Who to call, in what order, and what to say.
This is the internal sales playbook, published. Prioritized segments with their qualifying signal, the pipeline stages, the discovery script, the demo that actually closes, and the five objections you will hear.
Ranked by how short the path to a paid pilot is
Programs that already own VEO / Pixellot / Trace hardware
They already film every fixture and have already proven willingness to spend money on capture. The budget conversation is a reallocation, not a creation.
Showcase and tournament operators
They hold footage on thousands of athletes across a weekend and can't index any of it. Ranked event output is a product they can resell to attendees.
Club and academy programs with multiple age groups
Multi-team structure means age normalization and cross-group comparison have immediate value, and one contract covers many rosters.
High school athletic departments
Film exists, analyst headcount does not, and playing-time decisions need defensible evidence. Long sales cycle tied to the budget calendar.
University programs and conference offices
Recruiting travel budget is the pain, and NIL raises the cost of a miss. Conference-level deals cover many schools at once.
European Tier 2/3 football academies
Structural incentive to identify and develop sellable talent, with far less analyst budget than the tier above them. GDPR posture must lead the conversation.
Seven stages
Highlighted stages are where deals are actually won or lost. Everything before them is logistics.
The discovery call script
"How many hours a week does your staff spend logging film — and what happens to the film you never log?"
The second half of that question is the one that does the work. Everyone has an answer to the first half. Almost nobody has thought about the second, and the silence after it is where the deal starts.
- 01How many teams and age groups do you cover?
- 02How many games are filmed monthly, and on what hardware?
- 03Who watches the film, and for how many hours a week?
- 04What happens when you miss an athlete — has it happened, and what did it cost?
- 05Do you use wearables, and which vendor?
- 06Who signs, and when does the budget cycle open?
- 07What analytics tool have you tried before, and specifically why did it fail?
The demo that closes
Never demo sample footage.
At the end of discovery, ask for one of their games. Process it. Then show them their own athletes ranked.
A director looking at an under-the-radar 15-year-old on their own roster ranked third is having a completely different conversation than a director looking at your demo data. The first one is about their program. The second one is about your software. Only one of those closes.
Ask while the call is still live
Get the file, or the platform share link, before you hang up. A follow-up email asking for footage converts at a fraction of the rate.
Turn it around fast
48 hours or less. Momentum from a discovery call decays quickly once the season resumes.
Lead the readout with a surprise
Open on the athlete they didn't expect to see ranked where they are. Then walk the pillars that put them there.
The five you will hear
Land and expand
Athletic directors and academy directors move programs every few years and talk to each other constantly. It is one of the most referential buyer communities in sport — conference meetings, coaching clinics, and group chats do more selling than any ad spend could.
So build the referral ask into the process rather than leaving it to goodwill. The 90-day check-in has a fixed agenda: review adoption, review one surprising athlete result, expand to the next age group, and ask for two names.
- 01Which staff opened the report, and which didn't — fix the delivery, not the person.
- 02One athlete whose ranking changed a decision. Name them.
- 03Expand: which age group or sport is next?
- 04The ask: 'Who else should be seeing this? Two names.'
Run this playbook on us.
Book the call, ask the hard version of every question above, and finish it by handing us one game file.