really too small
Logo churn: Churn counted in companies: the ones that leave during a period as a share of those you had at its start. Companies signed during the period don't count. Owned by SOP 130 — Separate revenue churn from logo churn
Long-term nurture: Keeping colder leads warm over time with regular free value and soft calls to action, by email, content or both. At minimum, one value email a week to the whole list; when a lead replies, the follow-up cadence starts over. Owned by SOP 148 — Stabilize the business at one to four people; also defined on SOP 89, SOP 235
Long-term result (ad): An ad framework showing bigger results over longer timelines, with figures only advanced buyers follow, to draw customers who pay more, stay longer, do better and refer friends. Owned by SOP 114 — Run the origin-story, prop-comedy, customer-story, show-don't-tell and long-term-result ad frameworks
Long-term thinking: One of the leadership practices: deciding by what builds lasting value over three years or more (or three or five years; no single horizon is set), not by this quarter's numbers. The time span a founder talks in shows their maturity. Owned by SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it
Look-alike audience: A larger audience a platform builds to resemble a list you upload, such as buyers, calls or opt-ins, in sizes of 1, 2 and 3 percent. Its quality depends on the list: customers beat opt-ins, and opt-ins beat cold contacts. Owned by SOP 36 — Build the targeting ladder; also defined on SOP 213
Looking-for ad: An ad framework: announce you want a fixed count of one kind of buyer after one outcome, who you are not looking for, a reason why, and proof. In one practice it is almost always the first ad made when something new launches. Owned by SOP 115 — Run the looking-for, new-versus-old, warning-signs, north-star and selfie ad frameworks
Loss leader: Giving away something buyers know costs real money, such as three or five one-on-one calls, and taking a loss on each. Worth it if acquisition cost falls by perhaps 50 or 80 percent and those buyers go on to buy something else. Owned by SOP 230 — Shape the front-end offer for lifetime value
Low-cost leader: A business that chose from day one to be the cheapest, with every part built for it: offshore help, heavy automation, nothing custom, far more units sold. Cutting prices because you sell badly is not this. Owned by SOP 233 — Become the most expensive and stop selling a commodity
LTV (lifetime gross profit): Lifetime gross profit; see that entry. Go to “Lifetime gross profit” → Owned by SOP 223 — Read the revenue ceiling off sales velocity
LTV (lifetime revenue): In the revenue-ceiling sums, lifetime revenue; see that entry. Go to “Lifetime revenue” → Owned by SOP 223 — Read the revenue ceiling off sales velocity
LTV to CAC: Lifetime gross profit to cost ratio; see that entry. Go to “Lifetime gross profit to cost ratio” → Owned by SOP 202 — Spot the seven sticking points and make the hard call

M

M&A: Mergers and acquisitions; see that entry. Go to “Mergers and acquisitions” → Owned by SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product
Magic question: What would it take, with a price attached: at a stated price, over a stated period, what would it need to look like for the buyer to be excited? It comes in two versions, over three months and over one year. Owned by SOP 146 — Make the first money — monetize
Main-concern close: Ask 'What's your main concern?'. If the answer is vague, ask what they are afraid of happening; if still stuck, spell out the actual worst case so they laugh and answer nearer the truth. Owned by SOP 101 — Run the general closes
Management (five practices): Running the business day to day through five practices: expectations, accountability, communication, cadence and recognition. Owned by SOP 271 — Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
Management by objectives: A pay plan for senior leaders: for example, an executive on $200K can earn up to 50 percent more by hitting objectives, usually three to five weighted goals for the year plus revenue and profit targets. Owned by SOP 270 — Onboard every hire against a written plan, then keep them growing
Management score: Rating each of the five management practices from 1 to 10 for a total out of 50: under 30 the system is broken (semi-broken, in a second reading), 30 to 40 has gaps, above 40 is a solid base. Fix the two lowest first. Owned by SOP 271 — Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
Manpower (question): The sixth and last of the six questions: you can't handle the volume, most often because of people, sometimes for structural reasons. Owned by SOP 200 — Treat a supply constraint as demand for talent
Mapping: Linking each problem the prospect gave to a solution you sell and checking it would help. More than three problems are grouped under one solution that solves several. Owned by SOP 242 — Map each pain to the offer and name the price
Market (question): The third of the six questions: is the market too small for more? Possible for a local business; very unlikely for anyone selling nationally, internationally or online. Owned by SOP 190 — Check whether the market is really too small; also defined on SOP 184
Marketing-qualified lead: A lead that meets your marketing bar. A high share of them marks a good high-friction lead magnet, even if each lead costs more. Owned by SOP 229 — Sell to richer customers and rewrite what you measure
Matched proof: Case studies and testimonials from people as close as possible to the lead's own situation, sent after they schedule, between calls, and every 90 days to leads who went quiet. Owned by SOP 87 — Lift a show rate with incentives
Maybes: People on the fence: they see value in what you sell but hesitate to pay. Most interested people fall here, and closing is trained for them. Owned by SOP 98 — Qualify with the four-letter test
Meat: The body of an ad, between the hook and the call to action: one of your three to five really valuable points or ideas that break a belief, more or less another way of stating the offer. Fewer people reach it, so it gets less preparation and wears out less often than hooks. Owned by SOP 119 — Assemble hook, meat and call to action; also defined on SOP 120, SOP 157, SOP 212
Media only: Acquisition cost counting ad spend alone. It applies to paid media and doesn't carry over to other channels. Owned by SOP 56 — Define and compute what a customer costs to acquire
Medium-term nurture: The stretch between someone showing interest and buying, aimed at getting as many as possible to show up within 30 days. Owned by SOP 85 — Set availability as a show-rate lever
Menu upsell: Four moves in fixed order: cross off what the customer doesn't need, prescribe what they do, offer a choice of two versions, and propose using the card already on file. The high-volume counterpart to the anchor upsell. Owned by SOP 67 — Run the menu upsell
Mergers and acquisitions: Buying other companies; one route to the next product, which may suit when speed matters most and the product is not core. Owned by SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product
Message match: Making the ads, headlines, free offer, offer, funnels, qualifying questions, scripts and nurture all address one narrower customer, from click to close. Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
Method (ads, outreach, content): How a business gets customers; nearly everyone uses ads, outreach, content or a mix. Choose the method first, then the strategy. Owned by SOP 186 — Pick the path up the mountain that fits your skills
Metrics (question): The second of the six questions: if you don't know what you spend and make, you can't tell whether more is working, so getting the numbers comes first. Owned by SOP 189 — Get the numbers and decide fast on reversible bets; also defined on SOP 184
Milestone referral bonus: A large reward for referring a hire, paid only once that person is activated, such as 25 grand at month six, so the referrer helps them succeed. SOP 252 instead pays part up front and the rest at month six; the pages leave the choice open. Owned by SOP 200 — Treat a supply constraint as demand for talent
Minnow: A small, low-value customer. The aim is 30 whales instead of 3,000 minnows. Owned by SOP 229 — Sell to richer customers and rewrite what you measure
Mirroring: The phone version of acknowledging: saying back what someone told you, in your own words, to show you listened. Owned by SOP 14 — Reply with acknowledge, compliment, ask
Model (question): The fourth of the six questions: the numbers are in and the market is big enough, yet the owner doubts this line of business is worth growing or will reach their goals. Owned by SOP 191 — Keep the vehicle and stretch the timeline; also defined on SOP 184
Monetization structure: The series of offers put in front of prospects and their price points; the core of the business and the hardest thing to change, perhaps every two to three years. Owned by SOP 11 — Refresh a promotion in order of operational drag
Monetize (stage 1): The stage after improvise: still one person, now the starter, and the business makes no money yet. In one reading the first paid sale moves you on and makes you officially a company; a second asks for consistent first sales to different customers, and the page leaves this open. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 146
Money (question): The fifth of the six questions: you can't do more because you can't afford it. It splits into four branches: leads, sales, profit per customer and cash flow. Owned by SOP 196 — Answer the money question, starting with acquisition cost
Money model: A series of offers in a deliberate order. By one definition a good one lowers what a customer costs to win, raises the gross profit they bring, and collects that profit within the first 30 days; by another, the bare minimum is more profit inside 30 days than the customer costs to win and serve. The page keeps both. Owned by SOP 59 — Assemble a money model from four prongs
Money-model mechanism: Reworking how you charge for what you already sell, for example as a giveaway, a decoy, an offer that earns the buyer's money back, or a lower price now against a higher one later. It brings in more leads while the service stays the same. Owned by SOP 197 — Solve a leads, sales or profit-per-customer problem; also defined on SOP 201
More (question): The first of the six questions: why can't we do more? Doing more of what already works, whether spend, creative, platforms, tools or people, is the easiest bet with the best return for its risk, and almost always the one to use up first. Owned by SOP 187 — Exhaust more before anything else; also defined on SOP 184
More, and more help (upsell pair): The two upsells that convert best: more of what the customer just bought, or more help with it, ideally faster and with less risk, effort and hassle, for more money. Owned by SOP 236 — Upsell more of it, more help with it, or better
Most aware: The warmest level of awareness: they know your product and only need the deal. Hooks for them usually lead with the offer. Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Move out: In the values-performance grid, people low on both values and performance: reassign them or let them go quickly. An improvement plan is possible, though letting them go is the plainer choice. Owned by SOP 259 — Sort the team by values and performance, and act on each box
MQL: Marketing-qualified lead; see that entry. Go to “Marketing-qualified lead” → Owned by SOP 229 — Sell to richer customers and rewrite what you measure
Multi-day challenge: A free event of three to five days, or an online summit, that gives value early and pitches, then pitches again, at the end. For cheap, mass-market opt-ins, 2 to 5 percent of opt-ins buying is the worst to expect. Owned by SOP 65 — Convert a free consumption asset

N

Narrower market: One of the five market directions: serving a slice of your current market, such as assisted living with 100 to 500 residents. Owned by SOP 93 — Choose a market direction
Net negative churn: When top customers add more spending than you lose from those who leave, so the business keeps compounding. Sometimes possible where customers can be upsold. Owned by SOP 130 — Separate revenue churn from logo churn
Net promoter score: One question, scored 0 to 10, on how likely a customer is to recommend you: 9 or 10 are promoters, 7 or 8 neutral, 6 and under detractors. The score runs from -100 to +100. Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
New-versus-old ad: An ad framework: pin all the buyer's pain on their outdated approach, reveal the new way tied to one simple number, then prove it with a worked or made-up case and one line of proof. Owned by SOP 115 — Run the looking-for, new-versus-old, warning-signs, north-star and selfie ad frameworks
Nine-step retention checklist: Find activation points; onboard; reward activation; link members and run events; correct or remove bad customers; offer annual payment; hold a cancellation call or show a clip; survey regularly; build a four-step customer journey. Owned by SOP 129 — Derive the activation point
No branding: People act exactly as they would have anyway; the business is close to invisible. Owned by SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction
Node (seller): A person or business that sells your product, such as a wholesaler, retailer, certified reseller, affiliate, door-to-door rep or referral partner, and keeps bringing in revenue as long as the product moves. Adding more of them grows the business. Owned by SOP 283 — Find or attach a compounding vehicle to a one-time sale
Non-negotiable (value): A value held as a hard line: break it and you are gone. Letting a breach go unpunished teaches people the line isn't real. Owned by SOP 260 — Make your values non-negotiable and find the ones you really hold
Nonverbal hooks: Sounds and visuals that grab attention, like a dropped tray or a knife tapped on a glass. Strong advertisers pair them with verbal hooks where the platform allows. Owned by SOP 121 — Write a hook
Normal group: A group of buyers growing at the same rate as the population. A normal group is good enough to enter; a shrinking one is not. A second reading measures the growth against the wider marketplace; SOP 1 flags it. Owned by SOP 1 — Pick the market before the offer
North star metric: One number that predicts the prospect's pain, the way neck and wrist size can predict body fat. The pains are blamed on the old way that holds it back. Owned by SOP 115 — Run the looking-for, new-versus-old, warning-signs, north-star and selfie ad frameworks
NPS: Net promoter score; see that entry. Go to “Net promoter score” → Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
Nudge: A one-liner that tips a prospect who is right on the edge into the deal, such as saying which option most people like; many closes have one built in. Owned by SOP 100 — Run the reason close; also defined on SOP 67
Nurture (after no purchase): Making a later purchase as likely as possible for people who haven't bought within about the first week. Owned by SOP 245 — Check sales is the constraint and fix the worst part first
Nurture (after the transaction): In the list of areas to improve, long-term nurture that continues after someone has bought. Owned by SOP 245 — Check sales is the constraint and fix the worst part first

