You are not selling training. You are selling a defensible position.
How to take the Article 4 instrument to market: what to charge, who to call, what to say on the phone, how to deliver without losing a weekend, and how to turn one INSET day into a recurring relationship.
What you are actually selling
Get this wrong and every conversation is a struggle. Schools do not buy AI training — they have been offered plenty of it and mostly declined. They buy the removal of a specific, dated, named risk that currently sits with one person's job title.
"AI training for your staff"
Generic, undated, no consequence for skipping it, competes with forty other CPD offers. Sits in the "nice when we have budget" pile forever.
"Evidence you met a legal duty that is now being enforced"
Specific, dated, owned by a named person, and the deliverable is a printed file they can hand to an inspector or a board. Moves from CPD budget to compliance budget, which is a different queue.
The one-sentence pitch
Say this, in this order
"The AI literacy duty in Article 4 of the EU AI Act has applied since February 2025, and national market surveillance authorities started enforcing it in August 2026. I run a one-day programme that gets an international school from nothing to a dated, evidenced position — a system register, a staff training record, a policy set and a board paper. I'm a Digital Technology teacher at an international school in the EU, so it is built for how schools actually run rather than adapted from corporate compliance."
Three moves in that paragraph: the duty exists and is enforced, the output is a file not a feeling, I am one of you. Never drop the third — it is the entire reason you beat the consultancies.
Who signs, who champions, who blocks
| Role | Function | What moves them |
|---|---|---|
| Head of School / Principal | Signs | Institutional risk and reputation. Wants to be able to answer a governor asking "are we covered?" without hedging. Rarely wants detail. |
| Head of Digital Learning | Champions | Usually already knows this is a gap and has been unable to get it prioritised. Your best ally and your best first email. Give them ammunition, not a sales pitch. |
| Business Manager / Bursar | Gates | Budget line and procurement. Cares that the price is fixed, the scope is bounded, and there is an invoice they can code. Never quote a range. |
| DP Coordinator / Head of Secondary | Champions | Assessment integrity is already eating their term. The permitted-use framework is what they want; the compliance is a bonus. |
| DPO (often external) | Blocks | May claim this is already covered under GDPR work. It is not — different regulation, different duty. Brief them early and make them a collaborator, or they will kill it late. |
| Board / Governors | Ratifies | Want the minute. Template T5 in the instrument exists so the Head can put this in front of them in ten minutes. |
The shortest path in a school
Head of Digital Learning champions it → Head of School signs it → Business Manager processes it → Board minutes it. Email the champion, not the signer. The champion will walk it up for you, and they will do it better than you can because they know the internal politics.
The offer ladder and what to charge
Four rungs plus a retainer. Fixed prices, published or quoted without hesitation. The moment you say "it depends on scope" you become a consultancy, and a consultancy is what they are trying to avoid.
| Tier | Offer | What they get | Price | Your time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Readiness callLead generation | Twenty minutes, no slides. You walk them through the four questions in Part 6 and tell them honestly where they sit. They leave with a one-paragraph summary by email. | Free | 30 min |
| 1 | Readiness auditEntry, remote | Completed 24-point instrument, AI system register built with them, Article 5 screening, a written readiness position and a board paper drafted from template T5. | €950 | 1 day |
| 2 | Audit + INSET dayThe core offer | Tier 1, plus the full six-module staff day delivered on site, all evidence artefacts collected and filed, and the policy set T1–T4 adapted to their context. | €2,400 | 3 days |
| 3 | Full-term programmeHighest value | Tier 2, plus the student programme mapped to AILit across year groups, three classroom activities piloted with named teachers, twelve-week check-ins, and the final re-audit printed. | €4,800 | 7 days |
| R | Annual review retainerRecurring | Yearly re-audit, regulatory update briefing, refreshed policy dates, and new-starter induction materials kept current. Renews automatically. | €1,200/yr | 1 day/yr |
Add-ons, priced so they are easy to say yes to
Extra twilight
A single module re-run for staff who missed the day, or a department deep-dive.
Board presentation
You present the readiness position to governors yourself. Heads love not having to.
Policy drafting
You write T1–T3 fully bespoke rather than adapting templates. Popular with schools that have no capacity.
Parent evening
Forty-five minutes to parents on how the school approaches AI. Reputational gold for the Head.
Second campus
Same group, second site. Materials are done; only delivery repeats.
