Brainforge Knowledge

Bo Steven Discovery Kickoff Dec 2 2025 Uttam notes

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Meeting Agenda: ABC Home - Discovery Kickoff

Date: Monday, December 2, 2025
Duration: 4 hours (9:00 AM - 1:00 PM)
Attendees: Bo, Steven, Uttam Kumaran (Brainforge)

Meeting Overview

This kickoff session launches the 4-week ABC Growth Discovery engagement. Our goal is to map your current state across Awareness, Conversion, and Retention/Resurrection, identify the top 2-3 highest-ROI growth opportunities, and prepare for Les’s knowledge transfer before March 2026.

Meeting Flow (4 hours)

Block 1: Vision & Strategic Context (60 min)

  • Company vision and growth objectives
  • Current challenges and competitive landscape
  • Success metrics for this engagement

Break (10 min)

Block 2: Business Operations & Lifecycle Deep Dive (90 min)

  • Customer journey walkthrough (Awareness → Conversion → Retention)
  • Marketing channels and attribution
  • Sales/booking process and systems

Lunch Break (20 min)

Block 3: Data Sources, Systems & Owners (60 min)

  • Complete data source inventory
  • System architecture and integrations
  • Data ownership RACI mapping

Block 4: Next Steps & Meeting Planning (20 min)

  • Shadow meeting schedule
  • Access and credentials roadmap
  • Week 1 priorities

Block 1: Vision & Strategic Context (60 min)

Meeting Objectives

  1. Understand ABC’s 3-5 year vision and growth aspirations
  2. Clarify competitive positioning and market dynamics
  3. Define success metrics for this discovery engagement
  4. Understand organizational structure and decision-making

Questions

Company Vision & Strategy

  1. What’s your vision for ABC in the next 3-5 years?

    • Revenue targets?
    • Market expansion plans?
    • Service line evolution?

  2. What does success look like for this discovery project?

    • Specific growth targets? (revenue, customer acquisition, retention)
    • Operational efficiency goals?
    • Strategic questions you need answered?

  3. Walk me through ABC’s current position:

    • Total annual revenue? (I saw mention of ~2-3% growth plateau)
    • Number of active customers?
    • Geographic footprint?
    • Service mix breakdown (17 services - which are biggest?)

  4. What’s your competitive landscape?

    • Who are your main competitors?
    • What are PE-backed competitors doing differently?
    • Where do you have competitive advantages?
    • Where are you losing market share?

Current Business Challenges

  1. What’s keeping you up at night?

    • Growth plateau concerns?
    • Customer acquisition costs?
    • Competitive pressure?
    • Operational bottlenecks?

  2. Where do you feel “blind” in your business today?

    • Marketing ROI?
    • Customer behavior?
    • Channel performance?
    • Conversion funnel?

  3. What questions can’t you answer today that you wish you could?

    • Attribution questions?
    • Customer lifetime value?
    • Win-back potential?
    • Service cross-sell opportunities?

    • Where are the new customers coming from

Organizational Context

  1. Walk me through your organizational structure:

    • Who owns Marketing? (Les - and transition plan?)
    • Who owns Sales/CSR operations? (Yvette, Janiece?)
    • Who owns Data/Analytics?
    • Who owns IT/Systems?
    • Finance/Operations leadership?

  2. How are growth decisions typically made?

    • Who’s involved?
    • What data drives decisions today?
    • Budget approval process?
      • Yearly budgeting
    • Forecast
      • CSR is forecasting
      • 10% growth
    • Rule of 21
      • Revenue + Profit = 21

  3. Les’s retirement timeline - what’s the succession plan?

    • When exactly is Les leaving? (March 2026?)
    • Who’s taking over marketing leadership?
    • What institutional knowledge are you most worried about losing?
    • How much of Les’s time can we get for knowledge transfer?