O

Objection: A reason a prospect gives for not buying, also called an obstacle. It may be a way around deciding rather than a real no. Owned by SOP 99 — Classify an objection
Objection block: One section per big objection, handled like an FAQ entry: what the prospect believes, why it is wrong, what is right, and proof. Up to five here, usually three to five; SOP 247 instead repeats the step until no reason for not buying is left, and the pages leave this open. Owned by SOP 207 — Build a video sales letter
Observable behaviors: The first, base layer of culture: how people talk, decide and treat each other day to day; your values, magnified. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
Obstacle (pain cycle): What stands between the prospect and where they want to be, and the reason things aren't working; the first thing the pain cycle looks for. Owned by SOP 240 — Label the problem and run the pain cycle
Offer: What you agree to deliver, how you take payment, and the terms. Owned by SOP 5 — Cut costly pieces from an offer and bundle the rest
Offer component: Each part of an offer. You should be able to argue that each part alone is worth the whole price or more; if not, drop it from the offer, though it can stay in delivery to delight people. Owned by SOP 230 — Shape the front-end offer for lifetime value
Offshore talent: Hiring equally skilled people in countries with a lower cost of living for work that need not happen in person. Costs may drop, sometimes by 80 percent or more. Owned by SOP 127 — Cut delivery cost nine ways; also defined on SOP 234
OKR: A kind of goal measure, set alongside KPIs once a team reaches 50 to 100 people, so that someone is held to account for each result. Owned by SOP 265 — Find which corner of functions, people and operations breaks first
Omnipresence: Being findable on many platforms instead of just one. Owned by SOP 25 — Sequence platforms and widen a niche
On-target earnings: What a rep in a given role should earn if they convert as many leads as they ought to. Every sales role should have one. Owned by SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps
Onboarding (customers): Teaching new customers how to reach the activation point, by booklet, video walkthrough, call, event or whatever fits. It carries on the sale by confirming they chose well. Custom, personal, live and reward-based onboarding generally beat their opposites, and some beats none. Owned by SOP 139 — Onboard customers to the activation point; also defined on SOP 235
Onboarding (for hires): Proving to a new hire that what they were promised holds up. Focus on it for 90 days at minimum; by one figure, most people only reach full productivity around month six. Owned by SOP 270 — Onboard every hire against a written plan, then keep them growing
One action, many reasons: Asking people to do one thing and backing it with many reasons, instead of asking for many things with one reason each. Ten reasons is the picture; what matters is many reasons behind a single action. Owned by SOP 277 — Give one action and many reasons to take it
One front door (business): A single business through which money comes in, with as many lead magnets and pieces of content in front of it as you like, so restless energy is spent without breaking the business. Owned by SOP 202 — Spot the seven sticking points and make the hard call
One front door (profile): One action you want from people on a profile, a single link rather than a page of links, so nobody is offered a second option. Owned by SOP 215 — Put calls to action on every platform
One-page plan: Five steps: choose the kind of lead; choose between a hundred actions a day and working to the goal; fill in the advertising checklist; do the action until you can pay someone else to; then repeat with employees as the lead. Owned by SOP 52 — Set daily advertising volume and keep going until the goal is hit
One-sentence test: If you can't say the vision in one line that makes a listener want in, what you have is a business plan or a service description, not a vision. Owned by SOP 262 — Write a vision so big your team's own visions fit inside
One-sided and two-sided referral: One-sided pays the referrer your average acquisition cost; two-sided splits that same amount between referrer and friend, which is preferred because it reads as a favor, not a payout. Owned by SOP 165 — Pick a second acquisition channel
One test a week: One test a week on each platform or pathway, because several at once hide what worked, get in each other's way, dodge choosing, and can't each run long enough. A year gives 52 improvements. Owned by SOP 41 — Run one test a week
One to one / one to many: Private contact seen only by the person it is sent to, such as a text or email, against public contact seen by everyone at once, such as a post, ad or billboard. Owned by SOP 12 — Run the four-channel grid
One-to-ten close: Ask where they are from 1 (no interest) to 10 (ready to start now). At 10, close. Below that, SOP 101 asks what would get them to 10; SOP 249 asks that and why they didn't say 1, so they list the reasons it is worth doing. The pages leave the difference open. Owned by SOP 101 — Run the general closes; also defined on SOP 249
Ongoing training: Training that carries on once a rep is fully up to speed at 14 days, for as long as they sell. Most owners stop because they won't give up 30 to 60 minutes of a rep's day. Owned by SOP 256 — Run ongoing daily and weekly training for sales reps
Onion of blame: The three categories of blame drawn as layers. Prospects often blame more than one thing and switch objections; keep peeling until they can decide. Giving three or four reasons before buying is normal. Owned by SOP 99 — Classify an objection
Open loop: A question or mystery left unanswered to hold curiosity until it is closed, whether by later content, proof or a callback. Loops opened and never closed lose the audience for good. Owned by SOP 23 — Retain with lists, steps and stories; also defined on SOP 30, SOP 114
Operating plan: A plan projecting growth and operating costs for the next 12 months, from which each department's budget is set, giving leaders room to invest. Owned by SOP 167 — Delegate spending with approval limits, department budgets and cards
Operating system (management): The everyday rhythms that make culture, leadership, structure and people work. Without it a business can come apart under its own growth. Owned by SOP 271 — Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
Operating system audit: A three-minute exercise: rate the five management and five leadership practices side by side and circle the two lowest in each column. Any score below 7 means that part of the system doesn't really exist. Owned by SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it
Operational CFO: A finance leader who follows money as it moves out through the business and returns; without one, cost is never linked to return. Owned by SOP 154 — Get granular financial data
Operational drag: How much of the business a change touches. Promotion refreshes are ordered from least drag (new images) to most (new monetization structure); a new tier that adds a fifth to revenue while doubling the work is arguably a poor trade. Owned by SOP 11 — Refresh a promotion in order of operational drag; also defined on SOP 224
Operationalize values: Turning each core value into something a candidate has to do in the interview instead of talk about. How they respond shows whether they hold the value. Owned by SOP 269 — Test a candidate's values live instead of asking about them
Operations (corner): One corner of the triangle with functions and people: how work moves between people, how they talk and how decisions get made. The connective tissue. Owned by SOP 265 — Find which corner of functions, people and operations breaks first
Opportunity that expires: The strongest form of urgency: a real reason the opportunity itself shrinks as time passes and more people find it. Owned by SOP 9 — Split scarcity from urgency
Optimize (stage 6): The 20-to-49-person stage: the owner is a leader over two full layers of managers, and time and resources are lost to a growing workload. You move on by doing things better rather than more. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 157
Optimize for return: Another name for a buyer-optimized campaign; see that entry. Go to “Buyer-optimized campaign” → Owned by SOP 197 — Solve a leads, sales or profit-per-customer problem
Organic post as ad: Taking a free post that did unusually well, adding a call to action tied to a lead magnet or offer, and running it as a paid ad. A post that draws inquiries is likely nearer an ask, so don't start posting more like it. Owned by SOP 210 — Set ad volume and harvest the ads you already have; also defined on SOP 38
Organization color map: A leader's chart of seats: green for someone to promote, yellow for a weak holder, red for a missing department or a team reporting to someone who shouldn't lead it. Owned by SOP 179 — Plan the workforce and map responsibility
Origin story (ad): An ad framework: open with an outrageous result, show surroundings that seem the opposite of what would produce it, stack the reasons it shouldn't work, then close on overwhelming proof: if it works here, it works anywhere. Owned by SOP 114 — Run the origin-story, prop-comedy, customer-story, show-don't-tell and long-term-result ad frameworks
OTE: On-target earnings; see that entry. Go to “On-target earnings” → Owned by SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps
Outbound / inbound: Outbound means your first contact with the prospect was private; inbound means it was public. An automated email blast is still outbound. Owned by SOP 12 — Run the four-channel grid
Outlier (content): A post that performs far above the rest on a platform. Outliers found with software or platform searches are kept in a presentation file, each with a screenshot and a few ideas for reusing its formula. Owned by SOP 122 — Split hook effort seventy, twenty, ten
Outreach assembly process: Outreach run as stages in order: getting leads, personalizing, qualifying, contacting, and preparing reps for the call, with tools helping at each. Owned by SOP 217 — Run outreach as an assembly process
Outsized refund: Giving back more than the buyer paid, on conditions such as working through the program and attending calls. Pick a multiple, such as twice, two to three times or three times, and write it into the terms. Owned by SOP 7 — Choose and condition a guarantee
Over-expansion (sticking point): Opening more locations than your people can run, so results drop everywhere. At root it is a shortage of talent and competence, a supply-side constraint, not a question of speed. Owned by SOP 203 — Fix over-expansion, pay, underpricing and a single product
Overwhelm: Giving customers more than they can use; named the top reason customers leave. Owned by SOP 131 — Run the keep-one and remove-one survey
Own-preferences objection: Self-blame in which the prospect wants the result your way delivers, but done their way, changing core parts of the product. Also describable as wanting to have their cake and eat it. Owned by SOP 112 — Handle I don't like this specific thing
Ownership chart: A chart for each department so every result belongs to one named person, not a committee. Owned by SOP 265 — Find which corner of functions, people and operations breaks first

