23 questions, ranked by what each answer unblocks. Bring no more than eight to the call. The portal is doing most of the talking.
This question unblocks everything. If the answer is a system name with structured fault codes, we are a year ahead of schedule. If the answer is "in the ticket notes" or "in his head," Phase 1 becomes structured capture first and the timeline moves.
Follow-up: how far back does it go, and can it be exported.
The top five device families by volume are the only families worth building Rung 3 for. Without this number we are guessing at where to point the engineering. And the month-by-month shape determines whether rung 2 trace capture is worth building per device family.
Ask Randolph specifically. He came up through the bench. This is the question where he stops evaluating us and starts collaborating, and it is worth spending real time on. What is already there shapes what we are augmenting versus what we are starting from scratch.
The posture here is genuinely curious, not competitive. That catalog is the right data. A structured catalog of harnesses, connectors, pinouts, and the machines they fit is precisely the substrate the diagnostic engine needs. We want to absorb it, not replace it.
No dealer locator was found on their public properties. Dealer count directly sizes the field-tablet opportunity, the eventual licensing model, and the residual-risk data product's distribution network. Field-of-use restrictions in dealer agreements may also constrain what Ag Express can build or sell around their relationship.
Unblocks: VOICE-07, ROI on the intake node, and whether season one needs a commodity vendor instead of a built one.
Reveals whether the bottleneck is call capacity or expertise depth. Different problems, different solutions. Also unblocks VOICE-10 escalation design.
Unblocks installation logistics, remote access posture, and who our day-to-day counterpart is. Whether on-prem is a comfortable idea or an alarming one matters to the sequencing.
We know they run WordPress, HubSpot, and the storefront. What runs behind those is the ingestion surface for CC-07. The answer changes the integration scope significantly.
A CEO can sponsor this. Only an engineer can validate the bench claims. An engineer who feels bypassed will kill the program quietly. Ask early.
Two months old, ten-year term, under FTC and five-state supervision. Independent repair providers get the same software capabilities as authorized dealers. He may not have connected it to his own strategic position yet.
Offered as help, not as a finding. It is the most concrete, non-speculative demonstration that we did the work, and it has nothing to do with AI.
You are entering harvest. The phones are about to be at their loudest and the benches at their fullest. This is simultaneously the best time to make the argument and the worst time to ask for their attention. The first sixty days are ours.
The model has your variables blank. We will not put a total in the empty cell. Filling them is exactly what the discovery engagement is for, and a vendor who shows you confident numbers built on assumptions you can immediately falsify is not a vendor to trust with your building.
Verdict sign-off, calibrated confidence language, counsel-drafted disclosure, insurer review before Rung 1 ships. This conversation happens before the first customer sees a result, not after. We bring this up.
Hardware, code, corpus, models, runbooks. Not licensed back to you. Not on our platform. Purchased in your name, running in your building, transferable without our involvement. That is not a concession. It is the whole differentiator.
Four to six weeks. Fixed fee, credited in full against the first retainer month if you proceed within thirty days. Everything diagnostic, nothing constructive. This is what the next call is asking for.