The PRACTIS™ Method
Sales methods train the conversation. The PRACTIS™ Method trains the performer — before, during, and after every customer conversation.
The PRACTIS™ Method is a published standard for field sales performance. It defines seven stages a rep moves through in every customer conversation and nine dimensions a coach observes across them. Score hands one lesson back to Presence, which makes it a loop rather than a sequence.
The game has nine dimensions. Most methods train three.
Legacy methods script the conversation, and they script it well. But field performance is decided before the conversation starts, after it ends, and across a whole season in the same territory. That is why training demonstrates beautifully on Monday and has thinned out by Thursday. The seven stages were not chosen to fit an acronym — they were chosen against a complete map of what actually decides the outcome.
- Inner Game
- The rep's state, and their ability to reset it. What a coach watches for Does performance at the fortieth conversation match the fourth?
- Human
- Reading the person in front of you and meeting them there. What a coach watches for Does the rep adjust pace and register to the person, or run one script at everyone?
- Trust
- The buyer keeps control throughout. What a coach watches for Can the customer end the conversation at any point without friction?
- Information
- What is said is both truthful and valuable. What a coach watches for Would every claim survive the customer checking it?
- Tactical
- The right move at the right moment. What a coach watches for Does the rep read sequence, or fire everything they know at once?
- Competitive
- The courage to actually ask. What a coach watches for Does the conversation end in a clear ask, or trail off into a hint?
- Score
- What gets counted, and what gets locked. What a coach watches for Is the agreement specific enough to survive the drive home?
- Learning
- Every conversation improves the next one. What a coach watches for Can the rep name what they changed since this morning?
- Long Game
- The territory is the account, not the address. What a coach watches for Does a no leave the street more open or less?
One loop, not a checklist
Two-forty on a July Tuesday. The last door shut hard enough to rattle the glass. What decides what happens at the next one — the rep’s mood, or a method? That question is the whole system. Fifty conversations a day become fifty repetitions only if something carries forward between them.
Score hands one lesson back to Presence. The ten-second self-review between conversations. Never let the last one answer the next one.
Underneath these seven words sits the engine that installs and measures it — private practice, coaching, certification, scoring. Reps memorise frameworks. Teams adopt standards.
The seven stages
Each stage names one law, one move, and one thing it changes on the operator’s scoreboard. Every stage has its own page with the research behind it, the physical execution, and the failure modes worth coaching.
- Stage 1 of 7
Presence Before the conversation
People buy the person before the product.
The move
Ten seconds before the knock: drop the last conversation with one exhale, set one intention, fix the walk. Arrive as a guest, not a survivor.
What it moves for the operator
This is the stage that governs variance. A team without a trained reset produces a strong morning and a weak afternoon from the same headcount, and no pipeline report will tell you why.
Primary dimensions Inner Game · Learning
Read the full standard for Presence - Stage 2 of 7
Reveal During the conversation
Honesty is the pattern-break.
The move
Name what you are before they wonder, then offer a real time-box with a real exit. The exit has to be genuine — if they take it, you go.
“I'm literally a salesperson at your door, so I'll be quick. Ninety seconds, then you can send me off. Fair?”
What it moves for the operator
Reveal is where most conversations are lost before they start. It converts the first fifteen seconds from a door being closed into a conversation being permitted, which is the cheapest conversion gain available to a field team.
Primary dimensions Trust · Human
Read the full standard for Reveal - Stage 3 of 7
Agency During the conversation
Agency removes resistance before it exists.
The move
Give what a stranger never gives — value and control. One free, checkable observation about their property, theirs to keep either way. Then hand over the fork and let their answer decide.
“Want the sixty-second version — or should I just leave you the note?”
What it moves for the operator
Agency is the difference between managing objections and never generating them. It also shows up after the sale: decisions people make freely hold, which moves cancellation rate, not just close rate.
Primary dimensions Trust · Human
Read the full standard for Agency - Stage 4 of 7
Clarify During the conversation
People pay to kill roots, not symptoms.
