The Sales Extraction Audit documents how a founder personally sells, before that founder hires a salesperson. The audit is for B2B founders who close most deals themselves and are planning a first sales hire. The audit produces a written playbook set a stranger can sell from, and a verdict on whether the founder is ready to hire.
For founders about to make their first sales hire
Get how you sell out of your head and onto paper, before you hire someone to do it
The Sales Extraction Audit turns the way you personally sell into five documents a stranger can actually work from, and ends with a written answer on whether you are ready to hire. Three weeks. From $3,399.
Fit check
This is for you if:
- You run a B2B company somewhere between $100k and $2.5m ARR.
- You still close most deals yourself, and your calendar is basically the forecast.
- You are planning a first or second sales hire in the next six months.
- Nothing about how you sell is written down anywhere someone else could use.
If you are pre-revenue there is nothing to extract yet, so start with the free diagnostic and come back when deals are closing. If you already have sales managers in place, your constraint is wider than this one handoff, and the PACED Review is the right instrument instead.
How it works.
Three weeks, four steps, and you end with documents that have been tested rather than just written.
- 01We record you selling. Two or three working sessions, about ninety minutes each, walking your live deals while you actually run them. Not a workshop: the process worth writing down is the one you use, not the one you remember using.
- 02I write it up. Five documents, drafted from the recordings, in your language. You correct them rather than write them.
- 03A stranger tries to use them. I hand the documents to a cold reader and score what they can genuinely do from the paper alone. Two tests decide it: can they build a hundred-name prospect list from your ideal-customer profile, the ICP document, and can they send your second email?
- 04You get a straight answer. Ready, and you get the eight-week ramp plan for the person you hire. Not ready, and you get the specific work to do, and a free re-run in three months.
What you walk away with.
Five documents, each with a job. The set is not finished when it is written, but when a stranger passes both tests with it:
- The ICP specificationWho you sell to, in observable criteria a stranger could apply: title, company shape, trigger events. The test: they could build your prospect list without asking you anything
- The outreach playbookHow you reach them: sequences, scripts and cadence, written so someone who has never sent your second email could send it
- The discovery frameworkThe questions in order, what a qualifying answer sounds like, and the red flags that mean walk away
- The objection libraryWhat buyers actually say, what each objection really means, and the answer that works
- The closing processProposal, presentation, negotiation boundaries, and the handoff into onboarding
Plus the two things you actually decide with: a written verdict on whether you are ready to hire, and the eight-week ramp plan for the person you hire.
If you are not ready, I will tell you.
That is the point of the engagement, not a caveat at the bottom of it. You get the reasons in writing, the specific work to do, and a free re-run in three months once you have done it. The fee stands either way: what you are buying is the answer, not the hire.
Three ways to do it.
Same audit at the base of all three. The difference is how far in you want me.
Handover ends on purpose. By month three you have the content, the tools, and a quarter of supervised practice: the difference between a technical founder and a manager of salespeople. If it needs to run longer, we're having a different conversation about a different engagement.
I'm Hassaan Ahmad.
I've spent the last thirteen years selling enterprise software, and the four before that building a company of my own to 80 staff. I've carried the number, hired and fired, and run teams. I do this work myself: two clients a month, no associates. The full history is on my LinkedIn.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Sales Extraction Audit?
The Sales Extraction Audit is a three-week, fixed-fee engagement that turns a founder's personal selling into five documents: the ICP specification, outreach playbook, discovery framework, objection library and closing process. Each is tested before it is called finished, and the audit ends with a written verdict on whether you are ready to make your first sales hire.
What do Extract, Install and Handover cost?
Extract, the audit alone, is $3,399 fixed. Install, which adds the sales process built and running in your CRM, is $4,199 fixed. Handover is $5,499 a month for exactly three months, $16,497 in total, and includes everything: the audit, the CRM build, a tracked landing page, the first sales deck, and weekly pipeline reviews with rep-management coaching.
What does a failed first sales hire actually cost?
A failed first sales hire costs you the recruiter's fee plus every month of salary you pay before the failure is undeniable. Contingency fees typically run 15 to 25% of first-year base salary (Paraform, 2026), and the average fee across Top Echelon's network was 21.5%. On the months: average ramp runs 9.1 months without structured onboarding, against 5.7 months with it (Sales Management Association), and ramp is about how long it takes before a bad hire is undeniable. On an $80,000 base at those middle figures, that is $17,200 in fees and roughly $60,700 in salary: just under $78,000, before you count your own time. The long version of this argument walks the arithmetic with your own numbers.
Why do this before the hire rather than after?
Extraction before the hire is what lets you tell whether the person or the process failed. Without documents there is no standard to measure a new rep against, so a slow first quarter is unreadable: you wait, the average ramp runs 6.2 months (Bridge Group, 2026) while the recruiter's guarantee window closes at ninety days for roughly 45% of firms (Revenue Bench, 2026), and you learn nothing you can use on the next hire.
Can I not just write this myself, or have AI write it?
A founder can write a playbook themselves, and many do. The difference here is the test rather than the text: documents are only finished when a stranger can build a prospect list and send your second email from them alone. A fifteen-page document that has never been handed to someone who was not in the room is not yet a playbook.
How is it different from the PACED Review?
The PACED Review examines the whole revenue engine across five gates. The Sales Extraction Audit is the same tier of work aimed at one moment: the handoff from founder-led selling to a first hire. Same price, same rigour, narrower target. If your constraint is wider than that handoff, the Review is the right instrument.
What happens if the audit finds we are not ready to hire?
A not-ready verdict comes in writing with the specific reasons, a prescribed work list in priority order, and a free re-run three months later once the work is done. The fee stands: what you are buying is the answer, not the hire. A not-ready verdict is a normal outcome, and usually the cheaper one.
What do the three weeks actually involve?
The Sales Extraction Audit runs as two to three recorded working sessions around your live deals, roughly ninety minutes each, with drafting in between. You correct documents rather than write them. By the end of week three you have the five documents, the test results, the verdict and the ramp plan.
Sources
- Paraform, contingency recruiting guide, April 2026: contingency fees "typically fall between 15% and 25% of the placed candidate's first-year base salary". https://www.paraform.com/blog/contingency-recruiting-guide
- Top Echelon: 21.5% average placement fee across its network. The survey does not state what the percentage is calculated on, so it is used here as a mid-band figure, not a rate. https://topechelon.com/blog/typical-placement-recruitment-fees-average/
- Sales Management Association: average ramp 9.1 months without structured onboarding, 5.7 months with it. The measure is time to productivity. https://salesmanagement.org/blog/onboardings-impact-on-sales-productivity/
- Bridge Group, 2026 AE compensation and quota report: 6.2-month average ramp, 158 B2B companies. https://blog.bridgegroupinc.com/2026-ae-compensation-quota-ai-metrics
- Revenue Bench, placement guarantees explained, July 2026: "Ninety days is the most common. In TopEchelon's survey of recruiting firms, roughly 45 percent use a 90-day guarantee." https://revenuebench.io/guides/placement-guarantees-explained
- Founder Path, US SaaS account executive salary benchmarks, July 2026: $75,000 median base and $87,240 average, across 1,075 verified salaries. https://founderpath.com/salary-benchmarks/saas/account-executive
Book a chemistry chat.
Fifteen minutes, free, no deck. You tell me where your deals actually come from and I tell you honestly whether this is right for you now, and which of the three fits. If it is not right, I will say so and point you at what is.