Six options across three types. We need you to tell us which ones a contractor would find genuinely valuable.
The one question we are asking. For each option: would a contractor think this is worth having? Yes or no.
We are not asking whether it will work as a campaign, or who builds it. That is our side. Most of these are things we write and your reps hand over on the phone, so there is nothing for anyone to produce.
Three of them touch your product, so those we do have to ask about. They are marked.
Our send-to-positive-reply rate is bad. That is the whole reason. We are testing several things at once to see what moves it, and the offer is the variable we have never tested.
Every cold email we have sent for you asks for a call and gives nothing first. We want to try giving something first.
| Criterion | What it means |
|---|---|
| A thing, not a report | Doing one real unit of the work beats describing what is wrong. A free audit from a stranger is easy to ignore. |
| Redeemed on a call | We never hand the whole thing over by email. The offer is the reason the call happens, so the call stays the goal. |
| Zero effort to accept | No data to send us, no software to roll out to the crew, no commitment. If it costs them an afternoon it is a bigger ask than the call we already make. |
| Not a reporting pitch | When our copy leaned on cost analysis, meetings were lost to “looking for a different product”. The offer must sound like time capture, not analytics. |
| Deliverable at volume | If thousands of contractors say yes, it still has to be deliverable. For most of these that is on us, and we have accounted for it. |
Workyard has no data on a contractor until the product is actually running. That rules out anything shaped like “let us show you where your hours are leaking”, because we cannot know that cold and would be promising something undeliverable.
That leaves three honest shapes: something configured for them, a sample built for their trade and crew size, or the trial itself. Everything below is one of those three. We cut four earlier ideas that failed this test, listed at the bottom so you can see what we screened out.
We do the setup work first and walk them through it on a short call. They deploy nothing.
We build their current active job sites in Workyard before they log in. On the call they see their own jobs, not a generic demo.
Prevailing wage and pay rules configured, so per-project hours come out already allocated instead of being rebuilt by hand each week.
Why we think this matters: your own research says the thing that hits admin hardest is certified payroll, pulling accurate per-project hours every week by hand. And one contractor told us he pays the prevailing wage-class rate for hours that should bill at base when a tech steps off site, and finds out a week later.
Not a case study deck. One contractor, same trade, same size, what actually changed. We write these and your reps talk them through on the call. Nothing needed from your side.
Why we think this matters: your research puts payroll admin at 4 to 10 hours a week, and for some contractors 2 to 3 full days per pay period. At an office manager on 25 to 35 dollars an hour that is 5 to 15 thousand a year. It is also the number one pain in your own inbound.
For a shop their trade and size. Not their numbers, which we cannot know, but the pattern.
Why we think this matters: we ran a version of this in April and it produced more opportunities per email sent than anything we have run since. It was never scaled, so it has never had a fair test.
Hours spent and errors caught, the week before and the week after. Same trade and crew size as them.
The existing trial, except the setup is ours rather than theirs. One crew only, so it stays small.
The open question for you: this is the heaviest to fulfil. If it wins we would be asking your team to set up contractors who have not paid. Tell us now if that is not realistic.
| Cut | Reason |
|---|---|
| A cost-code list for their trade | We claimed contractors get cost codes wrong. We have no evidence for that, and your product notes show cost codes without a phase construct has already cost a deal. Pointing an offer at that is the wrong move. |
| Overtime and break-rule sheets | No evidence any contractor has asked for this. Invented by us. |
| Prevailing wage rate tables | The pain behind it is real, but handing over wage tables shows nothing about what Workyard does. It attracts people who want a document, not a tool. |
| A side-by-side against their current app | Across your sales calls, nobody has bought because a competitor was bad. Deals are lost to doing nothing, not to a rival. |
| Anything using their real numbers | “See where your hours leak” cannot be delivered cold. We have no data on them until the product runs. |
The only thing we need you to weigh. The three marked options need access to Workyard to configure anything, and the trial option means your team doing setup for a contractor who has not paid yet. Tell us if either is unrealistic. Everything else we handle.