Referral thank-you
An extra twilight, given to any school that introduces you to another that books.
Pricing logic, so you can defend it without flinching
Tier 2 at €2,400 is roughly what a school pays for one external INSET speaker for a day — except they also get a compliance file. Against a corporate consultancy quoting five figures for AI governance, you are an obvious yes. Against doing nothing, you are the price of removing a named risk from the Head's desk.
Do not discount. If a school genuinely cannot afford Tier 2, sell them Tier 1 and let the audit result make the case for the day. That converts better than a discount anyway, because the gap is now documented in their own file.
Where the real money is
International school groups run five to forty campuses. Sell the group, not the school. Price at Tier 3 for the first campus and €1,800 per additional campus. One relationship, one invoice, one set of materials, and a case study that unlocks the rest of the sector.
Speak once, sell many
School associations and regional heads' networks run termly meetings and are permanently short of relevant speakers. Offer a free 45-minute session. You are not selling from the stage — you are being seen by thirty Heads at once as the person who knows this.
Phase one — build the proof
You cannot sell this cold with no delivery behind you, and you do not need to. Run it once at your own school. Two weeks of work buys you the only asset that matters.
Pitch it internally as an offer, not a favour
Go to your Head with the instrument printed. Say: the duty is being enforced, we have a gap, I have built the whole thing, and I would like to run it here first. Ask for the INSET slot and permission to use the outcome as a case study, anonymised or named as they prefer.
Most Heads say yes immediately, because you have just removed a problem they knew about and had no plan for.
Run the audit before the day and record the number
Complete the 24-point instrument honestly. Whatever the score is, write it down with the date. This is the "before" half of your case study and it is worth more if it is low.
Deliver the day exactly as written
Do not improvise the first run. Use the run sheet, use the cards, collect every commitment card at the door. You are testing the product and you need to know which parts drag.
- Time every module against the run sheet and note the drift
- Write down every question you could not answer — these become your FAQ and your Vol. 02 content plan
- Note which of the three contested cards split the room hardest
Re-audit and capture the delta
Run the instrument again after the day. The jump from baseline to post-delivery is your headline number. "From 14/48 to 39/48 in one term" is the sentence that sells the next four schools.
Get three sentences in writing from someone senior
Ask your Head or Deputy for a short quote while the day is still fresh. Give them a draft to edit — nobody writes a testimonial from scratch. Ask specifically for something that names the outcome, not your personality.
Good: "We went from having nothing documented to a complete evidence file in one term, and the staff engagement was the highest I've seen for a compliance topic." Weak: "Jelena was excellent."
The one-page case study
Before, after, quote, and what was delivered. One side of A4, exported as a PDF and also published as a web page — the web version matters for Vol. 02, because answer engines cannot cite a PDF attachment sitting in your outbox. Anonymise the school name if you must ("a 900-pupil international school in Lisbon") but never anonymise the numbers.
Phase two — build the list
Sixty schools is enough. This is a small, knowable market where personal relevance beats volume, and a list of sixty researched schools will outperform two thousand scraped addresses by a distance.
Where the schools are
International schools in Portugal
Roughly forty to sixty, concentrated in Lisbon, Cascais, Porto and the Algarve. Same jurisdiction, same regulator, and you can drive there. Your own network already overlaps with several of them.
International schools in Spain and Italy
Large markets, same EU duty, English-language leadership. Remote Tier 1 audits travel perfectly; only Tier 2 needs a flight, which you price in.
School groups and associations
Groups operating multiple EU campuses, plus regional and national associations of international schools. One conversation reaches many.
Bilingual and private national schools
Same duty, less English-language competition for the work, often less served. Slower sales cycle, lower price tolerance. Come back to these once Tiers A–C are working.
What goes in the row
| Field | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| School, city, country | Jurisdiction drives which ePrivacy rules apply to your outreach. See Vol. 03. |
| Approximate roll and staff count | Sizes the INSET and tells you which tier to lead with. |
| Curriculum | IB, IGCSE, national. Changes which assessment-integrity examples you use. |
| Head of Digital Learning — name and role title | Your champion. Named person, not info@. |
| Head of School — name | Your signer, for the escalation touch. |
| Public AI signal | Do they have an AI policy page, a blog post, a job ad mentioning AI? This is your opening line and it changes the email from cold to observed. |
| Source and date | Where you found the contact and when. Vol. 03 explains why this column is not optional. |
| Status and next action date | Anything without a next action date is not a lead, it is a bookmark. |
Do not buy a list
Beyond the compliance exposure covered in Vol. 03, bought lists destroy the thing that makes your outreach work. Your emails land because they demonstrably reference that specific school. Sixty rows you researched yourself, at about four minutes each, is four hours of work and it is the highest-return four hours in this entire playbook.