P

P&L: Profit-and-loss statement; see that entry. Go to “Profit-and-loss statement” → Owned by SOP 150 — Set up the finances stage by stage
Packaging: The format that makes a piece feel native to a platform. When taste shifts (guessed at about every six months on short-video platforms, less so for long ones), change the packaging and keep the message. Owned by SOP 214 — Make more and better organic content
Paid advertising: Advertising to many cold strangers at once by paying someone for access to the people they have gathered: renting eyeballs. Reach is guaranteed; the question is efficiency, not whether it works. Owned by SOP 35 — Choose the first paid platform
Paid onboarding: Charging for onboarding, for example a gym selling six personal-training sessions a member must finish before joining group classes, so customers earn their way into the general base. Owned by SOP 139 — Onboard customers to the activation point
Paid warranty: A guarantee or warranty sold as a separate line after the yes, costing 5 to 30 percent of what the product sells for. On a claim you deliver again rather than refund. Owned by SOP 80 — Sell the guarantee as a paid warranty
Pain (before the ask): What every word before the request to buy is meant to build. Like making someone hungry before selling them a steak, you stir up the want in the language of your own product. Owned by SOP 239 — Build pain before the ask and clarify why they came
Pain cycle: The stretch of the call after the gap is set: find the obstacle, pull teeth for specifics, then recap, label, confirm and repeat. When it stops differs: SOP 240 runs it three times, until there is enough to tie to a solution; SOP 147 keeps going until everything is exhausted. Neither is settled. Owned by SOP 240 — Label the problem and run the pain cycle; also defined on SOP 147
Pain over promise: Say more about the pain buyers want out of and less about the gains you promise. Getting out of pain runs deeper than wanting something; a pain message is also held to be the more compliant one. Owned by SOP 246 — Write a why-people-buy document from the calls that closed
Pairing: Attaching your mark to people, experiences and things the ideal customer likes, so part of their reach and influence passes to your product. Owned by SOP 94 — Pair the brand with what the ideal customer likes
Pairing-to-profit chain: Nine steps in which a mark that means nothing is paired with what customers like, goes on a generic product that becomes premium, and customers pay for the product plus the link, lifting profit through higher prices. Owned by SOP 94 — Pair the brand with what the ideal customer likes
Passive income (funded in advance): Income paid for ahead of time, with effort (an organization that shares revenue with you, affiliate revenue, royalties) or with money (an asset). For the milestones, it means the interest and dividends an asset pays, not its rise in value. Owned by SOP 281 — Climb from earning to owning, one rung at a time
Paths up the mountain: A single constraint can be cleared by many routes, as a summit can be reached by many trails. Each differs in length, risk and scenery, so some suit you better than others. Owned by SOP 186 — Pick the path up the mountain that fits your skills
Pause (tonality): A silence after a word, which draws attention to that word. With inflection, one of the two voice moves that make the money. Owned by SOP 237 — Mark a script for tonality
Pause (in a voicemail): A deliberate gap after you say your name, so the listener searches their memory for who you are, and is not hanging up while they do. Owned by SOP 30 — Leave a third-party-trust voicemail
Pay less now or pay more later: An attraction offer with two choices: pay nothing today and full price after delivery if satisfied, or pay a lower price today with bonuses, set to about break even on acquisition cost. The front can be advertised as free. Owned by SOP 64 — Design a pay-less-now-or-pay-more-later offer
Payback period: How long until a customer's gross profit overtakes what it cost to win them, always figured on gross profit, never revenue. The shorter it is, the easier to scale, since the money is back in time for the next customer. Owned by SOP 57 — Compute the payback period and shorten it
Paying in product: Rewarding affiliates with product or credit instead of money, since it costs you less than they value it. It only works if they use what you sell; at high volume they usually want money. Owned by SOP 47 — Price affiliate commission off acquisition cost
Payment plan: Keeping the product the same and changing only how it is paid for. Refusals are usually about what is due now, not the total, and a plan is a bet that customers finish paying. Owned by SOP 70 — Work the payment-plan downsell ladder
Payment-plan downsell ladder: Seven steps in order: reward paying in full; outside financing, cards and layaway; half now and half on payday; the 1-to-10 question; thirds; an even spread; a free trial. Owned by SOP 70 — Work the payment-plan downsell ladder
Perceived likelihood of achievement: One of the four value variables: how strongly the buyer believes they will get the result. Proof they can verify moves it, and results nobody knows about add nothing; it breaks into eleven things you can build, from your own story to a live demonstration. Owned by SOP 15 — Decompose perceived likelihood; also defined on SOP 3
Perceived likelihood of success: Perceived likelihood of achievement; see that entry. Go to “Perceived likelihood of achievement” → Owned by SOP 3 — Diagnose an offer on its value drivers
Perceived problem: Anything the buyer believes will stop them succeeding, whether or not it really would. List every step of their journey, then split each across the four value variables. Owned by SOP 4 — Generate delivery options from a grid of choices
Performance-based and market-driven pay: Two bases for pay: market-driven pays the going rate for the role; performance-based makes pay depend on what the person does once in the job. Owned by SOP 160 — Build advanced compensation plans
Performance guarantee: In a win-your-money-back offer, the guarantee that pays out when the customer does the required things or hits the goal; it is the bet itself. Owned by SOP 60 — Design a win-your-money-back offer
Performance pricing: Ways to charge when the buyer pays only for results: a fixed amount per defined event, a share of revenue or growth over an agreed baseline, or a share of profit or gross profit. Owned by SOP 8 — Stack, name and price a guarantee
Permission ask: Asking before telling a blunt truth, three ways: may you be their coach rather than their friend for a moment, may you put your coach hat on, or may you share what you told someone in their exact spot yesterday. Owned by SOP 97 — Get permission before getting real
Permissive leader: A leader who lets unwanted behavior run with nothing pushing back, avoiding the discomfort of defending the culture. The worst conduct you let pass sets the standard. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
Permutations: Versions of a winning ad made by changing its parts, such as color, font, actor, clothes, background or speed. Big advertisers reportedly try for a hundred versions of one winner. Owned by SOP 212 — Make better ad creative with hooks, permutations and assembly
Personalization: Being useful, relevant and pleasant to deal with for every single lead: learn what they want, get it, and tell them it is theirs if they come. It lifts show rates; one practice uses six tactics, from their preferred channel to sending proof. Owned by SOP 87 — Lift a show rate with incentives
Personalization at scale: Finding one thing to mention about each lead, such as a recent post or a company change, so automated outreach doesn't read as automated. AI can now draft these lines. Owned by SOP 217 — Run outreach as an assembly process
Personalize, then a large, quick, free result: The two halves of every cold message, in order: show you know something real about the person, then hand over something valuable within about 30 seconds. Owned by SOP 28 — Write a cold message
Personalized opener: A first message sent as three separate texts: how you found them, a specific true compliment, and a question. Its only goal is a reply. Owned by SOP 17 — Build the warm outreach list
Phone-usage close: Another name for the smartphone close; see that entry. Go to “Smartphone close” → Owned by SOP 97 — Get permission before getting real
Pixel: The platform's record of your conversions. Once trained on your best customers, it becomes close to an edge over competitors. Owned by SOP 213 — Fix ad targeting and bid for return, not cheap leads
Placement (ad slot): A specific place for an ad on a platform, such as the feed, stories, sidebar, mid-video or before a video. Start with the ones competitors already use. Owned by SOP 35 — Choose the first paid platform
Placement success rate: How often a recruiter fills the roles they take on; the one number to ask for. The best reach 100 percent by turning down roles they can't fill. Owned by SOP 166 — Track candidates in one system and use specialist recruiters
Platform company: A company built by buying similar businesses again and again, such as trash routes, until it is one of the biggest in its market. Owned by SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product
Platform risk and regulatory risk: Platform risk is breaking a platform's own rules, which may be stricter than the law, and risks losing the account; regulatory risk is breaking the law, and risks jail. A fine is named as a third outcome. Owned by SOP 176 — Install a compliance process for marketing
Playbook (for a new hire): The written guide a new hire gets along with their level of ownership, so they decide for themselves. They bring you only the unusual cases outside the playbook, put at 5 percent; on a second reading, they may come to you for only about 5 percent. Owned by SOP 265 — Find which corner of functions, people and operations breaks first
Playbook stack: A set of common fixes for one kind of business, grouped because similar people on similar platforms tend to get stuck in similar places. Drawn in broad strokes; working one constraint at a time still decides the order. Owned by SOP 204 — Run the influencer playbook, one constraint at a time
Point of greatest deprivation: The moment a customer's want is highest, before the need is met, like selling water to someone thirsty before they drink. Upsells land there, not when the value they just got is at its peak. Owned by SOP 222 — Script the upsell at each point of greatest deprivation
Point of no return: The moment the value a buyer sees drops to the price or below. On a subscription, that is when they cancel; on a one-time sale, when they stop coming back or referring. Owned by SOP 2 — Set a price from the value gap, not from competitors
Polar brand: A brand people recognize at once and react to strongly, for or against. Strength doesn't require polarity, and setting out to polarize gets in the way of doing business. Owned by SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction
Positioning sentence: One line stating whom you help, with what specific problem, by what unusual method, and which worry that method answers. Write it before going further. Owned by SOP 1 — Pick the market before the offer
Post-purchase behaviors: What customers do after buying that makes them likelier to buy again, stay or pay more, such as landing one high-ticket sale in the first seven days in one business. Owned by SOP 219 — Find the right customers, screen for them and capture data
Potential (away from the constraint): Capacity added somewhere other than the constraint, like widening a road before the point where it narrows. It only pays off once the constraint is dealt with. Owned by SOP 184 — Find the one constraint with six questions
Power (closing): Being able to direct or influence people. Being powerful depends on knowing how to close. Owned by SOP 108 — Drill a team on closing
Power (say-do): Influence earned when your instruction is followed and turns out well, which makes them likelier to follow you next time. In content, give instructions that work. Owned by SOP 211 — Build status, power, credibility and likeness through content
Power law: About 80 percent of advertising results come from about 20 percent of your ads, the winners. Owned by SOP 113 — Remix and remake a proven ad
Pre-call video: Material prospects watch before the call, in nine steps from a hook built on their pain, through proof, why the problem persists, the solution and its risks, to whom they will speak with. Owned by SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people
