A home-and-garden show, a couple picturing summer on a deck that currently bounces when the dog crosses it.
The setup
The show floor is full of summer. This couple's actual deck has a wobbling rail and a stair stringer the frost has been working on for years — but what they're shopping for is the picture: dinners out back, coffee before the house wakes up, the dog asleep in the last of the sun.
This round runs the documented event play on the trade that sells a picture: qualify first — territory, project, timeline — and set the appointment at their patio door, where the probing walks the boards with both decision makers.
“We're just looking around, honestly.”
What the round trains
Qualifying at the event: territory, project, and timeline first — then setting a real appointment with all decision makers present.
The round trains qualification with a want, not a need: nobody's deck is an emergency, so the timeline question does the real work — when is this backyard supposed to exist? The drill ends with a set appointment or an honest no, never a brochure.
How Spar scores it
Every round ends in a scorecard — your language, your move, and whether both decision makers stayed in the conversation. This round is graded against the documented qualification — territory, project, timeline, and the set appointment.
The grade turns on the landing: territory, project, and timeline established in order, and a set appointment with both partners named. Selling the picture at the booth — sketches, figures, finishes — is marked down as the leak it is.
The language scan runs on every round: the system’s words — approve, overall investment, work order, monthly investment plan, move forward — or the scorecard shows you where the wrong words leaked in.
Go deeper: the deep dive — The call center — setting the appointment; this trade’s other drill — Missing Decision Maker; the Decks track — Decks sales training.
Spar’s documented system is trade-agnostic by design: the published position is that the sales psychology and the rebuttals are the same in every in-home trade — only the examples change. This page runs Spar’s documented rounds in a decks setting; it does not present decks-specific scripts.
In sparring, the homeowner pushes back the way yours will — talks back, interrupts, pushes on the money — and the scorecard grades the run against the documented system. Train the decks version until the response is reflex — $29/month. Spar before you knock.