Phase three — first contact
Full templates and the legal position are in Vol. 03. What matters here is the sequencing decision: which door you knock on, in what order, and what you are asking for.
Warm before cold, always
Before you send a single cold email, list everyone you already know across these schools — former colleagues, conference contacts, parents at your own school, people from your teaching networks. Ask each for one introduction. A warm introduction converts at several times the rate of the best cold email you will ever write.
Publish before you pitch
Get the pillar page and two or three posts live first (Vol. 02). When a Head searches your name after your email lands — and they will — there should be something there that demonstrates competence. An empty search result is a silent no.
Ask for the readiness call, not the sale
The first email asks for twenty minutes, free, no slides. That is a small ask with an obvious benefit and no procurement implication, so it can be granted by one person without consulting anyone. Asking for a meeting about a €2,400 purchase cannot.
Work in batches of fifteen
Fifteen schools per week, four-touch sequence, tracked. Batching lets you see which opening line works before you have burned the whole list, and keeps the follow-up volume inside what one person can actually sustain alongside a job.
The discovery call
Twenty minutes. You are not presenting. You are asking four questions that let the school discover its own gap out loud, which is the only kind of discovery anyone ever acts on.
Call structure — twenty minutes
MINUTE 0–2 — FRAME
"Thanks for the time. I'll keep this to twenty minutes. I'm not going to
present anything — I want to ask you four questions, and at the end I'll
tell you honestly where I think you sit. If that's useful we can talk
about what comes next, and if it isn't, you've lost twenty minutes and
gained a summary you can use anyway."
MINUTE 2–14 — THE FOUR QUESTIONS
Ask. Then stop talking. The silence is doing the work.
Q1 "Can you tell me, roughly, every AI system in use across the
school right now — including anything staff use that wasn't
formally approved?"
→ Almost nobody can. This establishes the gap without you
asserting anything.
Q2 "Who is the named person accountable for AI at the school?
Not a committee — whose job description says it?"
→ Usually nobody, or a vague gesture at the DPO. Note the name
if there is one; they must be on the proposal.
Q3 "If a market surveillance authority asked for evidence that your
staff have had AI literacy training proportionate to their roles,
what could you hand them today?"
→ This is the question that lands. Let it sit.
Q4 "Do you use anything that infers student attention, engagement,
or mood — engagement analytics, proctoring, wellbeing dashboards?"
→ If yes, you have just found a possible prohibited practice and
the conversation changes entirely. Do not oversell it. Say you'd
want to check the vendor documentation before concluding anything.
MINUTE 14–18 — REFLECT BACK
"Here's what I heard." Summarise their own answers. Name the two or three
gaps in their words, not yours. Then:
"For what it's worth, that's completely normal — most schools I speak to
are in the same position, because the headline in 2026 said the rules were
delayed and the part that applies to you wasn't."
MINUTE 18–20 — ONE CLEAR NEXT STEP
Offer exactly one thing. Never two.
Gap is large + they seem ready → "I'd suggest the audit and the
staff day. I'll send a one-page
proposal today, €2,400 fixed."
Gap is large + no budget signal → "Start with the audit at €950.
It'll tell you whether you need
the day, in writing."
Possible prohibited practice → "Before anything else, let's get
that vendor answer. I'll send you
the exact wording to use today."
Not ready → "Sounds like you're covered for now.
Can I send you the readiness
instrument so you have it?"
→ they use it, they score low,
they come back.
ALWAYS: send the promised thing within four hours, while the call is warm.
Be honest when they are fine
If a school is genuinely in good shape, tell them so and end the call early. You will get the referral, and word travels fast in a small sector. The reputation you want is "she told us we didn't need it".
Perform urgency you do not feel
The deadline is real, which means you never have to inflate it. Educators detect manufactured pressure instantly and it costs you the sector, not just the sale.
The proposal
One page. Sent within four hours of the call. A long proposal signals that the scope is unclear, and unclear scope is exactly what a Business Manager refuses.
