From signed to activated
Outcomes
The clock starts at yes
Once a client signs, your job shifts from selling to deploying, and speed matters: the faster the client is live and capturing leads, the better your retention. Two targets shape the whole sequence: the AI employee live within 7 days of signing, and the first lead captured within 14.
Collect what you need
Before you configure anything, gather what the setup needs, in a short intake call or a form you send the same day they sign:
- Business name, address, phone number, and website
- Business hours, including after-hours and weekends
- Services offered and approximate pricing
- The phone number the AI Receptionist should use: a new number or the existing line
- How the business wants to greet callers: tone, any custom phrases
- Logo file and brand color preferences
- Google Business Profile and Facebook page access
- Any existing CRM or scheduling tool
Build one reusable intake form. It takes the client ten minutes to fill out and saves hours of back-and-forth during setup.
Draft your reusable intake form from the checklist above. Ten minutes now, and every deployment after this one starts ahead.
Configure, then prove it works
Start on your side, in Partner Center: activate the products on the client's account from its Products tab, and set up the billing, since the order, subscription, and retail pricing live in Commerce. Then work through the setup in the client's Business App: branding, the AI Receptionist's hours and greeting and lead-capture questions, the chat widget on their website, review sources connected, social accounts connected with the first posts scheduled, and any CRM or scheduling integrations. The Hire your first AI Employee path covers the mechanics of each piece hands-on; this checklist is the order you run them in for a client.
Setup is complete when every component has passed a live test:
- Call the AI Receptionist from a mobile phone. It answers, greets correctly, and captures a lead.
- Send a test web chat. The AI responds and the lead appears in the inbox.
- Trigger a missed-call text-back. The SMS sends within seconds.
- Submit a review request manually. It goes out.
- Check the social post queue. The first post is scheduled.
That test run is also the moment worth describing to the client on the handoff call: their own business, answering its own phone.
The handoff call
Thirty minutes, and the client leaves knowing where to look. Show them the dashboard: leads, review activity, conversation history. Play back a test call so they hear how their receptionist sounds. Confirm their notification preferences, walk through the approval workflow for flagged reviews, and confirm the social post schedule and how to approve or edit it. Then take questions.
Clients do not need to understand how it works. They need to know where to look and who to call.
Capture the proof point
The moment your client captures their first real lead is what changes the relationship, and it fuels your next sale. Watch the lead feed for the first 48 to 72 hours after go-live. When the first lead lands, reach out: "Did you see that lead that came in last night?" Screenshot it and send it to them. If they followed up, ask how it went; a closed job at this stage is a case study.
Then save the result as one line: "HVAC client, 3 leads in first week." That line is your proof point, and it walks into every future sales conversation with you.
Make it repeatable, and what 90 days looks like
The first deployment takes the longest. By the third you have a rhythm: the same intake form for every client, the setup checklist run in the same order, one proof-point line documented per client, and your signed-to-first-lead time tracked until it sits under 7 days.
The warm-book outreach from earlier in this path lands its first yes.
Deployed, tested, handed off, and the first leads are arriving.
The one-line results are accumulating, and each one shortens the next sale.
Roughly $2,500 in monthly recurring revenue at $500 per client, running on a rhythm you own.
Most partners who hit day 30 hit day 90. The first sale is the hard one, and everything in this path exists to make it happen.
Knowledge Check
Three quick questions on the intake, the go-live test, and the proof point.