Sales Playbook

Purpose: Selling guide for the internal sales team — from first call to close.

Related docs: Triage (discovery questions + module routing) · Webinar Scripts (demo sequences)

Last updated: May 2026

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Table of Contents

1. The Pitch
2. Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
3. Discovery Call Structure
4. Demo Preparation
5. Upgrade Paths
6. Handling Common Objections
7. Pricing & Close
8. One-Liners & Reusable Messages

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1. The Pitch

Elevator Pitch (30 seconds)

"TrackingTime turns the hours your team works into structured, reliable data that feeds billing, profitability analysis, and payroll — all in one place. Instead of spreadsheets, email threads, and manual reports, you get a single source of truth that everyone from the developer to the CFO can act on."

Core Positioning

TrackingTime is a time intelligence platform for service teams. It solves two distinct problems depending on who you're talking to:

Mode A — For agencies, consultancies, and professional services firms: Time is the product you sell. TrackingTime connects the hours your team works with the clients you bill, so you know in real time whether your projects are profitable — before it's too late.

Mode B — For HR, operations, and compliance teams: Time is the basis for payroll and legal compliance. TrackingTime replaces spreadsheets and disconnected tools with a formal record of hours worked, approved, and ready for payroll.

What TrackingTime Is NOT

• Not a surveillance or screen monitoring tool. It doesn't capture screenshots or track keystrokes.
• Not a CRM or ERP replacement.
• Not a full Gantt/dependency planner — it has a visual project timeline, not a critical-path engine.
• Not a payroll processor — it feeds payroll systems with verified data.

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2. Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Primary Segments

Buyer Personas

The Operations Manager / Time Manager The internal champion. Feels the pain of chasing time entries, cleaning up spreadsheets, and reconciling hours before month-end close. Has tried other tools and knows the adoption problem first-hand. Becomes the power user post-sale.

The Agency Owner / Consulting Partner Decision-maker. Cares about margin and cash flow. Doesn't want to talk about features — wants to know if they're losing money on retainers and fixed-fee projects. Responds to P&L framing and ROI stories.

The CFO / Finance Lead Controls the budget. Needs verified, auditable hours before approving invoices. Values the approvals workflow and the ability to export clean data to accounting.

The IT Manager (Business-tier deals) Cares about SSO, security, and audit logs. Evaluates risk. Bring them in late, but be ready for their checklist.

Company Signals That Indicate Readiness to Buy

• Team uses Excel or Google Sheets for time tracking
• Hours are collected by email, Slack messages, or "memory"
• Month-end close takes 1–2 full days of manual reconciliation
• They've discovered a retainer overrun or a fixed-fee project that lost money
• Finance team asks for "approved" hours but the manager can't confirm them
• Company operates in Spain/EU and has heard about the labor time-recording regulation
• Currently using a tool like Harvest or Toggl but hitting its limits (no approvals, no retainers, no profitability)

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3. Discovery Call Structure

The structure of a discovery call. For the full list of 10 discovery questions, the question → module mapping, and routing examples, see triage.md.

Call Flow (25 min)

Quick Qualifier Table

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4. Demo Preparation

Full demo scripts live in webinars.md:

• Webinar A — Agencies & consultancies (45 min): adoption → data quality → reporting → profitability → client collaboration
• Webinar B — HR, operations & compliance (45 min): adoption → work schedules → reporting → approvals + PTO → roles
• Webinar C — Freelancer to agency growth path (35 min): Free → Starter → Pro → Pro Plus arc

For 1:1 demos, use the same module sequence from the relevant script but compress to 25–30 min. Skip modules that didn't come up in discovery.

Before the Demo: Pick Your Entry Point

Use what you learned in discovery to decide where to start. Don't run every module — lead with the one that matches their biggest pain.

What to Always Show

Regardless of which flow you run, never skip these:

1. The business problem first — before any feature, frame the pain in their language.
2. Before/after data quality — show what incomplete entries look like vs. with policies active.
3. Timesheet datatable with live grouping changes — switch views live: by client, by project, by user.
4. Shared Report with logo — if there's an external client in the picture.
5. The Pace report — for any prospect running fixed-fee or retainer projects.
6. Pricing comparison — always close with a plan side-by-side.