Block 2: Business Operations & Customer Lifecycle (90 min)

Meeting Objectives

  1. Map the complete customer journey from awareness to retention
  2. Understand marketing channel mix and performance
  3. Document sales/booking process and conversion funnel
  4. Identify pain points and friction across the lifecycle

Demos/Walkthroughs Requested

  • Marketing channel overview

    - Current marketing mix (digital, traditional, referral)  
- Budget allocation by channel  
  - 4% of revenue to marketing overall  
- How performance is currently tracked

  • Website/booking flow walkthrough

    - Show me how a customer books a service today  
- Mobile vs. desktop experience  
- Service selection and pricing display  
- Checkout/scheduling process

  • Call center operation overview

    - How incoming calls are routed (80K+/month)  
  - Call volume is the best signal for sales  
- CSR scripts and processes  
- How leads are captured and tracked  
- Integration with Andi (our existing AI chat platform)

  • Current reporting dashboards

    - What reports do you look at daily/weekly/monthly?  
- Where do these reports come from?  
- What do you trust vs. not trust?

Churn Segmentation

  • In state vs out of state moves

Service Lines

  • 17 service lines (list of most recent below)
    • Trash bin cleaning
    • Water quality 5 or 6 years ago)
    • Appliance Repair
  • Currently paused on moving into anything new. Trash cleaning and garage door

Commercial vs Residential

  • 80% residential vs 20% commercial
  • Want commercial to start bundling
  • Commercial - Pest/Lawn
    • Time to close can be longer
    • Pricing is based on Time in Motion
    • Commercial pest is it’s own thing
    • Commercial lawn is getting to that size
    • Types
      • Multifamily
      • Hospital
      • Hotel
      • Kitchen
  • Contracts
    • 5-30k/yr
    • 1-6 month sales process
  • There’s no marketing budget around commercial

Pricing

  • Typically higher priced across services
  • A/C there’s potential pricing pushback
  • Mechanical
  • Handyman

Subscriptions vs One Time

Branches

  • Austin - 110M
  • San Antonio (2017 when steven took over) - 30M
    • Pest and lawn to start. Growing since there
    • ABC started there
  • College Station - 10
  • Corpus - 10
  • Smaller - 10
    • Belle Country
    • Rio Grande Valley
    • Waco
    • Marble Falls
    • Georgetown
    • Bastrop
  • New Branches
    • Potential new satellite offices

Penetration

  • Austin (40/person)
  • College Station
    • Low on all services except pest and lawn
  • San Antonio
  • Corpus
    • Pest and Lawn

Questions

  • Nextstar
  • Google PPC
  • OTT

Monkey Boy

  • Owned the website development
  • Click to buy
  • There is an abandoned cart text follow up

Awareness & Lead Generation

  1. Walk me through your current marketing channels:

    • Digital: SEO, paid search (Google, Bing), paid social, display
    • Traditional: TV, radio, direct mail, print
    • Referral: Customer referrals, partner programs
    • Local: Local SEO, local partnerships, community events
    • Budget breakdown by channel?
    • Performance metrics for each?

  2. How do you currently track “How did you hear about us?”

    • Asked on every call?
    • Reliability of responses?
    • How is this data captured and aggregated?
    • Promo codes or tracking numbers used?

  3. SEO & Local Search:

    • How do you rank for key terms? (e.g., “pest control [city]”, “HVAC repair [city]”)
    • Google Business Profile strategy?
    • Do you track local rankings by service area?
    • Competitor analysis process?

  4. Paid Advertising:

    • Who manages paid channels? (Agency or in-house?)
    • Budget and ROAS targets by channel?
    • Landing page strategy?
    • Call tracking numbers used?

  5. Content & Organic:

    • Content marketing strategy?
    • Blog, video, social media approach?
    • How much traffic is organic vs. paid?

  6. What’s your biggest challenge with lead generation?

    • Cost per lead too high?
    • Lead quality issues?
    • Can’t scale certain channels?
    • Attribution confusion?

Conversion & Booking

  1. Walk me through the customer journey from initial interest to booked job:

    • Phone calls: What percentage of leads call? Call-to-booking rate?

    • Website: What percentage book online? Web-to-booking rate?
      • Click to buy
    • Other: Text, chat (Andi), email?

  2. Phone/Call Center Process:

    • How many CSRs?
    • Average call handling time?
    • Call scripts standardized?
    • How are appointments scheduled? (What system?)
    • What causes calls to NOT convert?

  3. Website Conversion:

    • Where do people drop off in the booking flow?
    • Service selection complexity? (17 services - confusing?)
    • Pricing transparency on site?
    • Mobile vs. desktop booking rates?
    • A/B testing process?