The move
Start with their homework — what did you find when you looked into this? Then three questions deep: what they are seeing, what they have already tried, and what the situation looks like if nothing changes. Say the root and the stake back in their own words. If there is no real problem, say so and leave well.
What it moves for the operator
Clarify is what stops a pitch from arriving before a problem is established. Teams that skip it discount to close, because they are selling a product against a price rather than a fix against a cost.
Primary dimensions Information · Human
Read the full standard for Clarify - Stage 5 of 7
Truth During the conversation
Truth gets stronger after verification.
The move
Present only what fixes their root, in ninety seconds. Real price, first pass, said like a fact rather than an apology. Then engage the alternative directly — tell them exactly what to compare and on which terms.
“You should compare this. Here is exactly what to compare: scope, frequency, warranty, and total annual cost.”
What it moves for the operator
Truth is what makes a quote survive a second opinion. It trades a small amount of same-day conversion for a large amount of conversion that does not unwind a week later.
Primary dimensions Information · Trust
Read the full standard for Truth - Stage 6 of 7
Invite During the conversation
The ask is a gift, not an ambush.
The move
Two honest doors — start now, or wait with the true cost of waiting stated plainly. The walkaway said once, and meant. Then the direct ask. Then silence, held. Every conversation ends in a yes, a scheduled return, or a clean release. Never a fade.
What it moves for the operator
The most expensive habit in field sales is the conversation that ends without an ask. Invite is the single stage most directly attached to conversion rate, because it converts completed conversations that currently produce nothing.
Primary dimensions Competitive · Tactical
Read the full standard for Invite - Stage 7 of 7
Score After the conversation
Every conversation trains the next one.
The move
On a yes, lock it: restate the agreement in their words, set exact next steps, pre-empt the second-guessing, ask about the referral. On a no, leave well — the free value stands, and a real return is planted. A no only scores if something was banked: a date, a name, or a leave-behind that was kept. Either way, ten seconds: one thing that worked, one thing that adjusts. Handed straight back to Presence.
What it moves for the operator
Score is two things at once: the stage that protects revenue already won, and the only stage that compounds. It is where cancellation rate and referral rate are decided, and where a rep with ten years of experience diverges from a rep with one year repeated ten times.
Primary dimensions Score · Learning · Long Game
Read the full standard for Score
Where to move. What to see.
Seven stages tell a rep where they are. Nine dimensions tell a coach what to look at. This is a teaching and coaching map, not a rigid scoring formula — it gets piloted with real teams, measured, and revised on evidence.
| Stage | Primary dimensions | Supporting |
|---|---|---|
| Presence | Inner Game · Learning | Human · Competitive |
| Reveal | Trust · Human | Information · Tactical · Competitive |
| Agency | Trust · Human | Tactical · Long Game |
| Clarify | Information · Human | Trust · Tactical · Competitive |
| Truth | Information · Trust | Tactical · Human · Long Game |
| Invite | Competitive · Tactical | Trust · Human · Information |
| Score | Score · Learning · Long Game | Trust · Information |
Four reps fail to ask for the sale. Four different fixes.
This is what the dimensions buy. Every one of these looks identical on a pipeline report and identical to a manager standing at the end of the driveway. Each one needs a different conversation on Monday.
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Rep A
Understands the problem completely, and never asks.
Competitive
Not a knowledge gap. Train the ask itself, and show them the documented odds they are misreading.
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Rep B
Asks confidently, before the customer has a problem worth solving.
Tactical · Information
Sequence, not courage. The discovery has to land before the ask exists.
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Rep C
Asks with urgency they invented on the spot.
Trust
Remove the fake deadline. A verified buyer who catches one invented pressure discounts everything else that was said.
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Rep D
Gets the yes, leaves the terms vague, and the job cancels on Thursday.
Score · Long Game
The ask was fine. The lock was missing. Coach the close-out, not the close.
Nine dimensions. Where does your team actually stand?
