Client Eagerness Playbook

---
name: client-eagerness-playbook
description: "The end-to-end process for turning one AI-automation offer into something prospects actively want: ten stages, one per book, each producing a concrete artifact. Use when you are starting a new offer or industry, preparing or reviewing a proposal, building a discovery-call outline, auditing website or proposal claims, deciding why a prospect went quiet, or writing messages for different awareness stages. Distills: Dunford, Osterwalder, Hormozi, Rackham, Maister/Green/Galford, Cialdini, Beckwith, Wiebe, Dixon/McKenna, Schwartz."
---

<!-- argument-hint: [stage number, book number, artifact name, or a situation you're in] -->

# Making Clients Eager to Work With You: the 10-book reading order, as a process
**Books**: 10 | **Generated**: 2026-10-06 | **Source**: distilled from the authors' published frameworks (no book text reproduced)

This is a PROCESS skill. Its ten books also appear in the six sibling skills; here each one is reduced to the artifact it produces in a fixed sequence. The sequence exists to enforce one rule you set for yourself: **improve ONE offer at a time.** Pick one industry and one expensive operational problem, interview buyers, build a focused package, test the message in real conversations. Nothing in stages 06–10 is worth doing until stages 01–05 have produced their artifacts for that one offer.

## How to Use This Skill
- **Without arguments** — load The Sequence below and start the master playbook at the first stage whose done-check fails
- **With a stage or book number** — `stage 04` / `book 04`; load that book file and the matching template
- **With an artifact name** — `positioning statement`, `trust plan`, `evidence audit`; load the template plus the book file that produces it
- **With a situation** — `prospect went quiet`, `proposal review`, `new industry`; read the Situation Index, then the short playbook it names
- **Browse** — "what books do you have?" → show the Book Index

When a question goes beyond The Sequence, READ the relevant `books/NN-*.md` and `playbooks.md` before answering. For depth on any one book, go to the sibling skill the book file names; this skill holds only what the stage needs.

## The Sequence

| Stage | Book | Question it answers | Artifact you produce | Done-check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Obviously Awesome (Dunford) | Who is this for, what do they use today, why us? | Positioning statement | A stranger in the segment could name the alternative we replace and the one thing we do that it cannot |
| 02 | Value Proposition Design (Osterwalder et al.) | What does one segment actually need to get done, and what hurts? | Value Proposition Canvas for ONE segment | Top-3 pains ranked by severity come from interviews, not from you; each has a matching pain reliever |
| 03 | $100M Offers (Hormozi) | What is the one package, priced so saying yes feels obvious? | Focused package: outcome, scope, price, terms, guarantee | One outcome, one price, one guarantee; everything in scope raises likelihood or cuts delay/effort |
| 04 | SPIN Selling (Rackham) | How do I surface the problem and make its cost visible in the buyer's words? | Discovery-call outline | Outline has at least 3 Implication and 2 Need-payoff questions; it ends in a defined Advance, not a "continuation" |
| 05 | The Trusted Advisor (Maister, Green, Galford) | How do I earn the right to be believed across the relationship? | Trust plan: credibility, reliability, intimacy, low self-orientation | Each of the four has one concrete behaviour for first call, proposal, and delivery |
| 06 | Influence (Cialdini) | Which of my claims are backed by evidence, and which only by assertion? | Evidence audit of website and proposal | Every claim is tagged with its proof type or marked for removal |
| 07 | Selling the Invisible (Beckwith) | How can a prospect evaluate an invisible service before buying? | Evaluability plan: demos, process clarity, examples | A prospect can see the process, a sample output, and a comparable result without talking to you |
| 08 | Where Stellar Messages Come From (Wiebe) | What words do customers already use for the problem and the result? | Swipe file of customer phrases | 20+ verbatim phrases from calls/interviews, tagged by stage of awareness and by pain/gain |
| 09 | The JOLT Effect (Dixon, McKenna) | Why do qualified buyers stall, and what do I do about it? | Indecision plan: implementation fears, option overload, "let me think about it" | For each stall type: a recommendation you will make, an option you will remove, a risk you will absorb |
| 10 | Breakthrough Advertising (Schwartz) | What should each person hear, given what they already know? | Messages per awareness stage: unaware of problem, exploring solutions, comparing providers | Three distinct openings exist; none of them leads with your product to someone who does not yet know the problem |

### Frameworks that recur across stages
- **Positioning components** (Dunford) — competitive alternatives → unique attributes → value → best-fit customers → market category. Use at stage 01; re-check at 07 and 10 because messages drift off-position.
- **Value Proposition Canvas** (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda, Smith) — Customer Profile (jobs, pains, gains) against Value Map (products/services, pain relievers, gain creators); "fit" when the right side addresses the ranked left side. Use at 02; the ranked pains feed 03's offer, 04's Problem questions, and 08's swipe file tags.
- **Value Equation** (Hormozi) — perceived value rises with Dream Outcome and Perceived Likelihood of Achievement, falls with Time Delay and Effort & Sacrifice. Use at 03 to decide scope; at 09 because every stall is a drop in perceived likelihood.
- **SPIN** (Rackham) — Situation → Problem → Implication → Need-payoff. Implication questions make the cost of the problem explicit; Need-payoff questions make the buyer state the value. Use at 04; the buyer's answers become 08's phrases and 03's outcome wording.
- **Trust Equation** (Maister, Green, Galford) — Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-orientation. Self-orientation is the denominator: one visible push for the sale divides everything else. Use at 05; apply to 06's audit (what signals low self-orientation?) and 09 (a recommendation that costs you something is low self-orientation made visible).
- **Six principles of influence** (Cialdini) — reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity (plus unity in the later edition). Use at 06 only to classify evidence you already have; never to manufacture pressure.
- **Make the invisible visible** (Beckwith) — a service cannot be inspected before purchase, so buyers judge on what they can see: process, people, artefacts, response speed, first and last impressions. Use at 07.
- **Stages of awareness** (Schwartz) — unaware, problem-aware, solution-aware, product-aware, most aware. The headline's job is to meet the stage, not to pitch. Use at 10; use at 08 to tag phrases; use at 04 to decide how much Situation/Problem questioning a given prospect needs.
- **Indecision vs status quo** (Dixon, McKenna) — a buyer who agrees the problem matters but still does not sign is not "not convinced"; they fear messing up (FOMU). Status-quo selling (more pain, more FOMO) makes it worse. Use at 09.
- **Advance vs continuation** (Rackham) — a call ends well only if something concrete happens that moves the sale forward. Use at the end of every stage that touches a live prospect (04, 07, 09).

