What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Joanna Platt went through the Starter proposal for Mossbrook as a customer: £26k deal total, four connectors, four weeks. She keeps the partner and referral side separate and wants dependencies and owners written down.
What happened: Sophie Ling walked Joanna Platt through the Starter proposal. Joanna read back five points and accepted them, with target close Friday 15 August 2025.
Customer view: Joanna had no push-back on the number. She cares about scope, owners and written dependencies, and said it was one of the more useful supplier calls she had had.
Commercial: The £26k is the deal total including the one-off implementation, not an annual price. Four connectors is a hard limit, so a fifth means an add-on block of five or a move to Growth. The dashboards builder is Growth only.
Watch: Joanna queried the four business hour P1 response for her own clients. The partner outline, training and named contact are promised but not yet delivered.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Who was there
BG-Demo
Them
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Sophie sends the agreement, draft order form and data note straight after the call.
- Joanna confirms the Salesforce admin and asks her head of sales about Gong.
- Sophie names the solutions engineer by the end of the week and sends the partner outline by the end of next week.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Salesforce access and Gong sign-off sit with Mossbrook and could slip the four-week build.
- The four business hour P1 response on Starter may not suit the clients Joanna would refer.
- The partner outline, training and named contact are still promised, not delivered.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A fifth connector would need an extra connectors add-on or a move to Growth.
- Joanna expects to refer selective clients from about sixty in the North West.
- Dashboards or more users could prompt a later Growth upgrade.
Transcript
- Joanna PlattHi Sophie, can you hear me? I've got the headset on this time, so hopefully it's better than last week.
- Sophie LingLoud and clear. Morning, Joanna. Much better, yes. Last week you sounded like you were calling from inside a lift.
- Joanna PlattHa, the office air con. Don't. Anyway, morning. How's your week been? Wednesday already, I don't know where it's gone.
- Sophie LingBusy but good. Lots of proposals out at the moment, so I'm living in documents. Yours is the one I'm actually looking forward to, to be honest, because it's a bit different from the usual.
- Joanna PlattGood, because I've got a lot to get through. Can I start with the client pipeline? Just so you know why I'm pushing a bit on timing.
- Sophie LingPlease do. That's the bit I want to hear.
- Joanna PlattRight. So we've got about sixty clients across the North West, all mid-sized, nearly all on Snowflake with us building and running the warehouse. Of those, a handful are properly asking the question you built this for: we've got data everywhere, the CRM, the call recorder, the tickets, can somebody just ask it a question and get an answer. Three of them are in conversations with me this month. Two more are, let's say, warm.
- Sophie LingThat's more than I expected. And these are all clients where you already have the Snowflake account set up?
- Joanna PlattYes, that's the point. We're already inside, we already know where everything lives. Which is why I keep asking myself, what does the client need on day one? Because if the answer is a six month project, I've lost them.
- Sophie LingMm. And that's where Starter fits, isn't it. One team, a small number of connectors, and you can be live quickly.
- Joanna PlattExactly. Which is what I want to go through today. I've read your proposal twice, I've got questions, and I've got a list. Is that all right?
- Sophie LingOf course. Let me share my screen so we're looking at the same thing. Can you see it?
- Joanna PlattNot yet. There. Yes, I've got the cover page.
- Sophie LingLovely. So just to frame it, this proposal is for Mossbrook as a customer in its own right, on the Starter tier, using B-Viz over your own client base. Separate from the partner and referral side, which we'll come to at the end. Is that how you read it?
- Joanna PlattYes. Two hats. Hat one, we're a customer. Hat two, we're an implementation and referral partner. I don't want them blurred, because then nobody knows who owns what. Who owns this, us or you? That's my test for every line.
- Sophie LingFair, and I'll try to say it that way. So on the customer side, the total on the proposal is £25,500. That's the deal total, so it includes the one-off implementation, it's not an annual price. I want to be clear on that because people often read it as the yearly number.
- Joanna PlattRight, so the twenty-five and a half is everything in, first year plus getting us set up.