Premium brand: A brand that charges premium prices. It has to deliver something special to win and keep the business; one practice is to make the product exceptional, or at worst not clash with the brand. Owned by SOP 95 — Climb the three levels of authority
Prep for sale: Cleaning up the whole company as if you were selling it, without deciding to sell, so others will invest, lend or buy in. It isn't trimming to show off margins, and cleaning up makes the business more valuable to own, whether or not it is sold. Owned by SOP 182 — Get the business sale-ready to reach new capital
Prepay upsell: Offering someone on an ongoing plan a bulk prepayment, such as buy five months, get one free. One taker in eight is said to lift 30-day profit by half. Owned by SOP 74 — Price continuity against upfront cash
Prerequisites: What someone must bring before you take them on, set as a bar such as a revenue level, so anyone below it can't reach the calendar and leads sort themselves. Also called requisites. Owned by SOP 208 — Set prerequisites, raise lead quality and add friction; also defined on SOP 193
Price anchor: The reference point a buyer forms for what an offer costs, set at the moment the offer is presented; a discount lowers it. See Price anchor and what-you-get anchor, and, for a far dearer option shown first, Anchor. Owned by SOP 6 — Build and present a bonus stack
Price anchor and what-you-get anchor: The two reference points a buyer forms when an offer is made: what it costs and what they get. Bonuses raise the second instead of lowering the first, which is why they beat discounts. Owned by SOP 6 — Build and present a bonus stack
Price constrained: Held back mainly by prices that are too low. In the view here, home services typically are, since the trade wins work without having to be good at sales or marketing. Owned by SOP 205 — Run the home-services playbook stack
Price ladder: Moving from free to full price five customers at a time (80, 60, 40, 20 percent off), then raising 20 percent or more every five by default (every ten or twenty for some products), until your roster is full. Start when referrals arrive or you run out of capacity. Owned by SOP 18 — Work warm outreach end to end; also defined on SOP 146
Price test: Pick a new price, work out how gross profit per unit shifts and what conversion rate would only break even, then track conversion. If it beats break-even, the new price wins; repeat until conversion times lifetime gross profit falls. Owned by SOP 128 — Test price with a step size and a cadence
Price to the niche: Raising the price to match the greater value a narrower customer gets. The same core product is worth more to a buyer who sees it describes exactly what they do. Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
Pricing and bonus-based urgency: Rotating which bonuses or starting price come with the offer, so waiting means losing the ones a buyer wanted. It matters most in small local markets. Owned by SOP 9 — Split scarcity from urgency
Pricing power: The ability to charge more without customers leaving for a rival; called the most important thing to judge about a business. With demand, it is what a brand gives you. Owned by SOP 94 — Pair the brand with what the ideal customer likes; also defined on SOP 216
Primary action: The unit counted under a hundred actions a day, which depends on the method: reach-outs for warm and cold outreach, minutes of making for content, dollars for paid ads. On a second reading (SOP 147), the paid hundred is minutes given to the ads, and content's minutes include outreach and commenting; neither is settled. Owned by SOP 52 — Set daily advertising volume and keep going until the goal is hit
Primary and secondary features: Primary features are what the customer cares about and stay the same between the anchor and the main offer; secondary ones, like brand or lining, are what you strip. Changing something they care about forces a fresh judgment of price and value. Owned by SOP 68 — Run the anchor upsell
Prioritize (stage 4): The five-to-nine-person stage: the owner becomes a manager over one layer. Trying to serve everyone holds it back; you move on by narrowing to your best customer. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 149
Priority (speed upsell): Selling speed as an upsell: the same thing done faster, delivered sooner or moving the buyer to the head of the line. Rich buyers pay the most for it. Owned by SOP 231 — Build the next sale into the offer and anchor high
Priority (the constraint): The single thing you do first, which is the constraint. Having more than one means you are the problem. Owned by SOP 185 — Allocate resources to the constraint and use leverage
Prize-challenge ad: An ad framework: a contest offering something huge, with a deadline people believe, a recent winner, one simple measure to win, help to win, and value for those who don't. Owned by SOP 116 — Run the trend, value-anchor, bribe, underdog and prize-challenge ad frameworks
Proactive customer journey: A map with a line for each of retain, review, refer and resell, showing every point to act, set off by time, behavior or event, so service stops being only firefighting. Owned by SOP 164 — Categorize the business at fifty to ninety-nine people
Problem-aware: They sense a problem or a gap between their current state and the one they want, but don't know the solutions yet. Hooks for them usually lead with pain. Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Problems list: A running list of every complaint heard in your market. One practice is to build each talk around one problem from it, rather than starting from what talk to make. Owned by SOP 280 — Build a talk around one problem and one named solution
Process map: A job written down as a chain of actions someone could be seen doing: each result replaced by the actions that produce it, and each decision point marked. One view tests the map on a learner whose output shows at once what was missed. Owned by SOP 279 — Map a process as actions someone can be seen doing
Product-aware (knows the kind of product): One of two readings of the product-aware level: people who know about the kind of product you sell but not yet that you sell it. Read this way, the proof-led hook speaks to them. Which reading is right is not settled. Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Product-aware (level of awareness): The second-warmest level of awareness, on one of two readings: they know your product but aren't sure it suits them. Read this way, the proof-led hook speaks to them. Which reading is right is not settled; see Product-aware (knows the kind of product). Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Productize (delivery): Selling to customers alike enough to share one way of delivering, with templates and automation, maybe 80 percent repeated and a small part custom, instead of building a solution for each. Owned by SOP 127 — Cut delivery cost nine ways; also defined on SOP 234
Productize (stage 5): The ten-to-nineteen-person stage: the owner directs a first two or three managers, and each customer brings in too little money. You move on with a second, premium product sold to existing customers. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 152
Professionalize: Moving from speed, improvising and gut calls to deliberate moves, repeatable systems and team execution. Between $3M and $30M (on another reading, a couple of million to $30M), depending on skill, chaos becomes the liability; it means clarity and rhythm, not red tape. Owned by SOP 271 — Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
Profit-and-loss statement: A statement showing profit or loss for a period: income minus spending. The founder has to be able to read it and review it every month. Owned by SOP 150 — Set up the finances stage by stage; also defined on SOP 172
Profit-center leader: In a bigger business, a leader who owns a profit center and can be given a gross margin target that guides what they buy and reinvest. Owned by SOP 227 — Hold the margin line with targets, not industry averages
Promote to control: A new version proves itself in steps: first on a share of traffic, then in a true 50-50 split, then it becomes the control if it holds. Owned by SOP 220 — Run two-round concept testing and promote to control
Proof: Evidence that what you sell works: data backing your advertising claims, such as a client's weight falling from one week to the next. Owned by SOP 110 — Claim your proof from the data
Proof over promise: Showing results from people you already helped outweighs making claims. In one practice, selling waits until there are 10 or more testimonials, and stronger kinds of proof beat weaker ones. Owned by SOP 146 — Make the first money — monetize
Proof page: A page, a reel of every testimonial, or a wall of results. One stayed up for years holding over 5,000 testimonials, with a button to schedule a call every three to five. Owned by SOP 109 — Check proof against the thirteen comparisons
Proof point: A single piece of data that backs a claim. Owned by SOP 110 — Claim your proof from the data
Proof roll: A run of customer results placed after the call to action, closing a pitch or video sales letter. Owned by SOP 207 — Build a video sales letter
Prop comedy (ad): An ad framework: each short line of script paired with one funny, fast prop or scene, filmed separately and joined with quick cuts, upbeat music and big captions, ending on a call-to-action card. Owned by SOP 114 — Run the origin-story, prop-comedy, customer-story, show-don't-tell and long-term-result ad frameworks
Pruning: Cutting the hires, processes, product lines and projects that return least, then moving the money, time and people that frees to what returns most. The view here is that beyond a certain point it is the only way to keep growing. Owned by SOP 274 — Prune what returns least and move it to what returns most
PS (postscript): The line at the bottom of a piece of writing or email. After the headline it is the most read part, so it is a strong place for a call to action or something light, like the comics in a newspaper. Owned by SOP 24 — Set the give-to-ask ratio; also defined on SOP 254
Pseudo-HR: Someone on the operations side doing HR on the side, which, in the view here, gets you by until about 100 people; past that you have a full HR department. Owned by SOP 168 — Specialize the business at 100 to 249 people
Pull forward: Calling leads who booked themselves to move their appointment earlier, ideally to the same day; a conversation held now shows up 100 percent of the time. Owned by SOP 86 — Cap the booking window at seventy-two hours
Pull incentive: Something the lead gets after they arrive, offered as an either-or choice that assumes they are coming. Owned by SOP 87 — Lift a show rate with incentives
Pulled-forward churn: After a price raise, churn rises in the first month, falls, typically below normal, the next, and is back to baseline by month three: mostly customers who would have left anyway, going a month early. Owned by SOP 83 — Write the price-raise letter with a vanishing discount
Pulling teeth: When an answer is vague, muddled or incomplete, digging for specifics: say something like 'okay, cool', then ask for an example or for more, again and again, until the answer is concrete. Owned by SOP 241 — Pull teeth until the answer is specific
Pure commission: Pay for reps who generate their own business, such as door-to-door home-services reps. What you pay the rep is basically your whole cost of getting a customer, since no marketing spend sits behind it. Owned by SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps
Pure direct response: A business with no reputation, only arbitrage on media: put money into ads, take more out, keep the difference. It works, but it fights over the same small ready-now slice and earns far less than it could. Owned by SOP 244 — Sell to what the buyer knows and lengthen the runway
Purpose or mission: The fourth, top layer of culture: why the company exists beyond profit, in one sentence you like saying. It needn't be perfect. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
Push incentive: A gift given before the lead arrives, such as a small gift card, theirs to keep whether they come or not; it works through reciprocity. Owned by SOP 87 — Lift a show rate with incentives
Pyramid of leadership traits: Fifteen character traits in five layers, from a base of industriousness and enthusiasm up to poise and confidence, with an apex of rising to hard challenges. Each layer rests on the one below; score each trait from one to five. Owned by SOP 264 — Rate yourself layer by layer on a pyramid of leadership traits