Most teams have never been scored against a standard, so nobody can say which reps are ready and which are being sent out to find out. We will baseline your team against the nine dimensions and tell you what we find, including the parts that are already working.
Or take the standard and run it yourself — it is free, and that option is real. Nothing on this page is gated, and nothing below it requires a conversation with us.
Three layers, one system
When someone asks which of these is the methodology, the answer is all three, in layers. A standard nobody installs is theory. A drill with no standard behind it is just activity. And neither one tells you who is ready.
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What
The PRACTIS™ Method
The field selling system. Seven stages covering the nine dimensions of field performance in one loop — from the ten seconds before the knock to the ten-second review after it.
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How
Script-to-Scrimmage
The process that installs it. Drill the language until it is automatic, then prove it under pressure against an AI customer. Reading a method and running it are different things, and only one of them changes a conversation. The sequence is covered by four issued US patents in force, out of five issued to date.
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Proof
Certification
The evidence it is installed. Reps certify against the Method rather than against a completed course, and the engine scores every play. A book cannot tell you who is ready. A standard with an engine behind it can.
Script-to-Scrimmage is covered by four issued US patents in force
The Method is published open and free to run. The process for installing it — drilling the language until it is automatic, then testing it under pressure against a simulated customer — is patented. One continuous family, with earliest priority running back to 2009. The patents are held by ROLR, Inc. and used by Practis under a perpetual licence, not owned by us. Five have issued in total; one has since lapsed for unpaid maintenance fees, which is why the count above is four rather than five. The numbers are here so you can read the claims and the current status yourself rather than take the word “patented” from a vendor.
The full patent family, and what it covers- US 10,079,993 B2 System for juxtaposition of separately recorded videos Issued September 18, 2018
- US 10,636,413 B2 System for communication skills training using juxtaposition of recorded takes Issued April 28, 2020
- US 11,030,992 B2 System for communication skills training using juxtaposition of recorded takes Issued June 8, 2021
- US 11,848,003 B2 System for communication skills training using juxtaposition of recorded takes Issued December 19, 2023
- US 12,148,416 B2 System for communication skills training Issued November 19, 2024
Great methods, built for a different game
SPIN, Sandler, Challenger and MEDDIC were designed for booked B2B meetings, and they are good at that. A scheduled call with a known buyer and a buying committee is a genuinely different problem from forty unscheduled conversations on a street. None of these was built for the second one, and none of them claims to be.
| Method | Built for | Where it is strongest |
|---|---|---|
| SPIN | Developing a buyer’s problem and its implications inside a booked, complex B2B sale. | The question sequence, backed by the largest observational study of selling ever run. |
| Sandler | Qualifying hard and keeping the seller out of a supplicant position. | Mutual qualification, and the discipline to walk away from a bad fit early. |
| Challenger | Reframing how an informed buyer understands their own business. | Teaching a commercial insight the buyer had not already reached. |
| MEDDIC | Qualifying and forecasting a long enterprise deal across a buying committee. | Rigour about economic buyer, criteria, and champion before a forecast is trusted. |
What the field adds
Three things change when the conversation is short, unscheduled, and in person. There is no meeting to prepare for, so the rep’s state on arrival is the preparation. There is no follow-up sequence to recover in, so the exit has to do the work in ten seconds. And the same street gets worked again next season, so how a rep leaves a no is an asset or a liability rather than a footnote. Those are the three places the PRACTIS™ Method spends most of its attention, because they are the three that a methodology written for the conference room had no reason to cover.
What a standard moves, and where
Six outcomes, each traced to the stage that produces it. An operator should be able to read this section and know which number on their own dashboard ought to move first, and which stage to look at when it does not.
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Faster ramp
Seven stages, one card, and simulation before a rep touches a paid lead — readiness measured in days, in industries that lose reps in weeks.
Presence · Certification
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Higher conversion
The conversation that ends without an ask is eliminated, the presentation is locked to the established problem, and resistance is prevented rather than managed.