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5. Upgrade Paths

The Feature Ladder

Most customers follow this progression:

1. Track time
2. Generate timesheets
3. Share reports          ← Starter covers 1–3
4. Understand profitability  ← Pro adds 4
5. Control budgets           ← Pro Plus adds 5–6
6. Approve hours
7. Enterprise governance  ← Business adds 7

Free → Starter

Trigger: The team is using it but adoption is inconsistent. They want AutoTrack, work schedules, and proper reports.

Pitch:

"Free gave you the basics. Starter gives you the infrastructure to make tracking a habit: AutoTrack for people who forget, work schedules so you know who's behind, and the full reporting suite to turn hours into actual answers."

Key features unlocked: AutoTrack, work schedules, reporting suite, shared reports, PDF/Excel export, automatic weekly report inbox.

Starter → Pro

Trigger: They're billing clients and need to see whether they're making money. They have employees and need PTO management.

Pitch:

"You're generating hours, but you can't yet see if those hours are profitable. Pro adds billing rates and invoicing so the hours your team logs become the basis for every invoice — without manual calculation. And it adds PTO and time cards so you're not running leave in a separate spreadsheet."

Key features unlocked: Rates & costs, invoicing, billable/non-billable, Pace report, PTO module, time cards, Viewers, role-based access control.

Pro → Pro Plus

Trigger: They run retainers or fixed-fee projects. Finance wants approved hours before billing. They work with clients who need access to the platform.

Pitch:

"You've connected hours to money. Now you need the full operating layer: retainer budgets tracked in real time, a formal approval workflow before billing, expenses in the same place as hours, and the ability to bring your clients into the platform."

Key features unlocked: Retainers, expense tracking, approvals workflow (submit/approve/reject/lock), Client Users, advanced time off policies (accrual, carry forward, seniority).

Trigger story to use:

"A team discovers that two fixed-fee projects have been chronically over-budget — absorbing the margin from the rest of the agency. They only saw it when the Pace report became available. That's the moment they upgrade."

Pro Plus → Business

Trigger: IT requires SSO. The company needs formal audit logs. They have multiple teams that need segmented visibility.

Pitch:

"Business is for organizations where IT owns the stack, compliance is non-negotiable, and access control needs to match the actual org chart. SSO means onboarding and offboarding are managed from your directory — not manually in TrackingTime."

Key features unlocked: SSO (Azure AD + Google Workspace), audit logs, user groups + Supervisors, granular per-role permissions, GDPR DPA, SLA 99.9%.

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6. Handling Common Objections

"It's too expensive."

"Let me put that in perspective. If your team bills even 10 hours a month that would have otherwise gone unregistered, TrackingTime pays for itself at any plan. The question isn't whether the tool costs money — it's whether the cost of not having it is higher."

Follow up: walk through a quick ROI calculation based on their team size and billing rate.

"Our team won't adopt it."

"That's the most common concern, and it's the right one — most time tracking tools fail because adoption fails. TrackingTime solves this with three different tracking methods: calendar sync for planners, AutoTrack for people who forget, and retroactive logging for people who prefer to enter at end of day. There's no single 'right' method — there's the method each person will actually use."

Demo: show AutoTrack and the calendar integration live.

"We already use [Harvest / Toggl / Clockify]."

"Those tools handle basic tracking well. Where they fall short for teams like yours is [pick based on discovery]: retainer management, a formal approvals workflow, connecting hours to profitability, or bringing clients into the platform. If you've outgrown basic tracking and need the operating layer on top of it, that's where TrackingTime is different."

Key differentiators by pain:

"We use [Jira / Asana / ClickUp] and our team won't leave it."

"They don't have to. TrackingTime integrates directly with [tool]. Tasks from [tool] appear in TrackingTime, and your team starts the timer on the task that's already there — without switching context. One click, no extra step."

"We're not ready — maybe in a few months."

"Totally understand. Can I ask — what would need to change for this to be the right time? [Listen.] Often the teams who say 'not yet' are in the middle of a project that's already over budget, or closing a month where the data isn't clean. If that's the situation, waiting costs more than starting."

"We need SSO / IT sign-off first."

