Sales Flock — Operator Guide (Single Source of Truth)

Audience: the operator, the sales manager / HR manager, and every member of the sales flock. This page is the single source of truth for how the operator guides the flock. If a term, an offer, or a document conflicts with this page, this page wins. Every engagement step ends in a verifiable artifact — a logged conversation, a signed LOI, an activated trial account.

Status: live since October 1, 2026. Self-serve signup, the 3-month trial and Stripe billing have been live in production since October 7, 2026.

What counts as a customer (the number we report)

A customer is a signed-up account that has run at least one real reconstruction.

It is counted from the account store and the results archive, never from a spreadsheet: venv/bin/python scripts/count_customers.py (add --list for names). Internal and test identities are excluded automatically.

The offer (memorize this)

Headline: Turn Any Desktop Computer into a 3D Metrology Lab. A camera and a laser record a hologram; our software turns it into a calibrated 3D measurement with proof attached, and for labs without a laser and camera we sell the instrument too (built to order; none shipped yet).

A free 3-month trial of ApertureAPI: full reconstruction API access, 100 reconstructions a month, no card, no LOI. For a lab that needs a formal answer on its own rig, or has no rig, the structured next step is the free validation and then a Software or Hardware Design Partnership (below).

• The trial is 3 months, free, full-featured, and it is the same trial for everyone: a self-serve signup at api.apertureapi.com/signup or a partner activated through Lane B below. The 3-month limit is enforced by the API itself.
• The no-account upload form at https://api.apertureapi.com/ is always free. It is a try-it path, not an account, so it never conflicts with the trial.
• There is NO "free account for life." That promise is retired and must not be made, repeated, or implied — verbally, in email, or in any document. If a prospect was told it previously, escalate to the operator before responding.
• After the trial: the account converts to pay-as-you-go ($0.03 per reconstruction) or a monthly plan (plans, self-serve by card) and/or a design partnership (page 22), or walks away with no obligation.

The two design partnerships (approved, live 2026-10-19)

• Software Design Partnership: $10,000 fixed, about 90 days, 50% on signing and 50% at day 45. For labs that already have their own laser and sensor (holography / interferometry groups, biomedical QPI/DHM labs). They send real holograms and one reference measurement; we calibrate to their rig and deliver calibrated reconstructions with evidence records, a custom pipeline profile, priority engineering, a written comparison against their reference and publication/co-authorship rights; it converts to a monthly plan.
• Hardware Design Partnership: $25,000 fixed, about 4 months, 50% on signing and 50% on delivery of the instrument. For labs and QA benches with no rig that want 3D surface or thickness measurement. We build, calibrate and ship one of our capture instruments (built to order, theirs to keep; a research unit, not certified or medical), then onboard them for about three months. It includes everything in the Software deal. No instrument has shipped yet; never imply one has.

Both are preceded by a bounded free validation (see page 38). The operator countersigns and invoices; reps never send payment links. Full offers, qualifier, email, call script and agreement outline: page 22.

Claims discipline (same rule as the rest of this playbook)

Copy only from the prepared materials. Never quote a correlation/agreement figure, an error-detection percentage claim, or any frames-per-second number — those have no committed evidence behind them. Instead: "we publish our agreement numbers against a public dataset, and the report says where it falls short — I'll send it." Quotable without a figure: the SDC closed-loop calibration recovers pixel pitch very tightly on two committed targets (pitch only), and every result ships a re-computable provenance record. We do not claim measurement accuracy; the pilot is how a partner and we establish it — that honesty is the pitch, not a weakness of it.

The two customer personas

Partner-lab leads in medical or industrial QA for either persona are always wanted — log them (see "Reporting") even if they are not your assigned lane.

The three tiers of the flock

Structure per the operator, sequencing per the desk's advisor review: Tier 2 is the first hire — it is the learning engine. Tier 1 scales outbound once the motion is understood. Tier 3 comes when there is pilot evidence to hand them.