- Sophie LingThat's the deal total, yes. The subscription then renews annually after that, and we'd talk about that nearer the time, through Marcus, who looks after customer success.
- Joanna PlattOkay. Let's write that down. Total is the all-in figure, renewal is a separate conversation with Marcus. Fine. My finance director will ask me exactly that.
- Sophie LingAnd she'll get it in the order form in black and white, so there's no guessing. Anything on the price itself you want to push on before I move on?
- Joanna PlattNot on the number. It's in the range I expected. What I care about is what's in it. So, scope. Walk me through.
- Sophie LingOkay. Starter is built around one team. In your case, I've pencilled in your delivery team as that team, since they're the ones who'd be asking questions across your client work. There's a soft limit on users, so you can go a little over without anything falling over, and a hard limit on connectors. Four connectors, and that one is firm.
- Joanna PlattFour. Right. And I'm guessing that's the bit I'll bump into first.
- Sophie LingIt often is. What were you thinking of connecting?
- Joanna PlattSo, our own stuff. Salesforce for the pipeline, because that's where the client list lives. Zendesk, because delivery issues come in through the helpdesk. Gong for the client calls. And then something for documents, probably SharePoint, because every project plan and every handover note is in there.
- Sophie LingThat's four, and that's a sensible four. Salesforce, Zendesk, Gong and SharePoint. All of those are things we connect to routinely. Does anything sit behind a login that's awkward, like a shared service account?
- Joanna PlattSalesforce, probably. We've got one admin who set it up years ago and I'd want to check who holds the keys. I'll take that. That's mine, not yours.
- Sophie LingGood. I'll note it as a customer action: Joanna to confirm the Salesforce admin and access. And the others?
- Joanna PlattZendesk and SharePoint are fine, I can get those done within a day or two. Gong I need to ask our head of sales, because the call recordings have client names all over them and I want to be sure he's happy.
- Sophie LingSensible. And remember it all runs inside your own Snowflake account, so the data doesn't leave your environment. That's usually the thing that reassures people on the recordings.
- Joanna PlattYes, that's what I said to him last time, but he wants it in writing. Can you send me a paragraph I can forward?
- Sophie LingOf course. I'll put that on my list. A short note on how and where the data sits. I'll send it today or tomorrow.
- Joanna PlattBrilliant. Next question. What do we actually get, feature-wise? I know the pitch, but I want it in the words I'd use with a client.
- Sophie LingSo on Starter you get pages, chat and search. Pages are the generated summaries, say an account page or a project page pulling things together from the connected systems. Chat is where someone just types a question and gets an answer with the sources. Search is exactly that, across everything connected. What you don't get on Starter is the dashboards builder. That starts at Growth.
- Joanna PlattDashboards. Hmm. Is that a problem for us? Honestly I think my team would use chat far more than a dashboard.
- Sophie LingMost small teams do, to start with. If you find later you want dashboards, it's an upgrade conversation, not a rebuild. Nothing you set up is thrown away.
- Joanna PlattGood. That's a key thing for me. Don't make me redo it. Okay.
- Sophie LingUnderstood. Now the implementation. It's a fixed fee, it's inside that total I mentioned, and Starter is four weeks from kickoff.
- Joanna PlattFour weeks. Is that four weeks of calendar time or four weeks of effort? Because those are very different when you've got people on holiday in August.
- Sophie LingCalendar time, four weeks. But it depends on you getting us access to the connectors in the first week or so. If access slips, the date slips. I'd rather say that now than have us both surprised.
- Joanna PlattFair. That's what I mean about owners. Access is mine. Build is yours. Let's write that down.
- Sophie LingYes. And on our side, the solutions engineer will do the build, and Marcus will pick up the relationship once you're live.
- Joanna PlattWill I know the engineer's name before kickoff? Only because, being a consultancy, my people will want to talk to somebody technical straight away.
