Sales kit
Everything you say and send, written out for this product. You know how to sell; this is the SaaS-shaped version. Use it verbatim until you have done it ten times, then make it yours.
Two numbers to open with
Only one in four organisations reaches 75% or more of its people with internal communication, and 63% of frontline workers say leadership messages do not reach themS35. The hard number: 57% of London's construction workforce was born outside the UK (Census 2021, custom ONS cut), and 15.7% nationally including the self-employed, rising (ONS, Feb 2025). Colour, with its caveat: managers in a 12-manager practice-journal pilot study put non-English-speaking operatives at 34% of a typical site, up to 75%S15. Use one number in the first minute, not both.
The qualification gate (before you spend a demo on anyone)
A demo costs you half a day with preparation. Do not give one until the discovery call has answered these five. Three or fewer yeses: send the one-pager, set a date to try again, and move on.
| Question | Yes looks like | No looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Is the workforce deskless, phone-only and multilingual? | "Most of them are on site, no work email, three or four languages on a typical site." | "Everyone has a laptop"; one language. |
| Is there a record they are required to produce and cannot? | A toolbox-talk, recall, allergen or induction record somebody has asked for in the last year. | "We've never been asked." |
| Does the person you are talking to own that problem? | HSEQ, operations or site leadership with a budget line or a route to one. | IT, marketing, or "I was just curious." |
| Is there a date that makes it urgent? | A site start, mobilisation, audit, inspection, incident or contract retender in the next 90 days. | "Sometime next year." |
| Can they get £2,500 approved and a supplier onboarded in 60 days? | They know who signs and what the supplier process is. | "I'd have to find out" and no willingness to. |
The 20-minute discovery call
Goal: find out whether they have the problem, who owns it, and what "proof" would look like to them. You are not demoing yet.
Open (2 min)
"Thanks for the time. I build a tool that gets notices to site teams in their own language and proves who read them. Before I show you anything I'd like to understand how that works for you today. Is that OK?"
Today (8 min)
"When something changes on site, a new rule, a hazard, a recall, how does it reach everyone?" · "How many languages are on a typical site?" · "How do you evidence a toolbox talk today?" · "When did that evidence last get asked for, and by whom?" · "What happens on WhatsApp when someone leaves?"
Cost of the gap (5 min)
"In an HSE prosecution, once the duty and the risk are established, section 40 puts the burden on you to prove you did what was reasonably practicable. What would your evidence be?" (Section 40 of the 1974 Act reverses the burden only on the reasonably-practicable limb; a per-person, timestamped, language-stamped confirmation is evidence for that, not a defence on its ownS24.) Then: "If a notice didn't reach someone and there was an incident, what would that cost you?" Let them put a number or a story on it. Write it down; it goes in the proposal.
Decision, and what happens after yes (3 min)
"If this worked on one site for 60 days, who would need to say yes to rolling it out, and what would they need to see?" · "What's the supplier onboarding process like, and who runs it?" · "If we agreed a pilot today, what would have to happen inside your company before it could start?" Write the answers into the mutual action plan (Chapter 13 collateral: mutual-action-plan.pdf): every step from signature to launch, with a name and a date on each, co-signed on the call that follows the demo. The buyer who will not put dates on a page is telling you something.
Close (2 min)
"I'd like to show you a notice landing on a phone in the three languages you mentioned, with the confirmation record. 30 minutes, with [the site manager] in the room if possible. Tuesday or Thursday?"
The 30-minute demo
Set up before the call: a tenant in their brand colours, two test workers with Polish and Romanian as languages, one scheduled must-read, one hazard report with a photo. Have a real phone in your hand.
- Join card (3 min). Show the QR. Scan it on your phone. Enter a number, get the code, you're in. "That's the onboarding. One break, the whole site."
- Publish a must-read (5 min). Type a real notice from their world. Publish. Show it arrive on the phone in Polish. Play the video with captions if they mentioned video.
- Confirm and chase (7 min). Tap confirm on the phone. Show the reach page: who has, who hasn't, the chase list. Print the record. "This is the toolbox-talk sign-off, without the clipboard."
- Report from site (5 min). Photo, sentence, location, send. Show it arrive translated.
- Leaver (2 min). Set a leaving date on a user; show them locked out.
- Their questions (8 min). Stop demoing. Ask "what would you post first?"