One-page proposal skeleton
AI ACT ARTICLE 4 READINESS — [SCHOOL NAME]
Prepared for [NAME, ROLE] · [DATE] · Valid 30 days
WHERE YOU ARE
Three sentences, in their words, from the call. Name the specific gaps
they told you about. No adjectives.
WHAT THIS IS
The AI literacy duty under Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 has
applied since 2 February 2025. National market surveillance authorities
began supervising and enforcing it on 2 August 2026. Obligations for
high-risk education systems were deferred to December 2027; this duty
was not.
WHAT I WILL DO
1. Readiness audit — 24 indicators, six domains, completed with you
2. AI system register built and risk-classified
3. Article 5 prohibited-practice screening, including written vendor
confirmations
4. Six-module staff INSET delivered on site, differentiated by role
5. Policy set adapted to your context — staff, student, parents
6. Board paper drafted and ready to table
WHAT YOU WILL HAVE AFTERWARDS
A dated evidence file containing twelve items, a signed training record
for every member of staff, and a readiness position you can state in one
paragraph to a governor or an inspector.
WHEN
Audit week commencing [DATE]. INSET [DATE]. Evidence file closed by [DATE].
INVESTMENT
€[2,400], fixed. Includes all materials and licences for your use.
No further costs. Invoice on completion, 30 days.
WHO I AM
Two sentences. Digital Technology teacher at an international school in
the EU. [Case study line with the before/after number.]
NEXT STEP
Reply "yes" to this email and I will send the audit link and hold
[DATE] in the calendar.
Three details that get proposals signed
Fixed, not estimated. One number. A Business Manager can code a fixed number without a procurement process; a range triggers one.
A named date already held. "I will hold 14 October for you until Friday" creates a real, honest reason to decide, and it is true.
Reply-with-one-word acceptance. Do not send a contract to sign at this stage. An email reply is a contract. Send terms with the invoice.
Delivery without drama
The facilitator pack has the run sheet for the day itself. This is the wrapper around it — the fortnight before and the week after, which is where engagements are actually won or lost.
T minus 14 daysSet the conditions 2 hours
- Confirm the date in writing with the room, the timings, and the parallel-track split.
- Send the register questions to every head of department yourself, via the champion. Three questions, one email. This builds the register before you arrive and makes the audit fast.
- Confirm the DSL will attend M5. If they cannot, move the module rather than run it without them.
- Ask for one real assessment task from three departments, to use as live examples in M3.
- Get the school's actual tool list from IT, separately from what teachers report. The gap between the two lists is your most useful finding.
T minus 7 daysRun the audit 4 hours
- Complete the instrument with the champion on a call. Do not send it to them to fill in — the conversation is where you learn what is really happening.
- Classify every system. Flag anything that might touch Article 5 and send template T4 to those vendors immediately, so responses arrive before the day.
- Print the baseline score. Dated. This is evidence item E-12 and it is also your before number.
- Personalise the deck. Swap the generic examples for their curriculum, their tools, their subjects. This takes an hour and it is the difference between a good day and a forgettable one.
Delivery dayFollow the run sheet 6 hours on site
The facilitator pack covers this minute by minute. Three things that are yours, not the school's, and that nobody will remind you about:
- Photograph everything before you clear up — card sorts, flipcharts, the register on screen. You cannot reconstruct this later and it is evidence.
- Stand at the door for the commitment cards. Near 100% at the door, around 40% by email afterwards.
- Ask the Head for the testimonial on the day, while it is warm, with a draft they can edit.
T plus 5 daysClose the file — this is where the value lands 4 hours
- Assemble the twelve evidence items into one folder, indexed, with a cover sheet naming the owner and the review date.
- Re-run the audit and print the post-delivery score alongside the baseline.
- Deliver the board paper populated with their actual numbers, ready to table.
- Send the register of open questions — everything the room asked that nobody could answer, with owners and dates. Schools find this unexpectedly valuable and it seeds the next engagement.
- Invoice. Same day as the file. Not later.
The handover email
One paragraph: what was delivered, the before and after score, where the file lives, the next review date, and one sentence naming the biggest remaining gap. That last sentence is your next sale and it is entirely honest.
Turning one day into a year
A single INSET day is a transaction. The business only works if a meaningful share of schools become annual. Build the second sale into the first delivery, before you leave the building.
The annual review is already in the document
Part 11 of the instrument tells them to diarise an annual review. You wrote that. When the date arrives, you are the obvious person to run it. Put the date in their calendar during the handover, with your name on it.
