Specimen · Illustrative
Pre-call brief
Corvid Freight · Dana Whitfield, VP Operations
Thu 14:00 · 30 min · B-01
Snapshot
Corvid Freight — Series B logistics SaaS, ~140 people, mid-market freight brokers. Self-serve motion moving upmarket: two enterprise AEs hired last quarter, pricing page switched to "talk to sales" for the top tier.
Signals
- S-01 · Dana posted twice in 3 weeks about "spreadsheet ops" breaking past 20 dispatchers.
- S-02 · Careers page: 3 open ops-manager roles, zero ops-tooling roles.
- S-03 · Their thread said "before the board meeting", twice.
Likely pain
- P-01 · Ops headcount is scaling where tooling should; the cost curve is bending the wrong way (S-01, S-02).
- P-02 · Reporting is manual at exactly the moment the board wants numbers (S-03).
Read before you dial
Dana is public about the pain; don't waste discovery proving it exists. Spend the call on cost and consequence, and on who else feels it. The board meeting is your clock: anchor next steps to it.
Q-01
You've written about spreadsheet ops breaking past twenty dispatchers — where does it actually break first for your team?
Opens on her own words (S-01). She confirms the pain in specifics, not in the abstract.
Q-02
When a load falls through today, how many people touch the recovery before the customer hears anything?
Turns P-01 into a countable cost she has to name out loud.
Q-03
Three ops-manager openings and no tooling hires — is that a bet the team scales with people, or a stopgap?
S-02, respectfully challenged. Either answer tells you the build-vs-buy posture.
Q-04
What number does the board ask about that you can't produce without someone losing an evening to it?
P-02 made personal; ties the pain to the meeting on her calendar (S-03).
Q-05
If ops cost per load stays flat while you move upmarket, what happens to the margin story you're telling investors?
Connects P-01 to the Series B narrative — the consequence layer above the pain.
Q-06
Who besides you gets paged when dispatch backs up, and do they think of it as their problem yet?
Maps the buying committee without asking "who's the decision maker."
Q-07
What have you already tried (scripts, a hired analyst, a tool that didn't stick), and where did it stall?
Surfaces the graveyard before you pitch into it.
Q-08
If the board meeting went perfectly, what would you have shown them about ops?
Ends on her definition of success; the close writes your follow-up for you.
Next step · Propose a 45-min working session before the board date; bring the ops-cost model.
Deployed from IN-01 / IN-02 / IN-03