Sales conversation playbook

For whoever is in front of the customer at 4Rooks. The job in the first call is not to pitch ROSA. It is to validate whether the buyer has the problem ROSA solves.

Goal of each conversation stage

First call — discovery questions

The shape of a useful first call:

1. Trigger — "What made you take this call now?" (looking for: upcoming hardware change, standards integration, SKU expansion, CRA exposure, attrition)
2. Current footprint — How many product variants? How many hardware platforms? How many embedded engineers? What % of their time is on platform vs product?
3. Pain calibration — "If your next hardware target landed this quarter, how much of your app logic would survive?" (this is the diagnostic question)
4. Stack — Zephyr / Linux / Yocto / RTOS mix? Existing OTA, fleet, security tools?
5. Trigger urgency — Is there a date attached? (board meeting, certification window, launch, CRA milestone)
6. Prior attempts — Have they tried to standardise before? What broke?
7. Buying mechanics — Who would sponsor this? What's the budget pathway? Who is procurement?

What to avoid in the first call

• Demos of code or features. They sell architecture and reuse, not screens.
• Quoting price unprompted. Price is the third conversation, not the first.
• Promising customer references that don't exist publicly. Be honest about being early.
• "We can do anything" — narrow is more credible.

What "good" sounds like at end of first call

• Buyer can articulate why their firmware reuse problem is expensive
• Buyer agrees there is a specific upcoming event that triggers the conversation
• Buyer is willing to commit a technical lead to a follow-up
• Buyer has at least named a likely sponsor (CFO or CEO)

If those four are present → propose the architecture & migration assessment (10 days, fixed fee, creditable).

Pricing posture

• The free first call has no price. Don't anchor.
• Architecture assessment: anchor in the conversation as a specific number (suggested €15-25k, fully or partially creditable to pilot — confirm with Markus)
• Pilot: €200-400k fixed-scope, milestone-linked. Don't quote without scope.
• Avoid time-and-materials for the pilot — CFOs read T&M as uncontrolled risk.

Internal handover

Once a pilot is signed, write a deal note in /05_lighthouse_customers/account_files/[company]/deal_note.md capturing:

• Why they bought (in their words)
• Who internally sponsored
• What success looks like to them
• Risks to delivery
• What we promised that isn't in the SOW

This becomes the pilot delivery brief for 4Rooks engineering.