Q

Qualification friction: Qualifying questions added to the application, such as budget, authority, need and timing plus questions specific to the niche, so a rising number of leads sorts itself. Owned by SOP 149 — Prioritize and niche down at five to nine people
Quality vectors: Service levers with a premium end and a downsell end, such as response time, availability, who provides it, live or recorded, done for or with you, personalization and guarantee terms. Put numbers on them before you need them. Owned by SOP 72 — Generate tiers and downsells from the quality vectors
Quantity forms: Three ways to sell more or less at once: bulk (paying ahead for a longer period), frequency (how often it arrives) and size (how much each delivery holds). Owned by SOP 72 — Generate tiers and downsells from the quality vectors
Quick win: An early, concrete win proving to the customer that it works, short of the end goal, such as feeling better after a week at the gym or a first pull-up. Owned by SOP 235 — Get customers to buy again: make it good, onboard, remind

R

Rainmaker (salesperson): A salesperson good enough to take someone from completely unaware to a close; needed when a business has no sales process and no marketing skill. Owned by SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps
Rainmaker (top-level hire): A senior hire who brings more than themselves: contacts that open big new distribution or regions, key relationships already in place, or whole teams that may follow them. Owned by SOP 181 — Recruit top talent as the founder
RAISE (price-raise letter): The letter's five parts in order: remind them of the value they got, address the change head on, invest in their future, soften it with a loyalty discount, and explain away their worries. Owned by SOP 83 — Write the price-raise letter with a vanishing discount
Raw testimonial: A plain, unedited customer clip filmed on a phone. The less it is tampered with, the more real it looks, so it persuades more than a polished version. Owned by SOP 109 — Check proof against the thirteen comparisons
Re-engagement campaign: Three short emails (we miss you, last chance, we are cleaning up) asking whether readers still want to hear from you. Everyone who answers none of them is then taken off the list. Owned by SOP 278 — Prune the email list: ask who still wants it, then remove the rest
Reach: How many people know about what you sell, or see your material: the output and measure of advertising. No brand exists without it, so it is the first element of any brand. Owned by SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction; also defined on SOP 26
Reach, impact, confidence and expense: A score for ranking bets or fixes on four questions: how far it reaches, what impact it will have, how confident you are of the outcome, and how expensive it is in time, money and resources. Owned by SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product; also defined on SOP 148
Reactive and proactive customer service: The two halves a service team can split into once every proactive step is mapped: one answers incoming issues, the other works the customer journey. Owned by SOP 164 — Categorize the business at fifty to ninety-nine people
Ready-now share (3% / 97%): The belief that only about 3 percent of a market is buying-ready at any moment, with the other 97 percent not yet. In the view here, a business whose revenue all comes from that 3 percent is going for the sale too fast. Owned by SOP 244 — Sell to what the buyer knows and lengthen the runway
Reason close: Handing back the thing the prospect blames, such as no time or no money, as the very reason to act. Repeat the objection, agree it is real, turn it around, then ask for the decision. Owned by SOP 100 — Run the reason close
Reason why (naming slot): The naming slot that says why this offer, why now, and why it is free or discounted, such as a grand opening, a holiday, a season or limited places. Owned by SOP 10 — Name an offer with the five naming slots
Rebate: Charging up front and refunding once set steps are done: a trial with a penalty with the charge moved to the start, usually smaller in scope than a win-your-money-back offer. Owned by SOP 71 — Run a free trial with a penalty
Recap: Saying the prospect's problem back to them in their own words; after it come label, confirm and repeat. Owned by SOP 240 — Label the problem and run the pain cycle
Recognition (management practice): One of the five management practices: celebrating in public, again and again, what fits your values, so people repeat what gets rewarded. Whether that public praise takes in results that fit the values, or only behaviors (SOP 261), is not settled. Owned by SOP 271 — Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
Recognition rhythm: Recognition at every interval, as one company runs it: daily shout-outs tied to a value in a chat channel, weekly call-outs of one to three colleagues, a monthly MVP, quarterly awards and a yearly award for each core value. Owned by SOP 261 — Build a recognition rhythm that rewards values, not results
Recurring and reoccurring revenue: Recurring revenue comes from a membership; reoccurring revenue from repeat buying with no membership. Both add to a business's value, and recurring usually makes a company worth the most. Owned by SOP 74 — Price continuity against upfront cash
Red, yellow, green: Three colors used in three different ways. Lead scoring: red leads are truly unqualified, yellow less qualified, green prime (SOP 84; see Traffic-light score). Where an employee stands: plain labels at work, where yellow can turn green or red and you say what would get them back to green (SOP 153). Customer health: every account gets a color each week, one color for each distinct response, and each color sets off its own action, from keeping going to escalating (SOP 273). Owned by SOP 84 — Score and route inbound leads; also defined on SOP 153, SOP 273
Redline: For a business that feels full but flat: break it with demand first, then lift cash flow, then stretch capacity. At that balance point you could very likely handle 30 percent more if you had to. Owned by SOP 201 — Rerun the six questions for talent and weigh a redline
Referral-driven archetype: A business-to-business firm, such as a law or accounting practice, that runs on referrals, does almost no marketing, and is usually bad at selling. Owned by SOP 206 — Run the B2B service and software playbook stack
Reframe: What every close should be: another way of looking at the problem, never a disagreement. Owned by SOP 100 — Run the reason close
Reframing (one paid, rest free): Selling the same units for the same money but presenting them as one paid and the rest free, with or without a hidden discount, because free draws far more attention than a discount. Owned by SOP 63 — Design a buy-X-get-Y-free offer
Reinforcer: Whatever follows an action and gives the person a reason to do it again. Owned by SOP 257 — Name the rules your sales culture reinforces and tolerates
Reinforcing event: Someone does what you said and something good follows, which makes them more likely to follow your next instruction. When nothing follows, they stop listening. Owned by SOP 277 — Give one action and many reasons to take it
Remake: Filming basically the same winning script again with one real-world variable changed: a fresh session of the same ad (a clone; how much a clone may change is not settled), props, examples, setting, presenter or a mix. Slower to make than a remix, but can perform for months and sometimes years. Owned by SOP 113 — Remix and remake a proven ad
Remix: A new version of a winning ad made by editing its existing footage: speed, filters, border, fonts, headline, medium, format, meat or effects. The fastest to make and the fastest to wear out. Owned by SOP 113 — Remix and remake a proven ad
Renting eyeballs: Paying for temporary access to another platform's audience, aiming for the return on that attention to beat the fee; see Paid advertising. Owned by SOP 35 — Choose the first paid platform
Rep career path: A route for support reps to move from lower-level products up to enterprise customers, with more pay at each step; close to a retention system for staff, stretching the lifetime value of talent. Owned by SOP 178 — Triage support to specialized reps
Resource grades: Best gives the biggest gain in throughput for what you have, known only afterward; good gives some improvement; poor gives none, one level of waste; below that is double waste, where the business also gets worse. Owned by SOP 185 — Allocate resources to the constraint and use leverage
Resourcefulness objection: The second money objection: the prospect sees the value but truly can't afford it, the far rarer case. You answer by appealing to their resourcefulness. Owned by SOP 105 — Handle time and resourcefulness objections
Resources (leadership practice): One of the leadership practices: getting ahead of obstacles and making sure the team has the tools, staff, training and backing to work without waiting; the leader goes out and gets them. Owned by SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it
Responsibility matrix: A project tool that can also be used to design teams: who does the task, who answers for it (usually the direct manager), who is consulted as an expert, and who must be told the result. In one practice each team builds its own, which makes gaps easy to see. Owned by SOP 179 — Plan the workforce and map responsibility
Result issue and experience issue: Two kinds of customer problem: a result issue is not getting what they wanted; an experience issue is not getting it the way they wanted. Most will stay with a good experience and a bad result sooner than the reverse. Owned by SOP 146 — Make the first money — monetize
Results, actions or both: The three forms of the bet in a win-your-money-back offer: hit a number however they get there; do what they are told whatever the outcome; or both, used where customers often lack the skill to reach the goal alone. Owned by SOP 60 — Design a win-your-money-back offer
Retain (content): The middle job of a content unit: holding attention long enough for the person to get the value. Owned by SOP 20 — Build the content unit — hook, retain, reward
Retention budget: Money set aside for keeping a customer, on top of what winning them cost: a fifth of acquisition cost. Owned by SOP 138 — Keep value above price to hold customers
Return on ad spend: What ads bring back for each dollar spent on them; as a rule of thumb, worth far more attention than cost per lead, and the measure to steer by when moving up market. Owned by SOP 213 — Fix ad targeting and bid for return, not cheap leads; also defined on SOP 229
Revenue ceiling: Sales velocity times lifetime revenue: the hypothetical level beyond which the business will not grow as things stand. Below current revenue, you are shrinking toward it; above, you are growing toward it. Owned by SOP 223 — Read the revenue ceiling off sales velocity
Revenue churn: Revenue lost to churn as a share of revenue at the start of the period, leaving out revenue from new customers. Losing $500 of $10,000 is 5 percent. Owned by SOP 130 — Separate revenue churn from logo churn
Revenue retention: One of three things, named together, that give a business its value: revenue retention, growth and gross margin. The number of customers doesn't change that. Owned by SOP 229 — Sell to richer customers and rewrite what you measure
Reversible decision: A bet you could simply stop, like ad spend; decide these very quickly. An irreversible one, like staking your life savings with no backup, can't be undone. Owned by SOP 189 — Get the numbers and decide fast on reversible bets
Reward (content): The last job of a content unit: satisfying the reason someone chose to watch or read. Repeated rewards build the reputation for delivering that makes a brand. Owned by SOP 20 — Build the content unit — hook, retain, reward
Right product, right time, right way: In the view given, the three things any upsell comes down to. When an ask fails, one was wrong: something they don't want, an offer before they have met the problem, or an offer made the wrong way: in a way they didn't like, or, in the other telling, from a seller they don't believe. Owned by SOP 162 — Build an ascension path with five points to ask; also defined on SOP 66
Rising star: On the growth-share grid, a product in a growing market with a growing share: the next bet you hunt for, to buy or build. Owned by SOP 180 — Decide whether to buy or build the next product
Risk-adjusted return: How much a path is likely to return once its chance of failing is weighed. The path you pick, and the next product bet, should score highest on it given your skills and resources. Owned by SOP 186 — Pick the path up the mountain that fits your skills; also defined on SOP 180
Risk, speed and ease: Three things to test every offer part against: what lowers the buyer's risk (not only a guarantee), what shortens the time, and what makes it easier. Some parts meet more than one. Also called the vectors of value. Owned by SOP 230 — Shape the front-end offer for lifetime value; also defined on SOP 205
Rituals and systems: The second layer of culture: recognition programs, meeting rhythms and feedback loops that hold behavior in place, whether set up on purpose or by accident. Owned by SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it
ROAS: Return on ad spend; see that entry. Go to “Return on ad spend” → Owned by SOP 213 — Fix ad targeting and bid for return, not cheap leads
Role play: Acting out the sales conversation: one person plays a prospect raising problems from real calls, the other sells with the right scripts and techniques. One team ranks it the most valuable kind of sales training, if run properly. Owned by SOP 250 — Memorize the script, then drill it in role play
Rolling seasonal urgency: A promotion that ends with its season and comes back with a different flavor, so the deadline stays real. Owned by SOP 9 — Split scarcity from urgency
Rollover upsell: Crediting part or all of what a customer spent before toward your next offer. You decide whom to target, which offer to move them to and how the credit applies; the upsell should cost at least four times the credit. It works at any moment. Owned by SOP 69 — Run the rollover upsell
Rule (culture): A conditional: if a person does this, then that happens. Owned by SOP 257 — Name the rules your sales culture reinforces and tolerates
Rules of closing: A numbered set of rules for the part of a sale after the prospect says no; asking permission before getting real is one of them. Owned by SOP 97 — Get permission before getting real
Rumors-are-true ad: An ad framework: confirm that a product people are talking about is finally coming, offer an over-the-top gift, show receipts for what went into it, and tease a further unnamed project, so the only way to learn more is to take the next step. Owned by SOP 117 — Run the flying-prop, bribe, rumors-are-true, being-lied-to and data-stack ad frameworks
Runway (free asset): How long a free asset needs to run, which grows with the price, how cold the audience is, and the price against what the buyer can spend: the bigger the plane, the longer the runway. Owned by SOP 65 — Convert a free consumption asset
Runway (lengthen the selling): When cold ads or cold outreach won't convert, make the selling longer: a longer runway lets a bigger plane take off, and a bigger plane is a larger share of the market you can capture. Owned by SOP 244 — Sell to what the buyer knows and lengthen the runway