  4. Lead-to-Booking Benchmarks:

    • Current conversion rates by channel?
      • 70% conversion
      • Need to understand if they have capacity to take on new business
      • Holiday lights is low
    • How do these compare to industry benchmarks?
    • Which channels convert best? Worst?

Pricing

  1. What’s your biggest conversion challenge?

    • Long booking process?
    • Price objections?
    • Scheduling friction?
    • CSR training/quality issues?
    • Website UX problems?

Service Delivery & First Impression

  • Better commission on maintenance
  • Functional
    • There is a mosquito + lawn add on
  • Estimate marketing schedule
  • Greenrow -
  • Front - text

Click to buy

  • Once sold
  • Email is sent to office staff

Residential Phone

  • Inspector comes out
  • Bid is put together
    • Can do everything except landscaping
  • Goes over with customer
  • Collects payment
  • Payment i scheduled
  • Sales guy sends to office
  • Office emails the customer on service

  1. After booking, what happens?

    • Confirmation process?
    • Reminder communications?
    • Technician assignment?
    • Show-up rates?

  2. How do you measure first-job quality?

    • Customer satisfaction surveys?
    • Technician quality scores?
    • Callbacks or rework rates?

Retention & Customer Lifecycle

  1. What does the customer lifecycle look like?

    • Average customer tenure?
    • Repeat purchase rates by service?
    • Annual vs. one-time customers?
    • Subscription or membership programs?

  2. Loyalty/Rewards Program:

    • What programs exist today?
    • Enrollment rates?
    • Engagement metrics?
    • Impact on retention?
  • Julie - owns rewards
  • Costco
    • Lennox
    • Austin/College Station/San Antonio
    • Water Softener
    • HVAC
    • Customer journey - go online and buy costco hvac
    • Don’t have to give
  • Lowes/Home depot
  • Leadline - internal - 2500 leads a month
  • Commercial Sales Manager - Sales

  1. Customer Communication Strategy:

    • Email marketing? (campaigns, cadence)
    • SMS/text campaigns?
    • Seasonal reminders?
    • Cross-sell/upsell approach?

  2. Customer Churn:

    • What percentage of customers cancel each year?
    • Why do customers leave? (captured systematically?)
    • Terms of cancellation? (bad experience vs. moved vs. switched competitor)
    • How many cancelled customers left on “good terms”?

Resurrection & Win-Back

  1. Tell me about your cancelled customer database:

    • How many customers have cancelled but left on good terms?
    • Any segmentation? (service type, reason, recency, value)
    • Have you tried win-back campaigns before? Results?

  2. What would a successful win-back campaign look like?

    • Target audience?
    • Offer strategy?
    • Channel mix?
    • Success metrics?

  3. Cross-sell opportunities:

    • How often do customers buy multiple services?
    • Which service combinations are most common?
    • How do you identify cross-sell opportunities?

Block 3: Data Sources, Systems & Ownership (60 min)

Meeting Objectives

  1. Create complete inventory of all data sources
  2. Document system architecture and integrations
  3. Identify data owners and access requirements
  4. Understand current data flows and reporting processes

Questions

Systems Inventory

  1. Walk me through every system that touches customer data:

Website & E-commerce: - Monkeyboy

  • Website platform? (WordPress, custom, etc.)
  • Booking/scheduling system?
  • Payment processing?
  • Forms and lead capture tools?
  • Chat systems? (besides Andi)

Marketing & Advertising: - Les has a graphic designer

  • Google Ads account?
  • Meta/Facebook Ads?
  • SEO tools? (SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc.)
  • Email marketing platform? (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, etc.) - greenrope
  • Marketing automation?
  • Call tracking system? (CallRail, etc.)

Sales & Operations:

  • CRM system?
  • Call center software?
  • Scheduling/dispatch system? - Evolve
  • Field service management? - Evolve
  • Technician mobile app?
  • Sales - Dream

Finance & Accounting:

  • Accounting system? (QuickBooks, etc.) - Sage
  • Billing system? - Evolve
  • Payment processing?

Customer Service:

  • Customer support ticketing?
  • Review management?
  • Survey tools?