Objections, and what to say
| They say | You say |
|---|---|
| "WhatsApp is free." | "Keep WhatsApp for the banter. Move anything you'd have to defend onto a system that produces a record. The bill for the free option arrives when someone asks for the record, a leaver is still in the group, or the notice went out in English to a crew that reads Romanian." |
| "Our people won't install another app." | "There's nothing to install from an app store. They scan a card and put in their number. The ones who won't do that weren't reading the WhatsApp group either, and now you'll know who they are." |
| "We've got Teams." | "For people with a laptop and a work email. How many of the subcontractors on site have either?" |
| "What about GDPR?" | "We hold a name, a phone number and a language, plus the notices and the confirmations. Hosted on AWS London. A data processing agreement, a security summary and a worker privacy notice your HR team can adapt are all in the pack. Leavers are removed on their leaving date, which is more than the WhatsApp group does." |
| "Is the translation any good?" | "Good enough that the crew read it; not something to rely on for a contract clause. Keep the sentence short and it is excellent. Let me show you one now." |
| "We'd need group approval." | "For the company, yes. For one site for 60 days, who holds the budget? And I'll send the supplier pack to procurement today, so the two move together rather than one after the other." |
| "Send me some information." | "Happy to. What would you want it to answer, so I send the right two pages rather than a brochure?" (Then send the one-pager and book the next call before you hang up.) |
| "We're too busy right now." | "Understood. When is the next site start or mobilisation? I'd rather be live for that than mid-project. Shall I put a date in for the week before?" |
| "You're one person. What if you disappear?" | "Fair question, and it is the one I would ask. Three answers. Your data is yours: you can export every record and every worker at any time, and the contract says so. The pilot is refundable, so the risk in the first 60 days is mine. And the code runs on standard infrastructure; the escrow-style arrangement in the pilot agreement means it does not die with me. I will not pretend I am a 200-person company. I will be on your site personally, which the 200-person company will not." |
| "Will you still be here in a year?" | "I am building this to be here in ten. The honest answer is that early customers are how it gets there, which is why the pilot is priced the way it is and why you get me, not an account manager. Put a termination-for-convenience clause in; it is already in the order form." |
| "We've got HammerTech / Procore / SafetyCulture." | "Keep it. That is your permit, induction and RAMS system and I am not replacing it. It does not translate a notice into Romanian, and it does not caption a video. Run us alongside it for the daily communication and keep the compliance system for what it does well." |
| "Our principal contractor mandates their system." | "On their site, use theirs for what they mandate. Your own people still need your notices in their language, on every site, including the ones where you are the principal. Which of your sites is that?" |
| "Subbies aren't our employees." | "No, but on your site they are people you have a duty to under section 3 of the Act, and CDM makes the principal contractor responsible for site induction and information. Enrol them by phone number for the duration of the job; their leaving date is the day they leave site." |
| "They won't use their own phones." | "Some won't, and that is fine: nothing about this requires them to. The join card takes 30 seconds; there is no app, no email, no password. In practice the ones who refuse are rarer than the ones who never read the noticeboard. And you will know exactly who has not confirmed, which today you don't." |
| "We tried an app before and nobody used it." | "What did they have to do to get in? Usually the answer is an app store, an email address and a password, and that is where it died. Here it is a phone number. Try it on one site and count." |
| "Isn't this monitoring? The union will ask." | "It records that a person confirmed a safety notice, which is the record you already keep on paper. No location, no reading of messages, no productivity score. There is a worker privacy notice in nine languages and a pre-filled impact assessment in the pack for exactly that conversation; I would rather you had it before the union asks than after." |
| "Can't we just use Google Translate?" | "You can, and someone in the office does, one message at a time, then pastes it into a WhatsApp group with no record. This does that for every message automatically and keeps the record. The translation engine is not the product; the record is." |
| "What about people without a smartphone?" | "Nearly everyone on a UK site has one, but not everyone. For the rest the site manager prints the notice from the same system, so there is still one record and one place to see who is missing." |
Outreach that gets replies
Rules: one idea per message, a specific observation about them, one ask, no pitch. Plain text. No attachments on the first touch. Six to eight touches over four weeks across email, a call and LinkedIn, then park for a quarter.
Planning assumptions, not benchmarks. Published outbound statistics come from vendors selling outbound tools and are not measured on UK construction or catering buyers, so this guide does not quote them as facts. The numbers below are deliberately conservative planning figures; write your own over them after 100 accounts.
| Assumption | So |
|---|---|
| A well-written first email to the right person gets a reply 3–5% of the time; a full six-touch sequence across email, phone and LinkedIn gets a reply from 15–20% of accounts | Write to the Ops or HSEQ director, briefly, and run the whole sequence. One email is not outreach. |
| About one reply in three becomes a discovery call; about half of discovery calls pass the qualification gate | 100 accounts worked properly → 15–20 replies → 5–7 discovery calls → 3 demos. Plan on that, not on hope; the warm leads are worth more than the first fifty cold accounts. |
| A phone call on day 3 after the first email is the touch most likely to get an answer, because almost nobody in this market rings | Ring them. Screen the number against the CTPS first (below). |
| Two contacts at the same account (HSEQ and the divisional director) in the same week roughly doubles the chance one of them answers | Always two names per account. Never one. |
| An introduction from a customer converts several times better than a cold touch | Ask every pilot customer for two introductions at signature, and again at the day-60 review. |
Never type a customer name into these templates that has not signed. If you have no reference yet, say so; "you would be early" is a stronger line than a vague "used by".