## Book Index
| # | Book | Author | Best for | File |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Obviously Awesome | April Dunford | Positioning statement for one segment | [books/01-obviously-awesome.md](books/01-obviously-awesome.md) |
| 02 | Value Proposition Design | Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda, Smith | Value Proposition Canvas from interviews | [books/02-value-proposition-design.md](books/02-value-proposition-design.md) |
| 03 | $100M Offers | Alex Hormozi | One focused package with price and guarantee | [books/03-100m-offers.md](books/03-100m-offers.md) |
| 04 | SPIN Selling | Neil Rackham | Discovery-call outline | [books/04-spin-selling.md](books/04-spin-selling.md) |
| 05 | The Trusted Advisor | Maister, Green, Galford | Trust plan across the relationship | [books/05-the-trusted-advisor.md](books/05-the-trusted-advisor.md) |
| 06 | Influence | Robert Cialdini | Evidence audit of claims | [books/06-influence.md](books/06-influence.md) |
| 07 | Selling the Invisible | Harry Beckwith | Making the service evaluable | [books/07-selling-the-invisible.md](books/07-selling-the-invisible.md) |
| 08 | Where Stellar Messages Come From | Joanna Wiebe | Customer-phrase swipe file | [books/08-where-stellar-messages-come-from.md](books/08-where-stellar-messages-come-from.md) |
| 09 | The JOLT Effect | Matthew Dixon, Ted McKenna | Plan for buyer indecision | [books/09-the-jolt-effect.md](books/09-the-jolt-effect.md) |
| 10 | Breakthrough Advertising | Eugene Schwartz | Messages per awareness stage | [books/10-breakthrough-advertising.md](books/10-breakthrough-advertising.md) |

## Situation Index
- **Starting a new offer or entering a new industry** → run the master playbook from stage 01; short playbook "New industry in 2 weeks"
- **You have several offers and none sells well** → stage 01 and 03; the rule is one offer, so pick the one with the most expensive problem and park the rest
- **Writing a discovery-call outline** → book 04, template 04; check book 02 for which pains to probe
- **Prospect agreed the problem matters but has gone quiet** → book 09; short playbook "Prospect went quiet"; check stage 05 (did self-orientation show?)
- **Reviewing a proposal before sending** → short playbook "Proposal review before sending" (books 03, 05, 06, 09)
- **Website copy or landing page** → books 10, 08, 06, 07 in that order; stage 10 template
- **Prospect asks "how do I know this will work?"** → books 07 and 06: show process and sample output first, proof second
- **Pricing a package** → book 03; check stage 02 for the severity of the pain you are pricing against
- **Deciding what to say to someone who does not know they have the problem** → book 10 (unaware/problem-aware), book 04 (Situation and Problem questions)
- **Cold outreach or LinkedIn content for the segment** → books 10 and 08; use swipe-file phrases, pick one awareness stage per message
- **Prospect wants to compare you to three other agencies** → book 09 (limit the exploration), book 01 (competitive alternatives), book 07
- **Buyer keeps asking for more information** → book 09: this is a lack-of-information stall only if the information changes the decision; otherwise it is FOMU
- **You are tempted to add scope to close the deal** → book 03 (Value Equation: effort and delay rise) and book 09 (option overload)
- **Post-sale: keeping the client eager for the next project** → book 05 (reliability and intimacy), book 07 (last impression)

## Supporting Files
- [playbooks.md](playbooks.md) — the master playbook "One offer, one industry, end to end" plus three short playbooks (start here for "how do I…")
- [templates.md](templates.md) — fill-in templates for all ten artifacts
- [cheatsheet.md](cheatsheet.md) — decision rules and thresholds on one page
- [patterns.md](patterns.md) — every technique, deduplicated across books
- [glossary.md](glossary.md) — terms with book references

## Scope & Limits
Use this skill to run the process; use the six sibling skills for depth. Each book file here is deliberately short and points to the sibling skill that holds the fuller treatment: human-psychology, human-behavior, marketing-psychology, sales-psychology, copywriting, offer-creation. Distilled from the frameworks these books are known for, not from the book text. Where books disagree (Hormozi's urgency devices versus Dixon and McKenna's finding that pressure deepens indecision; Cialdini's scarcity versus Maister's low self-orientation), the book files say so and this skill sides with the trust-first authors because the process is built for repeat business with operators. Treat proprietary sales-research claims (Rackham's call studies, Dixon and McKenna's call analysis) as practitioner evidence, not replicated science.

**To apply these methods to your real pipeline**, use the workflow skills: `setup` (workspace), `lead-magnets`, `outreach`, `deals`, `pitch`. They cite this skill's book files as their method library.