- Sophie LingI'll make sure you do. I don't want to name someone I haven't confirmed, so let me come back to you on that by the end of the week.
- Joanna PlattThat's fine. Thank you. Okay, so connectors. Does each one have a go-live date?
- Sophie LingYes. In the order form, the connectors you're promised carry a commitment to be live within a stated number of days. We'd agree those with you. I'd suggest we set them realistically rather than aggressively, and the ones that depend on your access, we say so in the form.
- Joanna PlattGood, because I've been burnt by that before, a promise date that depends on something I never agreed to. I want my dependencies written on the page.
- Sophie LingAbsolutely. I'll put the dependencies in as a short schedule so nobody can argue later.
- Joanna PlattLovely. Next. Users. How many people can use it?
- Sophie LingStarter includes fifteen users as a soft limit. If you go over, we'd have a friendly chat rather than switch anyone off. If you know you'll be well over, there's an add-on for extra users in blocks of ten.
- Joanna PlattFifteen's fine for the first team. Probably we'd begin with nine or ten. I'd rather not pay for headroom I don't use.
- Sophie LingNo, and you wouldn't. The fifteen is already included.
- Joanna PlattOkay. And support? If something breaks on a Monday morning, what happens?
- Sophie LingOn Starter, a serious issue gets a first response within four business hours. The nightly refresh should be complete by seven in the morning your time on business days, and that's the same on every tier. Availability is ninety-nine point five, and there's a service credit if we miss that.
- Joanna PlattFour business hours for a serious problem. Hmm. Well. That's what a Starter customer would expect. But I'll be honest, if I put this in front of one of my clients, they'd ask about that.
- Sophie LingThat's a fair point and it's a tier question, really. The faster responses sit with Growth and Enterprise. For your own use, though, you're an internal team with a partner relationship, so I'd say Starter is the right size. If that changes, we'd talk.
- Joanna PlattYes, for us as a customer it's fine. I'm thinking ahead to the clients. Let's park that and come back to it in the partner part.
- Sophie LingParked. Anything else on the customer scope?
- Joanna PlattOne thing. Check-ins. What's the rhythm after we go live?
- Sophie LingStarter has a check-in every six months with Marcus. He'll look at usage, what questions people are asking, whether the connectors are loading properly. It's lighter than the quarterly reviews on Growth.
- Joanna PlattSix-monthly. Okay. I'd probably want a bit more at the start, a quick catch-up a few weeks after go-live. Not a formal review, just a how's it going.
- Sophie LingI think that's very reasonable, and I'm sure Marcus would be glad to. I'll flag it to him so it's not a surprise. I can't promise it as a contractual thing today, but I'll make the request.
- Joanna PlattThat's all I'm asking. Fine. Moving on, because I want to get to the commercial bit. Terms. Payment, notice, all of that.
- Sophie LingRight. So it sits under our standard master agreement with an order form on top. The subscription is invoiced annually in advance, and quarterly if you ask. Payment terms are thirty days.
- Joanna PlattThirty days is fine. Annual or quarterly, I'll ask finance. Probably annual, they prefer fewer invoices. Does the implementation get invoiced separately?
- Sophie LingIt's a one-off fixed fee, so yes, it's a separate line on the order form. I'll make the breakdown clear so your finance team can see exactly what's what. I'd rather over-explain than have a query come back in September.
- Joanna PlattGood. What about legal? Who reviews the agreement on our side, I think that's going to be me and our company secretary. How long does that usually take?
- Sophie LingIt depends how much they want to change. If they sign close to the standard, it can be days. If there's a lot of redlining, longer. Your target close on my side is Friday 15 August 2025, and I think that's achievable if the agreement lands with your company secretary this week.
- Joanna PlattFriday 15 August. Okay. That's about two weeks. It's tight with people away, but doable if I chase. I'll send it to her today.
- Sophie LingThen I'll send you the agreement and the draft order form straight after this call, so you've got everything in one email.
- Joanna PlattYes please. And can you mark clearly which version is the draft? I don't want anyone signing the wrong one.
