Prepare to learn, not to predict a sale
Use this fictional pre-call brief to practise separating source statements, guesses and useful questions. It is not research about a real company. For real work, use permitted public material and information shared for this purpose; leave personal profiles, private messages and confidential records out. Write the brief yourself or use one approved assistant. This worksheet does not search companies or contact anyone. A short question from a prospect is a reason to ask more, not a purchase order wearing a disguise.
Read the source packet before forming a view
Fictional source packet, training version 1. These excerpts and the inquiry are authored examples, not real public pages or customer quotes.
[A] About-page excerpt: “We are a five-person operations team helping project teams organise handoffs.” Publication date and current headcount have not been verified.
[B] Service-page excerpt: “Our handoff review uses a checklist of open actions and missing information.” No software, adoption level or measured result is named.
[C] Inquiry supplied for this exercise: “How can we make our handoff summaries more consistent?” It does not describe the current workflow or identify a specific error.
[D] Unknown: current tools, budget, purchasing role, decision process, urgency and whether a change is planned. There are no source URLs or real contact details in this packet.
Goal: prepare questions for a discovery conversation. Do not turn a source’s self-description into independently verified evidence, or an inquiry into proof of buying intent.
Ask for evidence, hypotheses and questions separately
Use only the supplied notes and preserve their source labels. Produce a short pre-call brief with three sections: source statements with labels and limits; hypotheses clearly marked for testing; and open questions for the conversation. For the fictional A–D example, keep its team size unverified. For other notes, use only their actual facts and unknowns; do not import that example’s team or workflow. Do not infer tools, budget, authority, urgency, demand or intent. Keep provided company names, URLs, quotes and dates as source information to check; do not invent any or claim a research visit. Write neutral questions about the workflow described in these notes, missing evidence and who could clarify it. Add a small source-check list for real use without claiming those checks have been performed. Source:
Compare with a complete pre-call brief
Pre-call brief — fictional practice, not verified account research.
Source statements
• A describes a five-person operations team working on project handoffs. Current size and page date are unverified; do not say “we confirmed five employees”.
• B describes a checklist for open actions and missing information. It does not establish which tool is used or whether the checklist works well.
• C asks about consistency in handoff summaries. It does not establish the cause, severity or willingness to buy.
• D leaves tools, budget, decision roles, urgency and change plans unknown.
Hypotheses to test
H1: “Consistent” might mean the same fields appear in every summary. This is a question suggested by B–C, not a finding.
H2: Missing owners or dates might be one difficulty. B mentions missing information, but no example confirms these particular fields.
Alternative: the person may mean writing style, review timing or something else. Ask before proposing a solution.
Questions for the conversation
1. “Walk me through the last handoff you prepared. What happened from notes to shared summary?”
2. “When you say ‘more consistent’, what would you want to see stay the same? Can you describe a non-confidential example?”
3. “Which parts of the current method work well, and where does someone need to clarify or correct the summary?”
4. “What tools or constraints do we need to understand before discussing a different approach?”
5. “If you decided to change this process, who would need to review it, and what would they need to see?”
These questions do not assume that a change or purchase is planned.
Check before using real material
Open the actual source, record its URL/title, publication date if available and the date you checked it. Keep the exact passage beside each claim. A missing publication date stays unknown. Distinguish public self-description from directly confirmed details. If sources conflict, retain both statements and ask which is current rather than choosing the larger or newer-looking number.
Wrong: “This five-person team urgently needs our tool and the caller controls the budget.”
Repair: “The fictional source says five people; current size is unverified. The inquiry asks about consistency. Need, urgency, budget and decision roles remain unknown [A, C–D].”
After the conversation, record new statements separately from your interpretation. Use quotation marks only for exact words you actually recorded with permission. A summary in your own words is a paraphrase, not a quote.
Check what each claim actually rests on
Can every source statement point to A, B, C or D? Are H1 and H2 still hypotheses, with an alternative explanation? Have team size, source date and buying role stayed within their evidence limits? Do the questions invite a description rather than ask the person to agree with your proposed solution?
Replace “You must be wasting time fixing summaries” with “Where, if anywhere, do you need to correct a summary?” Remove invented quotes, tools, budgets and purchase predictions. For real research, mark a source unread or unverified if you have not checked it; a copied link alone is not a source review. Revise the brief before ticking the checks below. The checks confirm your review choices, not the truth of an unverified account profile.
Turn confirmed findings into an internal update
Copy the reviewed brief before leaving; edited worksheet text is not saved. Use the open questions in an authorised conversation, then record what was actually said, what remains unknown and which next action was explicitly agreed. No call or message is sent by AhaDo. If your own team needs an update afterwards, use the stakeholder-update Task below with confirmed findings and open questions. That task is for an internal team update, not an automatic prospect follow-up. Keep any unagreed proposal separate from a commitment. Completion here means a preparation brief is ready, not that research, a call or a sale has happened.