Data & Analytics:

  • Google Analytics?
  • Business intelligence tools?
  • Dashboards? (Looker, Tableau, Google Sheets)
  • Data warehouse? (Snowflake, BigQuery, etc.)

AI & Brainforge Tools:

  • Andi chat platform (current state, integrations)
  • Knowledge base systems
  • Other AI tools?
  1. For each system above:
    • Who owns it? (admin access, primary user)
    • Who pays for it? (budget owner)
    • When was it implemented?
    • How critical is it? (1-10)
    • API available? Documentation?
    • Data export capabilities?
    • Integration with other systems?

Data Flows & Reporting

  1. Walk me through your current reporting process:

    • Who creates reports?
    • How often? (daily, weekly, monthly)
    • What tools are used? (Excel, Google Sheets, BI tools)
    • How much manual work is involved?
    • Who consumes these reports?

  2. What reports exist today?

    • Marketing performance reports?
    • Sales/conversion reports?
    • Customer retention reports?
    • Financial reports?
    • Operational reports?
    • Executive dashboards?

  3. Where is data currently stored?

    • Individual systems only?
    • Any centralized database or warehouse?
    • Spreadsheets? Where? Who maintains?
    • Google Drive, SharePoint, etc.?

  4. How is data currently moved between systems?

    • Manual exports/imports?
    • Automated integrations?
    • ETL tools?
    • Zapier/Make workflows?

  5. What are the biggest data quality issues?

    • Missing data?
    • Duplicate records?
    • Inconsistent definitions?
    • Systems out of sync?
    • Manual entry errors?

Call Data & Transcripts (Critical for ABC)

  1. Tell me about your 80K+ monthly calls:

    • How are calls recorded? (system/vendor)
    • Are calls transcribed?
    • How long are recordings retained?
    • Can we access historical transcripts?
    • Call metadata captured? (duration, outcome, disposition)

  2. What call data exists today?

    • Call volume by time/day/source?
    • Call outcomes? (booked, not booked, reasons)
    • Call quality scores?
    • CSR performance metrics?

  3. How do you currently use call data?

    • CSR training?
    • QA process?
    • Attribution analysis?
    • Customer insights?

  4. AI opportunity with call transcripts:

    • Have you analyzed transcripts for attribution improvement?
    • Opportunity detection? (upsells, issues)
    • Sales coaching insights?
    • Would you be open to AI-powered call analysis?

Data Ownership RACI

  1. For each data domain, who is:
    • Responsible (does the work)
    • Accountable (final decision maker)
    • Consulted (provides input)
    • Informed (kept in the loop)

Data Domains:

  • Marketing data and attribution
  • Sales/conversion data
  • Customer data and CRM
    • Started to check bundles a few years back
  • Call center data and recordings
  • Financial data
  • Operational data (scheduling, dispatch, completion)
  • Website and e-commerce data
  • Review and reputation data

Access & Security

  1. What’s the process for granting Brainforge access to systems?

    • IT approval required?
    • Security requirements?
    • SSO/authentication setup?
    • VPN or IP whitelisting?

  2. Any compliance or security requirements we should know?

    • PII handling policies?
    • Data retention requirements?
    • Audit requirements?

  3. Who will be our primary technical contact for:

    • System access and credentials?
    • API documentation?
    • Data questions?
    • Technical troubleshooting?

Block 4: Next Steps & Meeting Planning (20 min)

Meeting Objectives

  1. Schedule shadow meetings with key stakeholders
  2. Create access and credentials roadmap
  3. Align on Week 1 priorities
  4. Confirm communication cadence

Shadow Meetings to Schedule

  1. Who should we meet with for deep dives?

Les -
Nitesh -
Whitney
Julie - IT
David Lopez

Marketing Team:

  • Les (CMO) - PRIORITY for knowledge transfer
    - When: Week 1
    - Duration: 2 hours for first session
    - Topics: Strategy, channel history, institutional knowledge
    - Follow-up sessions: Schedule 2-3 more before March 2026

  • Marketing Coordinator/Manager (if exists) - Julie
    - Tactical execution, campaign details

  • Agency Partners (if applicable)
    - SEO agency, PPC agency, Creative agency
    - Monkeyboy

Sales & Operations:

  • CSR Team Lead (Yvette? Janiece?)
    - Call center operations, scripts, training
    - Andi integration and usage

