The Entrance is a statement of the conditions for which prospects' projects you will accept. Think of it as the notice on a shop's front door. For example: "clients who can provide specifications" or "clients who have the required documents ready." In business terms, it corresponds to lead-qualification criteria based on your ideal customer profile (ICP).
When asking generative AI for a draft, watch out for sentences that broaden the scope. "They seem pleasant," "They're in a hurry," and "Our previous supplier did it" are sentences that drafts find easy to write. If a draft has loosened the conditions, a person reverts it, following the order in Chapter 8.
▶ Decided by the top executive
• Decide the condition to place at the Entrance, in one line. Write that line in the fields in Chapter 14.
• Decide in advance that in 3x and 4x peak months, requests that don't meet the conditions will not be newly accepted.
• Requests accepted only because the client seemed pleasant are not counted toward the peak month's remaining quota, because without specifications, no quote version can be created.
▶ Asked of employees
• At the start of the week, write the one-line condition at the website's Entrance, and check on Friday that it's still there.
• Gather the answers to the five questions on one page.
Lead qualification shifts from the individual judgment of each salesperson to order-acceptance conditions written on the page. You lose less time to requests that don't meet your conditions, and even when the assigned employee changes, decisions about whether to accept work are made by the same standard.
Key points: What you place at the Entrance is a condition about specifications. Seeming pleasant is not a condition. Do lead qualification at the page stage. Declining may also mean not keeping promising prospects waiting.
AQ GROW | AI Search Structure