Agency · Invite
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Fewer cancellations
The agreement is locked before the rep leaves, with exact expectations and the second-guessing pre-empted.
Score
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Lower variance
A trained standard beats the talent lottery, and the afternoon slump is something a team trains against rather than accepts.
Presence · The loop
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More referrals
The referral ask on every yes, and a no that still banks a name, a date, or a leave-behind that was kept.
Score
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Territory value
Streets compound. Reputation, return permission, and logged assets outlive any individual rep.
Long Game
Take it. Run it. Certify against it.
The PRACTIS™ Method is published open. Run it with your team, teach it to your managers, build on it, adapt it to your trade’s language, and certify your own people against it. There is no licence to sign, no fee, and no permission to ask for.
We published it because field sales did not have a named standard, not because we wanted to own one. Every trade with a real standard — electrical, aviation, medicine — got safer and better paid once the standard was written down and argued about in public. A standard that only its author may use is a product with a standard’s vocabulary, and this industry has had enough of those.
If you want to credit it
Attribution is welcome and not required. If it is useful to point people at the source:
Based on the PRACTIS™ Method — practis.ai/method
This is a working standard
You are reading v0.1, last updated August 10, 2026. It will be revised as instrumented evidence comes in, and revisions will be dated. Books do not version. Operating systems do — and a standard that cannot be corrected in public is not a standard, it is a brochure with numbered sections.
Tell us where it is wrong
If you run it and something does not hold in your trade, that is the most useful thing you can send us. The stage that survives contact with a hostile territory is the stage worth keeping.
Send us a correctionQuestions about the Method
What is the PRACTIS™ Method?
The PRACTIS™ Method is a published standard for field sales performance. It defines seven stages a rep moves through in every customer conversation — Presence, Reveal, Agency, Clarify, Truth, Invite, Score — and nine dimensions a coach observes across them. Score hands one lesson back to Presence, which makes it a loop rather than a sequence.
What do the seven letters in PRACTIS stand for?
Presence, Reveal, Agency, Clarify, Truth, Invite, and Score. Presence happens before the conversation, Reveal through Invite happen during it, and Score happens after it and feeds the next one.
How is this different from SPIN, Sandler, Challenger, or MEDDIC?
Those methods were built for booked B2B meetings, and they are good at that. The PRACTIS™ Method is built for field sales — fifty short conversations a day, no scheduled meeting, no buying committee. It also covers ground those methods were not designed to address: the rep’s state before the conversation, the review after it, and the territory across a season.
Is the PRACTIS™ Method free to use?
Yes. The full standard is published on this page at no cost, with nothing gated. You can run it with your team, teach it, build on it, and certify against it. It was published because field sales had no named standard, not to create something to license.
Do I need to buy Practis to run the PRACTIS™ Method?
No. The Method is what reps learn and it stands on its own. Practis is the engine that installs and measures it — private practice against an AI customer, certification, and scoring on every play. Teams run the Method without us; the engine is what makes readiness measurable rather than assumed.
What are the nine dimensions for?
The seven stages tell a rep where they are in a conversation. The nine dimensions tell a coach what to look at. They matter because one visible failure has several different causes: four reps can all fail to ask for the sale for four different reasons, and each needs a different intervention.
Does the Method work for teams that are not door-to-door?
The stages are written for field sales, where the conversation is short, unscheduled, and in person — canvassing, in-home consultation, and technicians who sell at the kitchen table. The underlying laws hold more broadly, but the examples and the timing are built for the field, and we would rather be specific than universal.
Why is the Method versioned?
This is v0.1, last updated August 10, 2026. It is published as a working standard rather than a finished book, and it will be revised as instrumented evidence comes in. Books do not version. Operating systems do, and a standard that cannot be corrected is not a standard.
Where are the results numbers?
Deliberately absent. The six outcomes named on this page are the mechanisms we expect to move and the stages that move them; the figures come from instrumented pilots, and we will publish them with denominators when they are validated. A standard that overclaims is a standard that gets audited.
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