- Sophie LingGood call. I'll put the date in the file name. And once it's signed, the executed copy is the one that counts, anything earlier is superseded.
- Joanna PlattPerfect. Okay, now the other hat. Partner. This is where I've really been waiting to talk.
- Sophie LingGo for it. Tell me how you see it.
- Joanna PlattSo, here's what I want. When a client of ours is ready, I introduce them to you. I don't want to hand over a name and then hear nothing. I never let a referral go without a follow-up, so I need to know what you do with it, who calls them, and how quickly.
- Sophie LingUnderstood. At the moment, a referral from you would come to me as the account executive. I'd aim to speak to the client within a couple of days, and I'd tell you the same day who I've spoken to and what happened. You'd never be in the dark.
- Joanna PlattA couple of days. Okay. And would I be on the first call or not?
- Sophie LingYour choice. Some partners prefer to introduce and step back, others want to be in the room. I'd suggest you join the first one, since they trust you, and then drop off once we're in the detail.
- Joanna PlattI like that. Joins first call, steps back for the detail. Let's write it down. And I only bring clients I'd stake my name on, so it won't be a flood, it'll be selective.
- Sophie LingWhich is exactly what I want. A smaller number of good introductions beats a long list.
- Joanna PlattNow, implementation. Some of these clients will want us to do the build, because we already run their warehouse. Is that something you'd allow?
- Sophie LingThat's the part we've been talking about internally, and I'd rather not promise the exact shape of it today. What I can say is that you'd be our first implementation partner, so we want to get the model right with you. My plan is to put a short written outline together, who does what on a joint project, and walk it through with you.
- Joanna PlattGood, I want that on paper. Who owns the client relationship, who owns the connectors, who answers the phone when something breaks at nine o'clock at night. If it's blurry, I won't do it.
- Sophie LingAgreed. And I'd rather it's blurry on a page now than blurry on a live project later. Can I ask what you'd want from us to feel comfortable?
- Joanna PlattThree things. One, training for my consultants so they can set up a client without ringing you every time. Two, a named contact on your side for partner questions. Three, honesty about what the product does and doesn't do. My people will oversell if I let them, and then it comes back on all of us.
- Sophie LingAll reasonable, and the third is the easiest, because I'd rather lose a sale than have a client disappointed. For the first one, we do have training options, including a day on site. Let me find out what we can offer a partner and come back to you with something specific, not a guess.
- Joanna PlattOkay. And on the second, is that you or Marcus?
- Sophie LingFor anything commercial or about introductions, me. For how things are going once clients are live, Marcus. I'll make that explicit in the outline.
- Joanna PlattGood. Because what I've learned is the minute two names are on something, nobody does it.
- Sophie LingHa, true. Then in the outline each line gets exactly one name.
- Joanna PlattPerfect. Back to the support thing from earlier. If I introduce a client and they're on Starter and they have a problem, whose fault is the four hours?
- Sophie LingIt's ours, it's in their order form, we own it. If you'd done the build, you might be first to hear about it, but the service commitment is ours to the customer.
- Joanna PlattOkay, that's clear. I'd want my consultants to know that, so they don't promise something faster by accident.
- Sophie LingI'll include a one page summary of the service levels per tier in what I send you. Plain English, not contract language.
- Joanna PlattYes please, that'd be great. Now. Tell me honestly, is there anything in the proposal you think I might trip over?
- Sophie LingHonestly, two things. First, the four connector limit. If by month three you want a fifth, that's an add-on or an upgrade, and I'd rather you know now. Second, the timetable. August is August, and if your access takes longer than expected, the four weeks stretches.
- Joanna PlattThat's honest. On the first, I'd like to know the options now, so I'm not surprised. What are they?
- Sophie LingYou can buy extra connectors in blocks of five as an add-on, which keeps you on Starter, or you move up to Growth, which has more users and connectors and brings in the dashboards builder. I'd only suggest the move if you're clearly outgrowing Starter.