S

SaaS: Software sold as a service. In theory steadier and higher in gross margin than a service business, though not always. Owned by SOP 206 — Run the B2B service and software playbook stack
Sales aids: Anything that makes reps sell more consistently, such as presentations, video or mailed sales letters, charts and calculators. They move the teaching part of the pitch to before the call. Owned by SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people
Sales culture: What keeps sales behavior up once people have the skill. If the system rewards not working more than working, then in the view here the owner set that culture. Owned by SOP 243 — Control the conditions, keep every step congruent and clear
Sales development rep: The setter role in outbound sales, whose scripts can carry the qualifying questions. A rough figure is 75,000 in on-target earnings, half base and half variable. Owned by SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps; also defined on SOP 217
Sales motion: The steps a business uses to take a lead through to a sale, such as a video sales letter before each call. A firm driven by referrals usually needs a sales motion more than content. Owned by SOP 206 — Run the B2B service and software playbook stack; also defined on SOP 205
Sales network (node of production): In a business like a brokerage, each agent is the unit that produces, so growth comes from drawing in and signing up agents. Owned by SOP 199 — Build a compounding vehicle
Sales pipeline stages: The stages tracked as a baseline: opt-ins, scheduled, showed, offer, closed, cash collected and back-outs. Owned by SOP 148 — Stabilize the business at one to four people
Sales specialization: Splitting reps by product, lead type, process and sometimes territory, each group with its own training and pay, so no one has to learn everything. Owned by SOP 175 — Capitalize the business at 250 to 500 people
Sales tone: Three constants the voice always keeps: loud enough to hear, clear enough to catch each word, slow enough to follow. A persuasive tone, which isn't the same as sounding salesy. Owned by SOP 237 — Mark a script for tonality
Sales velocity: How many units you sell each period. Multiplied by lifetime revenue, it gives the revenue ceiling; it tends to run high at a low monthly price, since referrals rise and the decision is easy. Owned by SOP 223 — Read the revenue ceiling off sales velocity; also defined on SOP 229
Scarcity: Limiting how many: the places, seats or items available, based on real capacity you set and then publish. Scarcity limits quantity, urgency limits time; both can run at once. Owned by SOP 9 — Split scarcity from urgency
Schedule rate: Of the engaged leads, the share who set an appointment: scheduled appointments divided by leads. Owned by SOP 85 — Set availability as a show-rate lever; also defined on SOP 189
Scraping: Using list- and lead-scraping software to pull contacts that match your customer criteria, tested on a sample of a few hundred for up-to-date details, responsiveness and fit before getting more. Owned by SOP 27 — Build a cold list
Screening pass rate: The share of applications good enough for a screening call; aim for about 20 percent. Zero points to a problem with the job description; it measures the ad and the review together. Owned by SOP 148 — Stabilize the business at one to four people
Script marks: How to show delivery in a script: a question mark where the voice should rise, dots for a pause (one way: one for short, several for long), and styles such as italics, bold or capitals where the rep slows, speeds up or changes pitch. Owned by SOP 237 — Mark a script for tonality; also defined on SOP 157
SDR: Sales development rep; see that entry. Go to “Sales development rep” → Owned by SOP 251 — Set sales comp and a career path for reps
Second acquisition channel: A new way of getting customers alongside the one that works. One of the hardest and riskiest moves, but it can double the business while lowering risk; expect a return after about 12 months. Owned by SOP 165 — Pick a second acquisition channel
Second form of payment: A backup payment method, approved along with the first, that lets you rerun a failed charge the next day. It cuts churn from card problems and raises lifetime value. Owned by SOP 78 — Switch to twenty-eight-day billing and collect a second card
Segmented messaging: Matching messages to each lead's score: the easy version is five minutes looking them up before contact; the hard version is separate email and text sequences for every lead category. Owned by SOP 84 — Score and route inbound leads
Segmented nurture: Sending leads messages matched to their segment instead of blasting the whole list: more emails written, not more emails per person. Owned by SOP 165 — Pick a second acquisition channel
Self-blame: The last kind of blame: the prospect avoids buying for fear of making a mistake. It shows up as disliking how the product does things, fear of the new, or fear of repeating a past failure. Owned by SOP 107 — Handle I need to think about it
Self-funding acquisition: Your existing customers' money, arriving early enough, pays for winning the next customers, so no bank or investor money is needed. Owned by SOP 58 — Work the three levels of advertising and the thirty-day window
Selfish reason why: Openly stating your own motive. People trust those who share their biases, even a bias against the viewer's interest. Owned by SOP 117 — Run the flying-prop, bribe, rumors-are-true, being-lied-to and data-stack ad frameworks
Sell hot: A polite phrase for a rep overpromising or lying to close; refunds sorted by rep will probably trace to one or two people. Owned by SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people
Sell into deprivation, not satisfaction: Make the next offer when want is highest, not just after it has been met. If needed, create the next want first, as with a food review that turns up gaps before supplements are offered. Owned by SOP 57 — Compute the payback period and shorten it
Sell to the goal: Selling to a goal; see that entry. Go to “Selling to a goal” → Owned by SOP 59 — Assemble a money model from four prongs
Selling to a goal: Setting the plan's length from the customer's goal and the price from the length, as in 50 pounds at two a week plus upkeep: 49 weeks at $200. The first rung of the service and continuity downsell ladders. Owned by SOP 206 — Run the B2B service and software playbook stack; also defined on SOP 59
Selling versus closing: Selling is everything before you ask for the sale; closing is everything after. Problems are easier to settle before you ask for money. Owned by SOP 108 — Drill a team on closing
Seminar dinner: A free themed meal with a 90-minute presentation that sells a consultation, which then sells a year-long program. The overall share of diners who buy the program is given as near 10 percent, though the stage benchmarks (25 percent, then a third) come nearer 8 percent. Owned by SOP 65 — Convert a free consumption asset
Service level agreement: A standard for how long a repeated technology task should take, such as fixing a down server or building a funnel, used to see the workload and size the team. Owned by SOP 170 — Decentralize technology into the departments
Setter: The person who works a list of people who already responded, qualifying them, filling in call notes and booking a longer call with a closer, who runs the selling part. Owned by SOP 53 — Run the setter scripts; also defined on SOP 147, SOP 248
Setter call: A structured call to someone who responded to an ad or email: learn their goal and deadline and schedule a follow-up within 36 hours. Owned by SOP 18 — Work warm outreach end to end
Setter scripts: Two rough outlines for calling people who raised a hand: one for businesses, booking a longer call within 36 hours; one for consumers, booking an appointment with a specialist, held with a card on file. Not for reading aloud; get legal advice where you operate. Owned by SOP 53 — Run the setter scripts
Seven-day follow-up cadence: A front-loaded week of attempts after an opt-in: a call within five minutes, an instant second call, voicemail, text, two more rounds that day, two calls a day for two days, then daily for four more, then long-term nurture. Owned by SOP 89 — Run the seven-day follow-up cadence
Seven headline traits: Recent, relevant, celebrity, proximity, conflict, unusual and still unfolding: parts to mix, not a formula. They add up, so more traits usually means more attention. Owned by SOP 21 — Write the seven headline traits
Seven levels of advertising: A seven-level capability ladder from everyone you know hearing about what you sell (level one), through hiring people to advertise for you, a product that earns steady referrals, widening platforms, and executives running whole channels without you (level six). Owned by SOP 54 — Climb the seven levels of advertising
Seven sticking points: Where owners commonly stall, in order: avatar, data, focus, over-expansion, compensation, being underpriced, and selling a single product. Owned by SOP 202 — Spot the seven sticking points and make the hard call
Seventy-twenty-ten split: Each round of hooks split into 70 percent core (proven hooks), 20 percent emerging (promising but less proven) and 10 percent big new ideas. It applies from the second round on, once there are results. Owned by SOP 122 — Split hook effort seventy, twenty, ten
Seventy-two-hour cap: Let leads schedule no more than three days ahead, five if you must. Longer windows fill more slots but bring more no-shows, lower team morale, and slots taken from real buyers. Owned by SOP 86 — Cap the booking window at seventy-two hours
Short selfie ad: An ad framework: a very short, rough walking selfie that sells only the next step, usually a lead magnet. In the example, the line showing someone worse off getting better results did the heavy lifting. Owned by SOP 115 — Run the looking-for, new-versus-old, warning-signs, north-star and selfie ad frameworks
Shout-outs: In one team, the opening of each sales meeting and daily training, where people call out each other's good work so reps get status for doing the right things. A manager starting them should go first, calling out the behaviors that make money. Owned by SOP 255 — Onboard a new rep in phases, with a test to pass each; also defined on SOP 256
Show, don't tell (ad): An ad framework: footage of the result happening carries the ad, with as few words as possible, ideally no narration, ending on a silent call to action. Owned by SOP 114 — Run the origin-story, prop-comedy, customer-story, show-don't-tell and long-term-result ad frameworks
Show rate: Of the leads with an appointment, the share who attend: shows divided by appointments scheduled. It takes process more than skill; 50 to 80 percent is called reachable, and a 10 percent lift is said to lift revenue 10 percent. Owned by SOP 85 — Set availability as a show-rate lever; also defined on SOP 149, SOP 189
Show, flow, demo: Three forms of proof in a talk: show something real, the rougher the better; trace step by step what happens to the audience, to prove you understand their world; and demonstrate, live if you can. Owned by SOP 280 — Build a talk around one problem and one named solution
Show-rate bump: A small commission top-up for strong show rates, typically worth 5 to 30 percent of what the rep earns per sale, depending on the price. Owned by SOP 88 — Pay and rank reps on show rate
Silence after the ask: After asking for the sale with a rising voice, stop talking and let them talk. One figure has reps who stayed silent for eight seconds closing 32% more; the silence can sometimes run to 60 seconds. Owned by SOP 237 — Mark a script for tonality
Silos: Departments working apart while the customer's journey crosses them all, so the customer gets a disjointed experience and wants to leave. Owned by SOP 135 — Run the cross-department call review
Single product (sticking point): Selling one thing, so lifetime value stays too low while margins keep shrinking; sometimes the time has come to build an upsell. Owned by SOP 203 — Fix over-expansion, pay, underpricing and a single product
Six-point testimonial script: Six points asked in order, each with its own questions: internal struggle (their low point), external struggle (their numbers then), skepticism, what made them go ahead, external victory (their numbers now) and internal victory (what is possible now). Owned by SOP 125 — Run the six-point testimonial script
Six questions: A fixed-order list that narrows a business down to its constraint: more, metrics, market, model, money, manpower. Stop at the first answer that holds. The order is how to think it through, not how common each cause is. Owned by SOP 184 — Find the one constraint with six questions
Six questions for talent: The same questions walked again with manpower put first: more, metrics, market, model and money, each asked about people. Owned by SOP 201 — Rerun the six questions for talent and weigh a redline
Skill: A chain of adaptive behaviors linked together, which breaks down into smaller chunks, all the way to the most basic. SOP 279 puts it as a linked series of actions with a dependable result. Owned by SOP 193 — Treat hard as a skill you lack and chunk it down; also defined on SOP 279
Smallest skill gap: Hire the person whose missing piece, attitude or aptitude, would take less time to teach. For a low-skill role that usually favors attitude; aptitude matters more as the skill a role needs goes up. Owned by SOP 192 — Hire for the smallest skill gap
Smartphone close: An answer to the no-time objection built on how much time the prospect already spends on their phone, best told as a story. Owned by SOP 105 — Handle time and resourcefulness objections
So-that test: The question that sorts a borderline case into a market: is the buyer doing this so they make more money, so they are healthier, or so they are less alone? Owned by SOP 1 — Pick the market before the offer
Soften the ask: Offering a lead magnet instead of asking for money directly. It returns less up front but more over time, and scales further than a direct ask. Owned by SOP 209 — Pick a lead bucket, starting with the offer and lead magnet
Solution-aware: They know the result they want and that solutions exist, but not that your product can deliver it. Hooks for them usually lead with a promise. Owned by SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness
Solution statement: A perceived problem turned into what you will do about it: how they get what they want, without what they dread, even if their biggest obstacle is real. Owned by SOP 4 — Generate delivery options from a grid of choices
Specialize (stage 8): The 100-to-249-person stage: the owner acts as president over a full executive team and four layers. Nobody can know everything; you move on with dedicated specialists and teams for specific tasks. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 168
Specialized stack: A department's own set of tools, replacing the general software everyone shared when teams were tiny. Owned by SOP 170 — Decentralize technology into the departments
Speed of response: How fast you reply to a lead between their booking and the appointment. Leads often decide before the call, so slow replies hand the sale to a competitor. Owned by SOP 90 — Reach a new lead fast
Speed to the first appointment: How long a lead waits between scheduling and the sales appointment itself; the shorter the wait, the higher the show rate. Owned by SOP 86 — Cap the booking window at seventy-two hours
Spending procedure: A written process setting who may spend, on what, and up to what limit without approval (one business used $10,000 per card), with a route for approval above that. Owned by SOP 167 — Delegate spending with approval limits, department budgets and cards
Splinter offer: A lead magnet that delivers one step of a multi-step process, such as working out a customer's color palette for a fashion consultant. Owned by SOP 209 — Pick a lead bucket, starting with the offer and lead magnet
Split testing: Running versions side by side, often small budgets across many variations, to see which does better: find the best hook first, then the best value piece behind it, then scale the winners. It needs tracking; in the view here it suits steady inflow, such as outreach and ads, more than content. Owned by SOP 34 — Front-load the opening seconds; also defined on SOP 220
Spouse or partner objection: Saying they can't buy until someone else agrees: a spouse, business partner, staff, kids, anyone. It is an objection about other people and one of the hardest to overcome. Owned by SOP 104 — Handle the spouse or partner
Stabilize (stage 3): The stage with one to four full-time people, where the owner's role is trainer. There is too much for one person; you move on by bringing your first couple of people on board. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it; also defined on SOP 148
Stack (offer): Putting the kept options together so every perceived problem on the grid is answered, usually with only one or two costly items per set of solutions. Owned by SOP 5 — Cut costly pieces from an offer and bundle the rest
Stacked guarantee: Two guarantees in one offer, usually a short window next to a longer one: conditional with unconditional, a small and a big outcome, or the same terms over two timelines. An anti-guarantee can't be stacked. Owned by SOP 8 — Stack, name and price a guarantee
Stacking closes: Adding another close from a new angle or comparison when one isn't enough; each step brings you nearer a sale. Owned by SOP 100 — Run the reason close
Stage (of scaling): One of ten steps of growth, numbered 0 to 9 and set mainly by headcount. Each has your role, a leadership structure, a constraint and what moves you on. Also called levels. Owned by SOP 183 — Find your stage by headcount and see what graduates it
Stages of awareness: Another name for the levels of awareness; see that entry. Go to “Levels of awareness” → Owned by SOP 212 — Make better ad creative with hooks, permutations and assembly
Standing proof streams: A set of processes that turn customer activity into a steady flow of videos, images and words for ads, content, outreach and pitches. Each stream you can switch on, such as reviews, social tags, events or awards, is a node. Owned by SOP 123 — Run the standing proof streams
STAR (practice rule): In the practice rule, the same four letters stand for situation, task, action, result. Owned by SOP 98 — Qualify with the four-letter test
STAR (qualification test): Situation, timing, authority, resources: the prospect has the problem, the time to fix it, the say to decide and the money. Someone with all four is a STAR prospect. Owned by SOP 98 — Qualify with the four-letter test
Stars (values-performance grid): People high on both values and performance: promote them, praise them in public and hold them up as the model. They carry the culture. Owned by SOP 259 — Sort the team by values and performance, and act on each box
Start low, step up: Begin with a low price to prove demand and find leaks, then raise it about 20 percent roughly every 10 sales until sales drop sharply, and go back to the sweet spot. Owned by SOP 128 — Test price with a step size and a cadence
Status (influence): Control of a scarce thing other people want; one of the four things that raise influence. In content, show you have what people want. Owned by SOP 211 — Build status, power, credibility and likeness through content
Status positions: The people whose treatment of someone gives or withholds status: spouse, children, parents, wider family, colleagues, bosses, friends, rivals and competitors. Show one benefit through several of them. Owned by SOP 39 — Write what an ad says, who says it, and when
Steps (content): Moves done in a fixed order that reach a goal when complete. People keep going because they want the goal, so a long list of steps helps if the first one lands. Owned by SOP 23 — Retain with lists, steps and stories
Story (content): An account of events that happened, might happen or never will, usually with a takeaway. It holds attention by making people ask what happened next. Owned by SOP 23 — Retain with lists, steps and stories
Story ad: One of the five meat formats: narrative ads, including lifestyle, documentary style, skits and brand manifestos, among others. Owned by SOP 120 — Use the five ad meat formats
Strategic partner: A partner who brings something that helps, such as distribution to 10,000 stores, and can add cash, share risk and help expansion. In the example the partner buys a small part, say 10%; whether selling a small part and bringing in a partner are one option or two is not settled. Owned by SOP 182 — Get the business sale-ready to reach new capital
Strategic workforce planning: Working out the people who will make the company's goals happen: how many, how fast, who moves, who leaves, backfills, promotions, backups and future specialists. Essentially organizational design. Owned by SOP 179 — Plan the workforce and map responsibility
Strategy: Spending limited resources such as time and money against demands that have no limit; put simply, prioritizing. Owned by SOP 185 — Allocate resources to the constraint and use leverage
Strategy call: A qualifying call that gives real value by clarifying what is holding the prospect back next, then hands qualified people to a salesperson. The benchmark is 25 percent or more. Owned by SOP 65 — Convert a free consumption asset
Structural churn: Churn that comes from the market itself, as when very small business customers go under. It makes a business high-churn, which is fine, though still worth cutting. Owned by SOP 138 — Keep value above price to hold customers
Structured interview: Every candidate for a role gets the same five to 10 questions for each kind of fit, so answers can be compared without bias. Owned by SOP 174 — Standardize selection and the founder's final interview
Sub-market: A narrower slice inside one of the three markets, such as property investing inside wealth or one diet inside nutrition. Repackaging a method people already follow is often all a sub-market needs. Owned by SOP 1 — Pick the market before the offer
Supply-constrained: Having a supply constraint; see that entry. Go to “Supply constraint” → Owned by SOP 200 — Treat a supply constraint as demand for talent
Supply constraint: Customers want more than you can serve, so you would take more on if other issues didn't stop you. It bites hardest in high-volume low-wage roles, the trades and high-end professional services. Owned by SOP 200 — Treat a supply constraint as demand for talent; also defined on SOP 184
Sweet spot (price): The price that gives the highest product of conversion rate and lifetime gross profit; it maximizes money, not units or customers. Owned by SOP 128 — Test price with a step size and a cadence
Swipe file: A saved collection of ads from any industry that caught your eye, reviewed before making a new round. Owned by SOP 212 — Make better ad creative with hooks, permutations and assembly