  • Head of Sales (if separate from CSR) - Bo

    - Conversion strategies, sales process

Data & Analytics:

  • Analytics Lead (if exists)
    - Current reporting, data sources, dashboards

  • IT/Systems Lead
    - Technical architecture, API access, security

Customer Experience:

  • Customer Service Manager
    - Retention programs, loyalty, customer feedback

  • Retention/Win-back Owner (if exists)
    - Cancelled customer strategy

Finance/Operations:

  • CFO or Finance Lead
    - Financial reporting, budget owners, ROI analysis
  1. For each meeting, what’s the ideal timing?
    • Week 1 priorities: Les (#1), CSR Lead, Analytics/IT
    • Week 2: Marketing execution, Customer Experience
    • Week 3: Operations, Finance
    • Week 4: Follow-ups and validation

Access & Credentials Roadmap

  1. What access do we need in Week 1?

Critical Path:

  • Google Analytics (view access)
  • Call recording system (recordings + transcripts)
  • Primary marketing dashboards/reports
  • CRM system (read access)
  • Andi platform (admin if not already)

Week 2:

  • Google Ads, Meta Ads (view access)
  • Website analytics (full historical data)
  • Email marketing platform
  • Booking/scheduling system

Week 3-4:

  • Additional systems as needed based on discoveries
  1. What’s the approval process for each?
    • Who needs to approve?
    • Timeline for access?
    • Any blockers anticipated?

Communication & Working Cadence

  1. How should we communicate during the 4 weeks?

    • Weekly sync meeting: Day/time preference? Who attends?
    • Slack/Email: Response time expectations?
    • Ad-hoc questions: Best channel and person to reach?

  2. How do you want to see progress?

    • Weekly summary emails?
    • Shared working doc/dashboard?
    • Formal check-ins only?

  3. Decision-making process:

    • If we need a quick decision, who can authorize?
    • What requires broader team input?
    • Any sensitive topics to handle carefully?

Week 1 Priorities

  1. Let’s align on Week 1 focus:

Discovery Priorities:

  • Les knowledge transfer session #1 (schedule ASAP)
  • Call data analysis kickoff (get access to transcripts)
  • Marketing channel performance baseline (get current data)
  • Website funnel analysis (GA access + booking flow data)
  • Customer database exploration (cancelled customers, segmentation)

Deliverables:

  • Complete data source inventory doc
  • RACI matrix first draft
  • Les interview #1 summary
  • Call data sample analysis (if transcripts available)
  • Week 2 meeting schedule confirmed

  1. What would make Week 1 a success for you?

    • Quick wins identified?
    • Clear understanding of landscape?
    • Confidence in our approach?
    • Specific deliverable?

  2. Any concerns or questions about the 4-week plan?

Resources Mentioned/Requested

To be filled out during meeting

Documents Requested

  • Pricing spreadsheet
  • Need David’s KPI sheet

System Access Needed

People to Connect With

Action Items

To be filled out during meeting

ABC Team (Bo/Steven)

Brainforge (Uttam)

Joint

Meeting Notes

Block 1: Vision & Strategy

Key insights, quotes, decisions

Block 2: Operations & Lifecycle

Key insights, pain points, opportunities

Block 3: Data & Systems

System inventory, owners, access needs

Block 4: Next Steps

Meeting schedule, priorities, concerns

Post-Meeting Tasks

  • Send meeting summary email (within 24 hours)
  • Create data source inventory spreadsheet
  • Draft RACI matrix based on ownership discussion
  • Schedule Les knowledge transfer session #1
  • Request priority system access (GA, calls, CRM)
  • Schedule shadow meetings for Week 1-2
  • Create Week 1 working plan
  • Set up shared workspace for collaboration (Google Drive folder, Slack channel, etc.)

Key Questions to Answer by End of Meeting

  • Vision: What does success look like for ABC in 2026-2027?
  • Pain: What’s the #1 growth bottleneck today?
  • Data: Where does our most valuable data live?
  • People: Who are the critical stakeholders we need to interview?
  • Access: What’s the timeline to get system access?
  • Les: How much time can we get with Les in the next 4 weeks?
  • Quick Wins: What’s the fastest way we can add value?

Last Updated: December 2, 2025

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