- Joanna PlattRight. So the block of five, that's the first option. Okay. I'm not going to decide that today, but I'll keep it in my head.
- Sophie LingOf course. No pressure on that. The proposal stands as it is.
- Joanna PlattLet me read back what I think we've agreed, and you tell me if I've got it wrong. One. Mossbrook buys Starter for our delivery team. Total is £25,500, all in, including the implementation, and renewal is a separate conversation.
- Sophie LingCorrect.
- Joanna PlattTwo. Four connectors: Salesforce, Zendesk, Gong and SharePoint. I confirm access, particularly Salesforce, and I check with our head of sales on Gong. Three. Four weeks from kickoff, calendar time, dependent on our access. Four. Terms are thirty days, annual in advance unless finance asks for quarterly. Five. Target close Friday 15 August 2025.
- Sophie LingThat's all right. Only thing I'd add is the check-in, six-monthly, with your request for an early catch-up passed to Marcus.
- Joanna PlattYes, six. Good. And the partner side is separate. You'll send an outline of who does what, plus something on training and a named contact.
- Sophie LingYes. The outline I'll send next week rather than today, because I want to check a couple of things internally first, and I'd rather send you something right than something fast.
- Joanna PlattThat works. What date, roughly? I like to put things in the diary.
- Sophie LingBy the end of next week. If I'm going to miss it, I'll tell you before, not after.
- Joanna PlattGood. I'll hold you to that, nicely.
- Sophie LingPlease do.
- Joanna PlattOne more thing and then I'll let you go. Reference. If a client asks, can they speak to someone who's using it? Not a polished case study, an actual person.
- Sophie LingThat's a fair thing to want. I'll see who's happy to speak and tell you who, but I won't name anyone until they've agreed. Customers are generous with their time but only if we ask first.
- Joanna PlattTotally. And being a customer ourselves, I'm happy to talk to a client as well, once we're live. That would be a stronger story than a slide.
- Sophie LingThat would be wonderful. Let's get you live first, and then we'll talk.
- Joanna PlattAgreed. So what happens next from your side, exactly?
- Sophie LingStraight after this call I send you three things in one email: the master agreement, the draft order form with the date in the file name, and the short note on how the data sits inside your Snowflake account. By the end of the week, I come back with the name of the solutions engineer. By the end of next week, the partner outline.
- Joanna PlattAnd from mine: send the agreement to our company secretary today, confirm the Salesforce admin, ask our head of sales about Gong, and talk to finance about annual versus quarterly. I'll email you if anything gets stuck.
- Sophie LingPerfect. And if it helps, we could have a short call early next week, fifteen minutes, just to see where you've got to on the access questions.
- Joanna PlattYes, let's. Monday or Tuesday would suit. Send me an invite and I'll accept whichever one you pick.
- Sophie LingWill do. Tuesday morning, I think, to give you Monday to chase people.
- Joanna PlattLovely. Thank you, Sophie. Honestly, this has been one of the more useful calls I've had with a supplier. You answered the questions I asked and didn't dodge.
- Sophie LingThat's kind, thank you. It's easier when the person on the other side asks real questions. And I do think this could be a good partnership, so I want to get the foundation right.
- Joanna PlattSame here. I'll say one last thing: I'm putting my name on this with my own clients. So if something goes wrong in the first few weeks, I want to hear it from you first, not from them.
- Sophie LingUnderstood, and agreed. You'll hear it from me first.
- Joanna PlattGreat. Right, I'll stop sharing my screen, sorry, you were sharing. I'll stop talking.
- Sophie LingHa, I'll stop sharing. Done. Can you still see anything?
- Joanna PlattJust your face now. Which is a lot less exciting than the proposal.
- Sophie LingCharming. Right, I'll get that email to you in the next half hour. Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday, and good luck with the company secretary.
- Joanna PlattThanks, I'll need it. Speak Tuesday, then. Bye, Sophie.
- Sophie LingSpeak soon, Joanna. Cheers, bye.