The open questions register
Every unanswered question from the day becomes a documented item with an owner and a date. Some of those are jobs. You are already the person who understands them.
The student programme
Tier 2 schools have staff sorted and students unmapped. The AILit progression map is the obvious next term's work, and it is a curriculum job rather than a compliance job, which means a different budget.
New-starter induction
Every September brings staff who were not there. The 90-minute induction version has to run and someone has to keep it current. That is a retainer, not a project.
When the deadlines move
The December 2027 high-risk date is coming and the rules will shift again before then. Every change is a legitimate reason to contact every past client with something useful. Keep a note of what changed and who needs to know.
The referral, asked for properly
At handover, when the file is done and the Head is pleased: "Is there another school you'd think of who's in the position you were in six weeks ago?" Specific question, specific moment. Offer the free twilight as thanks.
What a steady year looks like
Twelve Tier 2 engagements at €2,400 and eight retainers at €1,200 is around €38,000 for roughly 44 delivery days plus sales time — achievable alongside a teaching post if you cap it. Two group deals at Tier 3 pricing across three campuses each would roughly double that for less selling. The group route is where the leverage is; the single schools are how you build the credibility to get there.
Objections, answered
Six you will hear repeatedly. Learn the shape of the answer, not the words — reciting a script is audible.
"We're waiting — the EU delayed the AI rules." Most common
This is the objection your whole positioning is built to defeat, so answer it precisely and without triumph.
"You're right that something was delayed — the high-risk obligations moved to December 2027 under the Digital Omnibus agreement. But that deferral didn't touch Article 4, and it didn't touch the prohibitions. The literacy duty has applied since February 2025 and enforcement started in August 2026. The headline was accurate about the part that doesn't apply to you yet, and silent about the part that does."
"Our DPO already handles this." Blocker
Never contradict the DPO. Make them a collaborator or you lose.
"They may well be across it, and if so this will be quick. Worth checking one thing though — GDPR and the AI Act are different regulations with different duties. Most DPO engagements cover data protection but not the Article 4 literacy obligation or the Article 5 prohibitions, because those aren't data protection provisions. Happy to speak to them directly."
Then actually speak to them. DPOs who understand what you are doing often become your best referral source, because they are asked this question by every client they have.
"We already did AI training." Common
Do not disparage it. Ask about evidence.
"Good — that's more than most. Two things worth checking. Was it differentiated by role? Article 4 asks for measures proportionate to people's technical knowledge and context, so one identical session for everyone is harder to defend. And do you have a per-person record — names, dates, content — that you could hand over? Training that happened but wasn't recorded is difficult to evidence."
Most schools fail one or both. If they pass both, congratulate them and offer the student programme instead.
"There's no budget this year." Gate
Usually true about the CPD line and untrue about the school.
"Understood. Two thoughts. This often sits better against compliance or governance than CPD — different line, and the board paper makes the case. And if that doesn't work this year, the audit at €950 gives you a documented position and a plan, which is the part that matters if anyone asks. The training can follow next year."
A documented gap with a dated plan is a genuinely defensible position. Selling Tier 1 honestly here builds more trust than pushing Tier 2.
"Can't we just do this ourselves? You've published the framework." Fair
Yes, and say so. The publishing strategy in Vol. 02 depends on you being relaxed about this.
"Absolutely — everything's public and you're welcome to run it yourselves. What schools usually find is that it takes one person about seven days spread over a term, and the day itself lands differently when it's delivered by someone external. If you'd rather run it in-house, take the materials and I'll answer questions. If it stalls in November, call me."
Some will do it themselves. Most of those will stall, and they will call you, and they will trust you when they do.
"We're not in the EU." Qualifier
Check before you concede. The Act has extraterritorial reach where output is used in the Union, and many international schools sit inside EU jurisdiction even with a non-EU parent group or curriculum.
If they genuinely are outside scope, be straight about it: "Then Article 4 doesn't bind you and I'd be overselling to say otherwise. The substance is still the strongest AI literacy framework going and several non-EU schools use it as best practice — but I'm not going to tell you it's a legal requirement when it isn't."
That answer wins the referral even when it loses the sale.
Money mechanics
Not tax advice — take the specifics to a contabilista. But the constraints shape the offer, so they belong in the playbook rather than in a footnote.
