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
Deployment runs in two places, and the order matters: your side first, so the products exist and the billing is right, then theirs, so there is something to configure.
On your side, in Partner Center. Activate the products they bought from the Products card on the account's Overview, using Create order, then set their billing: the order, the subscription, and the retail pricing all live in Commerce. Subscription management covers the billing detail.
On their side, in Business App. Set up each of these on the client's account:
- Their branding
- The AI Receptionist's hours, greeting, and lead-capture questions
- The chat widget on their website
- Review sources connected
- Social accounts connected, with the first posts scheduled
- Any CRM or scheduling tool they already run
Each of those is a procedure in its own right. Deploy a receptionist for a client takes you through the receptionist and the widget on a client's account, and it picks up from Bring in your first client and Get set up. Finish your side before you start theirs.
Configured is not the same as working. Setup is complete when every component has passed a live test, and running it takes ten minutes. Check the client's editions first: two of the three tests below only run on the right one, so a failure may be a missing product rather than a broken setup.
Labrun the go-live test
Go to the client's account, with a mobile phone in your hand.
A client who also bought Reputation AI or Social AI has a review request to send and a first scheduled post to confirm, both set up in the AI Reputation Specialist setup guide and the Social Media Manager setup guide.
Describe that test run on the handoff call.
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, modelled at $500 per client, running on a rhythm you own.
Those dates are Vendasta's own benchmark for a partner starting out, modelled at $500 in monthly recurring revenue per client. Your pricing and your close rate move every number in it, so aim at the shape and measure the result against your own book. 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.