Legal, email. Email only companies (Ltd, PLC, LLP); sole traders and ordinary partnerships need consent. Put your company name, number, registered office and an opt-out line in every email, and a link to your privacy notice (UK GDPR Article 14; the notice is in the legal pack). PECR breaches of the marketing rules now carry the UK GDPR maximum, up to £17.5m or 4% of worldwide turnoverS32. Honour every opt-out the same day.
Legal, phone. Before you ring any number, screen it against the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS) as well as the TPS; calling a registered number is a PECR breach regardless of who answers. Screen the list monthly (the TPS licence is a modest annual fee for a small list). Ask on the call whether they mind you ringing again, note refusals, and never ring back a no.
Warm intro request (to your contact)
Cold, housebuilder (to Head of HSEQ / regional construction director)
Cold, contract caterer (to Operations Director / Head of Food Safety)
Never send any of these without the full signature block from the email kit (collateral: email-signature-and-onepager-copy.md): name, TeamTalk Ltd, company number, registered office, the privacy-notice link and the opt-out line. The templates above show the body only; the block goes under every one, including follow-ups.
The eight-touch sequence, in date order
| Day | Channel | What |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The cold email above, to the HSEQ lead. | |
| 1 | The same day, a different one-line version to the divisional or operations director: "I've written to [HSEQ name] about briefing records in every language on site; if that sits with you instead, 25 minutes?" | |
| 3 | Phone | Ring the HSEQ lead (CTPS-screened): "It's [name], I emailed on Monday about briefing records in every language on site. Have you got two minutes, or is there a better time?" |
| 4 | "Bumping this in case it got buried. One question: how do you evidence briefings today?" | |
| 7 | Connection request with no note, or a comment on something they posted. Not a pitch. | |
| 10 | "Sharing a 90-second video of a notice landing in Polish and being confirmed: [link]. Useful to see?" | |
| 14 | Phone | Second call, to whichever of the two contacts has not answered. Leave a 15-second voicemail with your number. |
| 21 | "Last one from me. If the timing is wrong, when should I try again? I'll leave you alone until then." |
At the end: park the account for a quarter with a re-entry trigger written on the card (a site start, a mobilisation, a job advert for an HSEQ role, an HSE notice, a new principal-contractor contract). The trigger feed in the sector playbooks tells you where to watch. Any reply at any point stops the sequence; a "no" is honoured for a year.
References: the ladder, and the six months before you have one
Until someone signs, the line is "you would be early", said plainly; it is stronger than a vague "used by". From the first pilot, references are a programme, not a favour, and every rung has consent in writing before it is used:
- Private verbal (day 30 of the first pilot): "May I tell one other builder, off the record, that you are running this?"
- Named quote (day 30–60): the reference-request template in Chapter 12, with the exact words sent first. Use each quote on the one-pager and in the deck, no more than that.
- Logo (at the annual order): a plc needs corporate communications to sign off name and logo use; ask at day 30 so it is ready by day 90.
- Case study (day 90): the template in the customer kit, two pages, with their numbers.
- Reference call: no customer takes more than one a quarter; you tell them who is calling and why, and you thank them with something specific afterwards.
Reciprocity is the price: early customers get you on site, first call on new features, and a fixed price at their first renewal. Say so at signature.
The one-pager (send after every first call)
One A4 PDF. Title: Every notice, every language, with a record. Three screenshots (join card, translated post, reach report). Five bullets from Chapter 1. Pricing from Chapter 3 (the Site price and the pilot). Your phone number. That is all.
Proposal (send after the demo, same day)
- What you told me (three lines, their words, from discovery).
- What we'll do (pilot scope: sites, users, languages, start date, success metric).
- What it costs (the £2,500 pilot and the year-one price it credits against, on the same page).
- What happens next (supplier onboarding, DPA, go-live date, review at day 60), as a mutual action plan with names and dates.
- "Accepted subject to the TeamTalk Pilot Agreement, attached." The signature is on the pilot agreement, which is the single contract; the proposal has none.
Two pages, PDF, plus the pilot agreement (Chapter 12 and the legal pack). Ask for the signature on the call, not by email.
After the sale: champion, renewal, churn
Your champion needs a page they can forward. The person who said yes has to explain it to five people who did not see the demo. Give them for-your-colleagues.pdf (collateral): the problem in their words, what the pilot does, what it costs, what happens if it fails, who to ask. Send it the day the pilot is signed, and ask who they will send it to.
Renewal starts at day 30, not day 300. The renewal is decided by the reach page, not the account manager: a tenant whose admins post twice a week and whose confirmed reach sits above 80% renews itself. So the renewal play is: day-30 review with the numbers; a written summary after every review that the champion can forward; a named admin per site who has been trained personally; the case study started at day 30 (collateral: case-study template); renewal notice at day 300 with the year's numbers on it; a price conversation at renewal, never mid-term.
Churn signals and what to do. No posts for two weeks: ring the admin, not the champion. Reach falling below 60% two months running: go to site with join cards; something changed on the ground (new subcontractor, new supervisor). Admin left the company: you have lost the tenant unless you find the replacement within a fortnight; ask the champion the same day. Every lost customer gets a 15-minute call to learn why, and the reason goes in the Friday review.