"SSO is a Business plan feature — we support both Azure AD and Google Workspace. When you're ready to loop in IT, I can walk them through the SSO setup, audit logs, and GDPR DPA. Want to set that call up now so it doesn't hold up the timeline?"

"The team is too small for this."

"TrackingTime has a Free plan that's genuinely useful for teams of 1–3. But I'd argue the opposite — the smaller the team, the more every hour matters. If you're a 5-person consultancy and 15% of your hours are unbilled because nobody logged them, that's a meaningful revenue leak."

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7. Pricing & Close

Plan Summary

Quick Recommendation Rules

• Billing by hour and need margin visibility → Pro minimum
• Running retainers or project expenses → Pro Plus
• Need formal approval workflow → Pro Plus
• SSO or enterprise audit requirement → Business

When to Introduce Pricing

Don't lead with price. Introduce it after:

1. You've confirmed the pain is real and costs them money or time.
2. You've shown the specific features that solve it.
3. The prospect has said something like "yes, that's exactly what we need."

Then anchor on value before presenting the number:

"The approval workflow and retainer tracking you just saw are in Pro Plus. For a team of [X], that's $[Y]/month billed annually. Given you said you spend [N] hours a month on reconciliation and lose roughly [Z] in unbilled hours, that pays back in the first week."

Closing Language

Soft close (end of demo):

"Based on what you've told me, Pro Plus looks like the right fit — retainers, approvals, client access. Want to start a trial with your team so you can see it with your actual data?"

Value close:

"You mentioned [specific pain from discovery]. That's [feature] in Pro Plus. What would it be worth to your business to solve that consistently, every month?"

Urgency (annual discount):

"Annual billing gives you 3 months free vs. monthly. If you're ready to move forward, locking that in now means your first invoice is meaningfully lower than starting month-to-month."

Trial to paid:

"How did the trial go? Was there a specific workflow you wanted to test? [Listen.] We can keep the current plan, or I can activate Pro Plus and walk you through the retainer setup in 30 minutes."

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8. One-Liners & Reusable Messages

Use these naturally in demos, emails, and follow-ups. They come directly from the product education layer and have been validated in live presentations.

On why time tracking matters:

• "If you don't know how many hours you're spending per client, you don't know if you're profitable."
• "Time is your product. If you don't measure it, you can't manage it or charge for it correctly."
• "Hours are already being worked. The question is whether that work stays visible or disappears."

On adoption:

• "There are three ways to track time — the best one is the one your team will actually use."
• "If your team already lives in Jira, tracking time is just clicking 'start timer' on the task that's already there."
• "AutoTrack doesn't require anyone to remember to log — it detects what you're working on and suggests the entry."

On data quality:

• "Having hours logged is not the same as having good hours logged."
• "Policies aren't surveillance — they're the minimum requirements for the data to be useful."
• "The audit catches problems before billing, not after."

On reporting:

• "The timesheet is the raw data. The reports are the answers."
• "A saved report is a question that answers itself every time you open it."
• "Shared Reports: the client sees live hours with no account, no exports, no manual emails."

On profitability:

• "Without rates configured, hours are time. With rates, they're money."
• "The Pace report answers the question every PM needs before it's too late: are we going to hit the deadline within the hour budget?"
• "Retainer without visibility is blind trust. With TrackingTime, the client sees exactly what they got for what they paid."
• "Hours plus expenses in the same system: the real cost of a project stops being an estimate."

On approvals and payroll:

• "Having hours registered is not the same as having trusted hours for payroll."
• "The approval workflow turns the time log into an official record — with a trail of who approved what."
• "Without lock, the period can change after it was approved. With lock, the data is immutable."
• "PTO and hours in the same system: HR stops cross-referencing sources to run payroll."
• "Time Cards aren't just convenient — in Europe they're a legal requirement."

On enterprise/security:

• "SSO isn't just convenience — it's control. When someone leaves, IT deactivates one account and TrackingTime access disappears automatically."
• "Roles mean the person logging hours can't see project costs. Without roles, everyone sees everything."
• "Audit logs: who approved what, when. No dependence on anyone's memory."

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Appendix: Use Case Quick Reference

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Source documents: education/, plans/pricing-packaging.md, use-cases/, triage.md, webinars.md