T

Table stakes: Features of high value that everyone in the industry offers, so people won't pay much extra for them. Owned by SOP 168 — Specialize the business at 100 to 249 people
Take rate: The share of customers who take an offer. Owners often expect far more than the roughly 20 percent who will; work it out, with delivery cost, before launching anything new. Owned by SOP 224 — Set fractal price tiers and read price off the close rate
Talent pipeline: The funnel that produces candidates, tracked step by step from résumés through screen and interviews so each break can be found and fixed. Owned by SOP 166 — Track candidates in one system and use specialist recruiters
Talent ratio: The hiring version of lifetime value against acquisition cost: lifetime gross profit per employee against what it costs to acquire the talent. Owned by SOP 200 — Treat a supply constraint as demand for talent
Targeting cheat sheet: For a new channel: start with interests, demographics and places, then look-alikes of opt-ins, then of calls, then of sales, as the data builds. Each rung takes a certain amount of data, and a thousand of an event is hard to reach; whether a thousand is that amount is not settled. Owned by SOP 213 — Fix ad targeting and bid for return, not cheap leads
Targeting ladder: Narrowing an ad's audience rung by rung: pick the platform, then a look-alike audience, then filters. Err toward too specific rather than too broad; for a tiny local radius, add perhaps one filter at most. Owned by SOP 36 — Build the targeting ladder
Ten pricing plays: Ten small price changes that barely touch sales: 28-day billing, a card fee waived for a second payment, sales tax on top, a yearly increase, longer billing periods, rounding up, a yearly renewal fee, continuity that starts automatically, an ultra-high option and a paid guarantee. Owned by SOP 77 — Run the ten pricing plays that add profit now
Ten questions (agency): Ten yes-or-no questions for every agency on a shortlist, from personal word of mouth and known clients through reporting and their own offer to price. A cheap agency is ruled out; an expensive one isn't ruled in. Owned by SOP 46 — Vet an agency with ten questions
Ten-times question: Asking what stops you doing ten times your current volume, channel by channel. Naming the blocker reveals the business's one constraint. Owned by SOP 40 — Choose the next growth move
Termination policy and process: A set way of letting people go. It clears the HR constraint at the ten-to-nineteen-person stage and cuts legal exposure and damage to culture. Owned by SOP 153 — Fire without surprise and plan who covers the work
Testimonial ad: One of the five meat formats: customers or founders speaking, such as user-made clips, talking to camera, podcast style, raw or polished testimonials, walk-and-talk rants, group shots, street interviews or influencer collaborations. Owned by SOP 120 — Use the five ad meat formats
Testimonial competition: Customers compete to make the best raw phone testimonial, judged by running the entries as ads; the one with most conversions over 30 days wins. Run it once or twice a year at most; one reading says to disclose the incentive in the ads. Owned by SOP 126 — Run a testimonial competition judged as an ad; also defined on SOP 210
Third-grade reading level: The target for everything you send or publish, measured with a free reading-level tool: keep every number, condition and hedge and rewrite until it is below target. SOP 31 sets the bar below third grade; SOP 243 brings copy under fifth, calling third amazing. Which bar is right is not settled. Owned by SOP 31 — Write at the right reading level; also defined on SOP 243
Third-party backing: Accreditations, industry awards, certifications or public approval from a trusted outside party. It works like a brand endorsement and strengthens proof, as long as that party's brand is credible. Owned by SOP 109 — Check proof against the thirteen comparisons
Third-party financing: Another company pays you now and the customer owes that company instead; said to raise revenue about 35 percent in most cases. Owned by SOP 70 — Work the payment-plan downsell ladder
Third-party logistics provider: An outside firm that stores and ships goods for an online seller. It is a core supplier, so falling behind on paying it is not an option. Owned by SOP 154 — Get granular financial data
Third-party-trust voicemail: A voicemail with only their first name, your first name, that you are calling about a named competitor or someone they know, a request to call back and your number. Your company is never named. Owned by SOP 30 — Leave a third-party-trust voicemail
Thirteen comparisons: A list of ways to show proof, each setting a more believable form beside a less believable one. The more boxes one piece of proof ticks, the better; ticking all of them is nearly impossible. Owned by SOP 109 — Check proof against the thirteen comparisons
Thirty-day window: The stretch in which any business can borrow interest-free on a card or credit line, at least in America. It sets the length of the second and third advertising tests. Owned by SOP 58 — Work the three levels of advertising and the thirty-day window
Three beliefs: What every sale has to break: that circumstances stop them, that other people have to act as they wish, and that they can't do it themselves. Owned by SOP 65 — Convert a free consumption asset
Three categories of blame: Almost everything prospects blame fits circumstances (time, money, fit), other people (permission or authority; trust or doubt) or themselves (fear, avoidance). Each rests on a belief about what has to happen. Owned by SOP 99 — Classify an objection
Three corners: Functions, people and operations, drawn as a triangle with growth in the middle. All three must work together; when growth stalls, one corner has failed. Owned by SOP 265 — Find which corner of functions, people and operations breaks first
Three-column exercise: Problems in one column, assets and resources in the next, and a blank third: how would you tell someone holding exactly these assets and problems to recombine them for a higher return? Owned by SOP 274 — Prune what returns least and move it to what returns most
Three-day no-sweat guarantee: Letting the buyer back out within three days, which most states are said to require anyway. In the downsell version, take a card and delay payment 24 to 72 hours. Owned by SOP 104 — Handle the spouse or partner
Three kinds of speed: How fast you make first contact, how soon the first appointment happens, and how fast you respond between the two. Owned by SOP 90 — Reach a new lead fast
Three lead magnet solution types: Ways a lead magnet can solve its problem: reveal a problem the buyer didn't know they had, give a limited free trial, or deliver one step of a multi-step process. Owned by SOP 13 — Choose and build a lead magnet
Three levels of advertising (thirty-day tests): Three money tests: one, lifetime gross profit beats acquisition cost, ideally three times or more; two, gross profit in the first 30 days beats acquisition cost; three, it beats twice acquisition cost, so money stops limiting growth. Owned by SOP 58 — Work the three levels of advertising and the thirty-day window
Three levels of authority: The kinds of influence, from least to most: what you say about yourself, what others say (affiliates and other customers), and what customers experience for themselves. Owned by SOP 95 — Climb the three levels of authority
Three levers (business value): A business grows in worth only through more customers, customers worth more, and keeping both going long into the future. Branding is offered as the cheapest, longest-lasting way to move all three. Owned by SOP 94 — Pair the brand with what the ideal customer likes
Three levers (making money): The ranked factors that decide whether money gets made: the group of buyers first, the offer second, persuasion skill last. Each is rated plus, neutral or negative; a negative stops you at that lever. Owned by SOP 1 — Pick the market before the offer
Three markets: Health, wealth and relationships: the three standing human problems nearly everything sold falls under. Pick one, then go down a level into a sub-market, where the money usually is. Owned by SOP 1 — Pick the market before the offer
Three-pillar pitch: Boiling the offer down to the three things someone needs to succeed, with a one-line statement and a comparison for each. It usually takes no more than two or three minutes. Owned by SOP 147 — Make new customers consistent — advertise
Three-plus-twelve rule: When offering three free months for a one-year signup, make it three free then twelve paid, a 15-month agreement, not three free and nine paid; the discount should lengthen the term, not eat into it. Owned by SOP 75 — Apply a continuity discount and the three-plus-twelve rule
Three tiers (affiliate commission): Commission levels paying 25, 50 and 100 percent of the ceiling: tier one for everyone who signs up, tier two for anyone who has activated, tier three for anyone holding a set level of sales. Owned by SOP 47 — Price affiliate commission off acquisition cost
Three-way introduction: Turning a named friend into a real referral: while you are together, the customer starts a three-way message thread from their own phone, ideally with a photo of the two of you. The person who gave the name stays in the conversation rather than handing you off. Owned by SOP 16 — Keep the referrer in the conversation when you contact their friend
Throughput: What actually comes out the end of the system, such as dollars or the share of leads who end up attending. For immediate growth, only work on the constraint raises it; while you can take more customers, a gain at any step adds to it. Owned by SOP 184 — Find the one constraint with six questions; also defined on SOP 85, SOP 245
Tier (pricing): A named combination of quality and quantity settings, sold at a price. Owned by SOP 72 — Generate tiers and downsells from the quality vectors
Tier pricing rule: About 20 percent will take each upsell, so price it at least 5 times the level below; if that holds, each layer doubles revenue. Owned by SOP 224 — Set fractal price tiers and read price off the close rate
Time-blocking: Planning every working hour of the coming week on the calendar in one weekly session of an hour or less, so a supervisor sees all time allocated, with room held for overruns. Said to save 10 to 12 hours a week on average. Owned by SOP 137 — Run the weekly time-blocking ritual
Time interval (naming): How long the result takes, stated in the offer's name: days, weeks, months or quarters for the whole program; seconds, minutes or hours for bonuses and features. Owned by SOP 10 — Name an offer with the five naming slots
Time to success: Two clocks: how long until the final result, and how long until the first sign of progress. Where the final result is slow, build in visible early progress. Owned by SOP 3 — Diagnose an offer on its value drivers
Time unlock: A reward that opens only once a customer has stayed a set time: first just past the average stay, then 30 days later, then 3 months later, then 3 months after that. SOP 158 instead puts the incentive one to two months before the churn point; which is right is not settled. Owned by SOP 140 — Incentivize activation and time unlocks past churn points
Tone guide: Another name for script marks; see that entry. Go to “Script marks” → Owned by SOP 157 — Optimize the business at twenty to forty-nine people
Top and bottom of the funnel: Top: long-term spending on awareness, associations, collaborations and endorsements. Bottom: direct-response offers aimed at an immediate sale and judged on return. Owned by SOP 177 — Go brand-first, read blended return and cost a permanent customer
Topic scope sizes: Sizes of topic scope, from the smallest audience to the largest. Start in the narrowest area where you are credible and widen one step at a time as credibility grows. Owned by SOP 25 — Sequence platforms and widen a niche
Touchpoint: Any point where someone in the business talks to a customer. Listing them, then the before, during and after of delivery inside each, finds the moments that can become content. Owned by SOP 276 — Turn customer delivery into a daily stream of content
Toxic talent: In the values-performance grid, high performers with low values fit; keeping them drives stars away. Two instructions are given and not settled: remove them at once whatever their numbers, or manage them out or remediate. Owned by SOP 259 — Sort the team by values and performance, and act on each box
Track, lose, print: The three phases of ad spend in order: measure what works, accept losing money before returns arrive, then, once return beats spend, feed it as much as it will take. Owned by SOP 56 — Define and compute what a customer costs to acquire
Traffic-light score: Red leads are truly unqualified, yellow less qualified, green prime; there are plenty of yellows. Owned by SOP 84 — Score and route inbound leads
Transition (stacked recap): The full read-back of every recap at the end of the pain cycle, before the call turns to the offer. Owned by SOP 240 — Label the problem and run the pain cycle
Transition (turn to the offer): Summing up the prospect's problems, checking they sound right, then saying you think this would help and asking if you can walk them through it. Owned by SOP 242 — Map each pain to the offer and name the price
Transparent pay policy: A written outline of how raises are given, handed to every teammate on joining, so everyone knows what to expect, what gets rewarded and how to ask properly. Owned by SOP 134 — Set pay increases
Trash (feature): Features of low value that nobody wants to pay for. Owned by SOP 168 — Specialize the business at 100 to 249 people
Trend format ad: An ad styled on a clip format popular right now, such as a podcast clip, or one that borrows organic hooks. Organic trends reach paid ads some six to 12 months later. Owned by SOP 116 — Run the trend, value-anchor, bribe, underdog and prize-challenge ad frameworks
Triage (on the call): Sorting prospects at the very start of a call, for example by whether they have at least five locations, so each is placed as one avatar and sold only the offer right for it. Owned by SOP 228 — Weigh a downsell against raising the core price
Triage support: A setup that sends each type of customer to the type of rep trained to serve them, through CRM tags, customer segments and phone and email routing, so reps learn only their products. Owned by SOP 178 — Triage support to specialized reps
Trial with a penalty: A free trial with conditions: the customer pays nothing if they do the things that get results and attend sales consultations, with a fee for each miss. That name is used inside the business; customers just hear 'trial'. Owned by SOP 71 — Run a free trial with a penalty
Trim: Rating every option on value to the buyer and cost to you, then cutting everything that isn't high value, cheap items included, and keeping every high-value item with its cost noted. Owned by SOP 5 — Cut costly pieces from an offer and bundle the rest
Two levers (technology and skills): The only two core drivers of leverage: technology, the tools you use (hands, shovel, bulldozer), and skills, what you learn to do; one salesperson might sell five times as much as another on the same leads. Owned by SOP 185 — Allocate resources to the constraint and use leverage
Two-round concept testing: First test three wildly different ideas (an orange, an apple, a banana); then test three smaller variations of the winner (a green, red and yellow apple), nine versions in all. Owned by SOP 220 — Run two-round concept testing and promote to control
Two-sided acquisition: One side of the business turns leads into customers; the other brings in job applicants. Growing one means growing the other, and winning talent uses the same advertising skill as winning customers. Owned by SOP 252 — Market for salespeople the way you market for prospects
Two-step sale: A setter runs only the first three steps of the call without selling, leaving the prospect wanting the answer, then schedules them with a closer. Owned by SOP 147 — Make new customers consistent — advertise
Two wars: In the view here, the two contests a business can pick: winning customers very cheaply, or making so much from each one that acquisition cost stops mattering. Anyone in between gets nowhere. Owned by SOP 225 — Pick your war and check lifetime value is the constraint