€15,000 is a hard line in 2026
Cross the VAT exemption threshold and you lose the exemption immediately, registering and charging VAT from the month after the breach. The old grace period is gone. Six Tier 2 engagements gets you to €14,400 — so the seventh sale is a decision, not an accident.
Decide deliberately. Registering is not a disaster; schools reclaim or absorb VAT routinely. Being surprised by it mid-year is the problem.
Non-Portuguese clients withhold nothing
Portuguese business clients withhold at source; international clients do not. Combined with the fact that international school groups are your best buyer anyway, this points the same direction: sell outside Portugal wherever the offer travels.
21.4% on 70% of quarterly income
With an exemption for new freelancers in the first twelve months. Model this into your pricing from the start rather than discovering it at the first quarterly assessment.
Invoice on completion, 30 days
Schools pay reliably and slowly. Bursars work to monthly cycles, so an invoice sent on the 2nd is paid weeks sooner than one sent on the 28th. Never invoice in advance for a first engagement — it creates a procurement conversation you do not need.
One insurance question worth answering early
You are giving schools guidance that touches regulatory compliance. Professional indemnity cover is inexpensive for a sole practitioner and several school groups will ask for evidence of it during procurement. Sort it before the first group deal rather than during it, and keep the "this is not legal advice" language in every deliverable — it is in the instrument's footer for a reason.
Capacity, and what to refuse
You have a teaching post, a directorship, a lectureship and a PhD. The binding constraint on this business is not demand — it is you. Design for that now rather than discovering it in November.
| Constraint | The rule |
|---|---|
| Two engagements a month, maximum | Tier 2 is roughly three working days spread across a fortnight. Two concurrent is sustainable alongside a job. Three is not, and the third one is always the one that goes badly. |
| INSET days cluster | Schools run these in late August, October half-term, January and Easter. Your calendar will be lumpy. Sell Tier 1 audits into the gaps — they are remote and schedule freely. |
| Never deliver in your own school's term-time crunch | Report weeks, exam weeks, your own INSET days. Block them before you publish availability. |
| One bespoke request per engagement | Say yes to one adaptation, price the second. Unbounded customisation is how a productised service quietly becomes consultancy at consultancy hours and product prices. |
Refuse these
Legal sign-off
"Can you confirm we're compliant?" No. You provide a structured self-assessment and training. Certification of compliance is not yours to give and the liability is real.
Being their DPO
Adjacent, tempting, different job, different liability, and it swallows the time you need for the scalable work.
Tool procurement on their behalf
You screen vendors against nine questions. You do not choose their systems. The moment you recommend a specific product you own its failures.
Free pilots after the first
One unpaid delivery, at your own school, to build the case study. After that, no. Free work signals the price is negotiable and it always is thereafter.
Undated scope
"Ongoing support" without a defined boundary is unpaid work with extra steps. Retainer or nothing.
Rescue jobs mid-crisis
A school that has already had an incident wants indemnity, not training. Refer them to a lawyer and stay out.
The first ninety days
Sequenced so that nothing depends on something that has not happened yet. Roughly six to eight hours a week.
| Weeks | Do | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Pitch the internal pilot. Book the INSET date. Run the baseline audit at your own school. | A date and a baseline number |
| 2–3 | Publish the pillar page and two supporting posts (Vol. 02). Set up the LinkedIn cadence. | A findable body of work |
| 3–4 | Build the list of sixty. Four minutes a school, one column at a time. | A researched list with next-action dates |
| 4–5 | Deliver the internal pilot. Re-audit. Collect the testimonial and write the one-page case study. | Proof, with numbers |
| 5–6 | Request every warm introduction you can. Publish the case study as a web page. | Five to ten warm conversations |
| 6–9 | Cold sequence, fifteen schools a week, four touches (Vol. 03). Track opens, replies, calls. | Sixty schools contacted, calls booked |
| 7–10 | Run discovery calls. Send one-page proposals within four hours of each. | Proposals out |
| 9–12 | Deliver the first two paid engagements. Close both evidence files properly. Ask for referrals at handover. | Revenue, and two more case studies |
| 12 | Review: which opening line worked, which tier sold, what you refused, what you should have refused. | A sharper version of all three volumes |
The single metric for the quarter
Not revenue, not followers. Discovery calls held. Everything upstream of a call is marketing and everything downstream is delivery — the call is the only place the business actually turns. If you are holding four calls a week by week nine, the rest follows. If you are holding none, the problem is in the list or the first email, and Vol. 03 is where to look.