Tier 1 — Early-career commission reps

• Who: early-career people doing outbound on the operator-supplied partner data, under close supervision. No upfront pay.
• The thank-you commission (defined terms — do not improvise):
• Trigger: first collected payment from the first paying client the rep sourced and closed (a free-trial activation alone triggers nothing — there is no revenue in a free trial).
• Amount: 100% of net revenue actually collected from that first client during that client's first 3 paid months, then the account reverts to the house.
• Timing: paid out within 30 days of each collection.
• One-time: the thank-you applies to the rep's first client only; subsequent closes move the rep to a standard commission conversation with the operator.
• Equipped with: the partner data set, the partner-signing page, the blank LOI, and the copy blocks in this playbook. Nothing else is approved outbound material.

Tier 2 — Mid-career technical sales assistant (first hire)

• Who: mid-career, part-time, $38/hour or more. Qualifies inbound and outbound conversations, separates equipment users from provisioners, runs follow-up, converts best-fit workflows into free 3-month trials.
• Bonus commission (defined terms):
• Per activated free partner account (Lane B only): a flat activation bonus, paid when a partner with a signed LOI completes signup and runs their first real reconstruction (that API event is the artifact). Default: $150; operator may adjust before contract signature. Self-serve signups (Lane A) don't earn this bonus, so the cost scales with signed partners, not with signup volume.
• On the first paid account they sourced: 5% of first-year collected revenue from that account, paid within 30 days of each collection.
• Their job is also intelligence: which persona answers, which rig types convert, what objections recur. That readout goes to the operator weekly.

Tier 3 — Senior operations / sales VP (heavy hitters)

• Who: the short list of senior optics/instrumentation commercial leads with a real rolodex who would look at an optical-computation project and say yes.
• The shape: a two-week demonstrated-good-faith period working partner conversations on our behalf, with the expectation of closing a few partners, before corporate-formation papers are signed with them.
• Hard rule (operator-ratified): "part of the company" is never offered as vague future equity. Before a Tier-3 candidate begins the two-week period, the operator puts the concrete terms in writing: what is being demonstrated, what specific equity/role conversation follows, and on what vesting/formation schedule. No Tier-3 recruit works a day on an unwritten promise.

The engagement flow: two lanes

Lane A — self-serve (where signup volume comes from)

1. Send the signup link with your tag: https://api.apertureapi.com/signup?ref=<your-handle>. Every signup through that link is recorded with your tag in the signup ledger, so attribution is automatic.
2. They sign up and get a key on the spot. No call, no LOI, no human in the loop. Or they try the no-account upload form first.
3. Follow up once after their first reconstruction to offer help, then again in month 3 about a plan.

Lane B — partner / free validation → design partnership

For equipment provisioners and for labs that need a formal, measured answer on their own rig.

1. First contact is made by HR / the sales manager or the assigned rep — never by an external agent on our behalf. The desk's network agent ranks apparent fit and surfaces names; humans make contact.
2. Qualify with the persona table above and the pilot page's qualifying question: what are you measuring, what is your reference measurement, can you produce both inside the free-validation window? No rig → Hardware Design Partnership.
3. Send the partner packet — the public links on the partner-signing page. Everything in it is public; no attachments needed, nothing to leak.
4. Sign the LOI — the blank template, filled in with the partner's details. Non-binding except confidentiality; it books the intent and the trial start date.
5. Activate the 3-month trial — partner signs up (signup), runs the quickstart, and their first real reconstruction is the activation artifact.
6. Convert — during month 3: paid plan, a Software or Hardware Design Partnership, or a clean no. All three outcomes get logged.

Reporting (progress is countable, not described)

Owner: the sales manager. Where: each rep keeps one copy of the prospect-log template (columns: date, rep, lane, file and row, organization, person, persona, channel, stage, next action and date, flag, notes). Stages: contacted / qualified / packet sent / LOI signed / trial active / converted / closed-lost. Every Monday reps send their log to the sales manager, who rolls it up for the operator together with the automatic counts: signups by ref tag from the signup ledger, and customers from scripts/count_customers.py. Partner-lab leads in medical or industrial QA go in the same log flagged LEAD-LAB, whatever their stage.

Escalation

• Any request to promise accuracy, uptime, or pricing not on the public pages → operator.
• Any mention of a "lifetime" or "for life" account → correct it to the 3-month trial, then log it.
• Any press, investor, or Show-HN-style public posting opportunity → operator (same gate as step 07).

Buyer pages to pair with this page: workflow fit · design partnership brief · procurement packet · validation docket. Pipeline stages and KPIs: page 00.