U

Unconditional guarantee: Money back for any reason, no questions asked. Framed as a fully informed decision that can only be made from the inside, it makes buying the way to put the decision off; a second frame sets out two risk-free choices, only one of which can work. Owned by SOP 7 — Choose and condition a guarantee
Unconditional service guarantee: A refund if the customer feels the service wasn't worth what they paid. It lets the offer be advertised as free; the rule is to hand the money back whenever asked. Owned by SOP 60 — Design a win-your-money-back offer
Underdog ad: An ad framework: lead with a modest, believable result, name bigger ones, then come back to the smallest, showing both the floor and the ceiling. It beat the others each time it was rerun. Owned by SOP 116 — Run the trend, value-anchor, bribe, underdog and prize-challenge ad frameworks
Underpriced (sticking point): Charging less than the work is worth; the fix is to keep pushing the price up. In a mature service business, price and skill line up roughly in a straight line. Owned by SOP 203 — Fix over-expansion, pay, underpricing and a single product
Unqualified: Prospects who are a poor fit, usually drawn in by confusion about what you sell, the results promised or how they happen: an advertising problem, not a sales one. Whether to keep them off the calendar, or close those who have the problem anyway as practice, is not settled. Owned by SOP 98 — Qualify with the four-letter test
Unscalable value: What you can only give a few people, such as personal attention, personalization, speed, status, access or secrets; usually what justifies a very high price. Early on, it is the one-to-one work you give at your own cost to learn from the market. Owned by SOP 81 — Run a fast-cash campaign; also defined on SOP 145
Unsell: Telling a customer first what they don't need, so they believe you about what they do. Stock items just to cross them off, and give away or cross off low-margin items to push higher-margin ones. Owned by SOP 67 — Run the menu upsell
Up market: One of the five market directions: moving to serve larger or better customers, such as owners with several locations, who sometimes cost more to win but return more. Every metric you track has to be rewritten: steer by return on ad spend and by lifetime value set against acquisition cost, and stop judging by the price of a lead. Owned by SOP 93 — Choose a market direction; also defined on SOP 197, SOP 229
Upsell: Whatever you offer next: the fix for the problem the first purchase exposed. It is the money model's second step, meant to maximize profit, and often carries most of it; a great one answers a hope the core offer left unmet. Owned by SOP 66 — Run the classic upsell and choose the moment; also defined on SOP 59, SOP 231
Upward cycle: What raising a price sets off: clients get more invested, see more value and get better results, while the business gains profit, money for service and seller conviction. Cutting price runs it backward. Owned by SOP 2 — Set a price from the value gap, not from competitors
Urgency: Limiting time: a deadline, by date or hour, for the buyer's decision. Owned by SOP 9 — Split scarcity from urgency
Usage churn: An early sign of churn: a customer who still pays but has stopped using the product. Reach out as soon as use drops, and bring them back to using it, or offer a lower rate matched to their use, before they ask to cancel. Owned by SOP 140 — Incentivize activation and time unlocks past churn points; also defined on SOP 73

V

Value above price: The rule for keeping customers: as long as what they get stays above what they pay, they stay. Add value or lower price; adding value is preferred. Owned by SOP 138 — Keep value above price to hold customers
Value drivers: Four drivers that set how valuable an offer feels: dream outcome and perceived likelihood of success sit on top and are pushed up; time to success and effort and sacrifice sit underneath and are pushed down. Owned by SOP 3 — Diagnose an offer on its value drivers
Value-anchor ad: An ad framework that leads with the offer: anchor what the dream outcome is worth, drop to free, anchor the product at the market rate, then add a reward that varies. Owned by SOP 116 — Run the trend, value-anchor, bribe, underdog and prize-challenge ad frameworks
Value-based pricing: Pricing by what customers will pay, worked back from the avatar, rather than by what rivals charge or cost plus a margin; the recommended model. Charging different customers different prices is fine with a method, a sound margin and similar delivery. Owned by SOP 82 — Set price from the pricing rules and the three models; also defined on SOP 203, SOP 206
Value elements: The four value drivers; see that entry. Go to “Value drivers” → Owned by SOP 39 — Write what an ad says, who says it, and when
Value per second: How much value each moment of a piece or a service carries, against how long it takes. Length is never the problem, only boredom: less but better beats more and decent. Owned by SOP 20 — Build the content unit — hook, retain, reward; also defined on SOP 131
Value piece: The body of an ad, doing one thing: breaking one belief, showing one skill, or unpacking one point people get wrong; see Meat. Owned by SOP 34 — Front-load the opening seconds
Value variables: The four value drivers; see that entry. Go to “Value drivers” → Owned by SOP 4 — Generate delivery options from a grid of choices
Values over results (recognition): Rewarding how a result was reached, with the values kept, rather than the result alone. In one company's practice, results are recognized through pay, targets and peers, and what is recognized in front of the whole company is the process and the behaviors. Owned by SOP 261 — Build a recognition rhythm that rewards values, not results
Values-performance grid: A four-box grid with values fit up the side and performance across. Each person lands in one box, and each box has its move. Filled in every quarter, or perhaps monthly when things move fast. Owned by SOP 259 — Sort the team by values and performance, and act on each box
Vanishing discount: A loyalty discount given with a price raise that expires 3 to 6 months out, ideally shown as a credit on the invoice, because people accept a disappearing discount better than a higher price. It can fall away in steps. Owned by SOP 83 — Write the price-raise letter with a vanishing discount
Vectors of value: Another name for risk, speed and ease; see that entry. Go to “Risk, speed and ease” → Owned by SOP 205 — Run the home-services playbook stack
Vendor agreement: A basic document both sides accept before work starts: who does what, where, by when, the cost, how long, who judges the work, and what happens if it falls short. Owned by SOP 146 — Make the first money — monetize
Verbal hooks: Words that grab attention: labels, questions, conditionals, commands, statements, lists or steps, stories, and exclamations or provocative claims. Owned by SOP 121 — Write a hook
Video before every conversation: Whoever you are about to speak with, by phone, video or in person, first watches a video sales letter, with a fresh one before each later conversation. It could probably cut three conversations to two, or even one. Owned by SOP 247 — Put a video sales letter before every conversation
Video sales letter: A short recorded pitch, usually under about 10 minutes (five to seven is typical), placed before every sales call and loaded with what the sales team keeps repeating, with visuals, stories and proof, so the call can start near the end of the sale. Owned by SOP 207 — Build a video sales letter; also defined on SOP 247
Virtuous cycle: Another name for a compounding vehicle; see that entry. Go to “Compounding vehicle” → Owned by SOP 199 — Build a compounding vehicle
Virtuous cycle of price: A higher price brings more gross profit, which buys better talent, which lifts reputation and demand, which allows a higher price again. Each raise also draws better customers. Owned by SOP 233 — Become the most expensive and stop selling a commodity
Vision: A statement big enough that everyone on the team can fit their own hopes inside it. In the view here, it keeps good people, draws new ones, and is the pitch to anyone thinking of joining. Owned by SOP 262 — Write a vision so big your team's own visions fit inside
Volume and luck: Enough attempts take luck out of it, and sheer quantity becomes a kind of quality. Make so many sales that failing to become world class would be unreasonable. Owned by SOP 195 — Put the marketing principles ahead of the tactics; also defined on SOP 88, SOP 108
VSL: Video sales letter; see that entry. Go to “Video sales letter” → Owned by SOP 207 — Build a video sales letter

W

Waiting list (agency): Demand for an agency running ahead of what it can deliver. When demand beats supply the agency is probably good; in one person's experience, one that advertises itself heavily usually isn't very good. Owned by SOP 46 — Vet an agency with ten questions
Waitlist (after selling out): After you sell out, the list of people who tried to buy, kept with their permission to tell them, and charge them, if a place opens. Owned by SOP 81 — Run a fast-cash campaign
Waived-fee offer: Month-to-month customers pay a starter fee, usually three to five times the monthly rate, which is waived if they commit to a longer term and charged only if they break it early. Owned by SOP 76 — Design cancellation terms and the waived-fee offer
Warm / cold audience: Warm people have given you permission to contact them, so they know you, though you may not know them. Cold people haven't; they are other people's or a platform's audiences, which you rent. Owned by SOP 12 — Run the four-channel grid
Warm outreach: Contacting people who already know you, one at a time, from every contact in your life. The easiest of the four channels, and the recommended place to start, before cold outreach. Owned by SOP 12 — Run the four-channel grid
Warm outreach list: A sheet of named rows gathered from your phone, every email account and every social account, totaled to give your starting lead count. A standing asset you keep adding to. Owned by SOP 17 — Build the warm outreach list
Warning-signs ad: An ad framework: lay out the buyer's specific circumstances, each tied to a number, as the reason they lack the result, building pressure until a call to action releases it. Owned by SOP 115 — Run the looking-for, new-versus-old, warning-signs, north-star and selfie ad frameworks
Webinar: A five-day event compressed into about 90 minutes: origin story, the big obstacle, value, then the pitch with a stack. Most convert about 10 percent of live attendees. Owned by SOP 65 — Convert a free consumption asset
Weighted pain list: A list, drafted with an AI tool, of the main pain-based reasons people buy, each weighted by its percentage chance of being the main reason. Each pain then gets that share of the pitch's time. Owned by SOP 246 — Write a why-people-buy document from the calls that closed
Whale: A customer who can be charged many times what others pay; the aim is many of them, such as 30 whales instead of 3,000 minnows. Discounts keep them away. Owned by SOP 229 — Sell to richer customers and rewrite what you measure; also defined on SOP 230
What are you giving up for it?: One practice's quarterly question, put to anyone bringing a new plan before goal-setting, to make room for the new and test whether the trade is worth it. Owned by SOP 274 — Prune what returns least and move it to what returns most
What to sell next: The three things to offer a buyer next: more of the same, an upgraded version, or something new that pairs with it. Owned by SOP 66 — Run the classic upsell and choose the moment
What would it take?: A question asked after a no, to learn what would turn it into a yes and find the biggest points of friction, whether or not you would actually do it. Put to a would-be affiliate partner before the offer is settled, it asks what would make yours the easiest yes for them. Owned by SOP 146 — Make the first money — monetize; also defined on SOP 48
Where do you put your $100?: A picture of all your money and time spread across buckets that return different amounts, from 10 to 1 down to less than 1 to 1. Everything below your highest-return bucket dilutes it; in this view, how good an owner you are is how near you sit to that bucket. Owned by SOP 274 — Prune what returns least and move it to what returns most
White-labeling: Giving a partner an existing lead magnet of yours, stripped of your brand so theirs can go on. They get a ready asset; you get leads from an audience that isn't yours. Owned by SOP 51 — White-label a lead magnet for a partner
White-labeling in reverse: Packaging what your first affiliates did to market and sell your product into a starter kit for the next group. Only possible once ten to twenty early affiliates have results. Owned by SOP 51 — White-label a lead magnet for a partner
Whitelisting (influencers): Running ads from an influencer's own account while they sell your product; useful for bigger businesses, especially with physical products. Owned by SOP 210 — Set ad volume and harvest the ads you already have
Why People Buy document: A document named for what you sell (why people buy our HVAC services, for example) holding the pains and phrases buyers use, applied across ads, video sales letters and the whole sales process. Owned by SOP 246 — Write a why-people-buy document from the calls that closed
Width then depth: Post regularly on one platform, then move to the nearest similar one, until you are present everywhere relevant, then get the most out of all of them. Might suit someone already experienced. Owned by SOP 25 — Sequence platforms and widen a niche
Willingness-to-pay pricing: Another name for value-based pricing; see that entry. Go to “Value-based pricing” → Owned by SOP 203 — Fix over-expansion, pay, underpricing and a single product
Win-your-money-back offer: An entry offer where the customer pays a deposit against a set goal and earns it back as cash or store credit by reaching the goal, following instructions, or both. It turns onboarding into a paid event and changes what you can charge for the back end. Owned by SOP 60 — Design a win-your-money-back offer
Winner (ad): An ad that beats the rest, such as your top 20, 10 or 5 percent. Making more ads gives you more winners to pick from. Owned by SOP 113 — Remix and remake a proven ad
Wins, Fun, Discovered, Meetups: Four kinds of post to include in an online group: wins (where testimonials come from), fun (anything light), discovered (findings backed by data) and meetups (connecting online or off). The names can be anything. Owned by SOP 142 — Correct or remove bad customers
Workforce projection: A plan made 12 to 18 months ahead, in one practice, predicting who will leave, who will be promoted and what will be needed, the way you project finances. Owned by SOP 179 — Plan the workforce and map responsibility
Working to the goal: Committing to a number of outcomes, not actions, and keeping going until you reach it however long it takes. It sets the bar above your current best. Owned by SOP 52 — Set daily advertising volume and keep going until the goal is hit
Wrong thing, wrong time, wrong way: The three ways an upsell fails; see Right product, right time, right way. Owned by SOP 162 — Build an ascension path with five points to ask

Y

Yellows are golds: SOP 98's name for its rule of closing unqualified prospects anyway; see Yellows are the new gold, though whether the two mean the same band is not established. Owned by SOP 98 — Qualify with the four-letter test
Yellows are the new gold: Treating less-qualified leads, the middle color when leads are scored red, yellow or green, as worth working: they still close for a rep with the right outlook. SOP 98's rule of a similar name closes unqualified prospects because people lie, the time is already booked and practice makes you better faster; whether its yellows are the same band is not established. Owned by SOP 84 — Score and route inbound leads; also defined on SOP 98
Yield account: An account that pays a return on idle cash; at $10 million, 5% would be 500 grand a year. Rates change over time. Owned by SOP 171 — Cleanse expenses, re-shop vendors and move cash into yield accounts

Z

Zero-to-one person: Someone good at making something from nothing, suited to starting a new channel, unlike a five-to-ten person, who prefers improving what exists. Owned by SOP 165 — Pick a second acquisition channel
Zoom-out close: When a prospect gets stuck on one detail, step back to the whole picture: what they want is what you sell, so have the details held them back, and does this beat going it alone? Owned by SOP 101 — Run the general closes