wiki/clients/current/bluepoint/2026-04-05-partnership-strategy-pre-call-prep.md · 1235 words · 2026-04-05

Partnership Strategy Call — Pre-Call Prep (2026-04-05)

Internal prep call between Mark Hope and Karly Oykhman ahead of a 4 PM call with Bluepoint's Wade. The session reviewed performance data, catalogued client complaints with rebuttals, and established a strategy to redirect the conversation toward sales execution rather than process concerns.

Attendees: Mark Hope, Karly Oykhman
Upcoming call: Mark → Wade (Bluepoint), same day at 4 PM


Overview

Bluepoint's principal Wade had expressed dissatisfaction to a third party (Chris), which contradicted a 7.5/10 sentiment score from the most recent client call. Mark and Karly worked through the disconnect, concluded that Bluepoint is overly focused on process rather than results, and prepared a data-backed case to redirect the conversation. A secondary initiative — an AI-powered "Client Brain" knowledge base — emerged from the discussion and was scoped for follow-up.


Key Decisions


Performance Data (Prepared for Wade Call)

Marketing — Strong Results

Metric Result
SEO health score 100% (up from 99%)
Organic traffic +50%
Visitors +35%
LinkedIn ads Significant lead volume generated

SEO health going from 99 → 100 is non-trivial; it typically requires resolving the hardest structural issues (template errors, orphan pages, etc.).

ABM Campaign (Salesforce)

Metric Value
ABM list size 249 accounts
Emails sent 383
Opens 46 (≈12% open rate)
Scheduling clicks 3
Sequence progress Mostly at step 3; step 4 beginning

Contacts with 3+ opens represent a clear warm-outreach opportunity. Salesforce dashboards were identified as the primary proof point to show Wade.

Sales Execution — Weak (Client-Side)

Metric Value
Active deals in HubSpot 1
Qualified contacts (presentation / proposal / contract status) <100 of 7,000 total
Calls made by Mike (sales manager) in last 30 days 34 (~1/day)

HubSpot is not being maintained. Most contacts lack lead status. The sales manager's activity level is low relative to the pipeline opportunity.


Client Complaints & Rebuttals

"There's a backlog of work"

Rebuttal: The agency is waiting on Bluepoint for 15+ items. Evoke's weekly agenda explicitly lists items pending client action. The only item pending from the agency side at time of call was a minor background update on the Texas page.

"The LinkedIn poll took too long"

Rebuttal: Bluepoint submitted copy that exceeded LinkedIn's character limits. The agency revised and returned it; Bluepoint took 1.5 weeks to approve the revision.

"Website edits aren't reflected"

Rebuttal: Bluepoint held back their edit list for two months despite repeated requests. When submitted (Feb 10), it was 16 pages. Completed within three weeks — a reasonable turnaround for the volume.

Acknowledged: Pages were pushed in a suboptimal state while Karly was out. Ad traffic was being driven to them incorrectly. Status: Pages have since been rebuilt and reviewed; traffic is now directed to improved versions.

"Social post got our business model wrong"

Acknowledged: A draft post described reverse ATMs as leased to business owners and implied revenue sharing — both incorrect.
Correct model: Bluepoint owns the reverse ATMs. Business owners benefit from increased foot traffic and elimination of cash handling — not revenue. This was a knowledge gap, not a process failure.


Communication Overhead Analysis

Mark calculated that in the last 30 days, Bluepoint-related communication (105 emails × 10 min + 4 meetings × 60 min + Slack) totaled approximately 27.5 hours. At a blended rate of ~$150/hr, that's ~$4,125 — nearly the entire $5,000 monthly fee — consumed by correspondence alone, before any billable work is counted.

This framing was prepared to illustrate that the client is getting significantly more attention than the retainer covers.


Call Strategy for Mark → Wade

  1. Open with a direct question: "Tell me exactly what you're getting that you don't want, and what you're not getting that you do want."
  2. Acknowledge legitimate misses (Google Ads landing pages, ATM business model error) without over-apologizing.
  3. Present the marketing wins (SEO, traffic, LinkedIn leads) as evidence the agency is delivering.
  4. Show the HubSpot data to redirect accountability: 1 active deal, 34 calls/month from the sales manager, <100 qualified contacts out of 7,000.
  5. Show the Salesforce ABM dashboards to demonstrate campaign health and engagement.
  6. Propose the LinkedIn outreach task: 11 contacts/day, 1 hour/day — Mike or Wade personally, or delegate to sales team.
  7. Ask the growth question: Expand the ABM list (horizontal) or add more sequence steps (vertical)?
  8. Frame the partnership: "Let us do the marketing. You focus on sales. That's how this works."

Action Items


Emerging Initiative: AI Content Governance ("Client Brain")

A broader process improvement surfaced during prep. Client-specific institutional knowledge (business model rules, forbidden topics, preferred terminology) is not being systematically captured or used to govern content output.

Proposed solution:
- Add a dedicated "learnings / institutional knowledge" section to each client's record in Client Brain
- Conduct a 30-minute discovery call with each client to seed the knowledge base
- Use AI to check all content against client-specific rules before delivery
- At the end of each client call, capture: what did we learn this week about their business, their customers, their language?

Examples of rules that would be captured:
- Bluepoint: Reverse ATMs are owned by Bluepoint, not leased. Business owners gain foot traffic, not revenue.
- Citrus America: Do not mention "peel oil." Use "squeezing," not "crushing." Do not use "chocolate" — must be "chocolate flavored."

Next step: Mark to schedule a call with Evoke and Gavin to design and roll out this process.

See also: [1] · [2]


Sources

  1. Ai Content Governance
  2. Index
  3. Abm Campaign Salesforce
  4. Client Reporting Standards