Every downstream instrument in the Voicify "Competitor A or Competitor B" dental AI battlecard system — the slot decision tree, the quarterly refresh, the objection promotion queue, the win-loss debrief stack — depends on field signal the reps actually capture. Without a structured capture workflow, the refresh inherits anecdote instead of data, the discovery brief calibrates against last quarter's instincts, and the slot decision tree's thresholds drift toward whatever the loudest AE remembers from the last deal they lost. The field intel capture workflow is the rep-side counterpart to the battlecard library: five capture points, three artifacts, one feed into the quarterly refresh. It exists so the signal that ends up in the cards is current, structured, and statistically usable.
TL;DR
Five capture points. Three artifacts. One feed into the refresh. Reps capture competitive signal at the discovery brief submit, post-demo debrief, mid-cycle competitor mention, closed-won handoff, and closed-lost debrief. Capture writes into the slot-flip log, the three-tier objection backlog, or the win-loss debrief stack — never free-text CRM notes. Capture is gated inside the CRM deal-stage motion so reps cannot skip it. The AE manager owns weekly compliance review; the quarterly refresh consumes the artifacts directly. Tier 3 objections promote to Tier 2 on three independent mentions in 60 days; Tier 2 promotes to Tier 1 at the quarterly refresh.
Why a Capture Workflow at All
The strongest argument for a structured capture workflow is what happens without one. Reps absorb competitive signal in every dental AI deal — which dental-pure competitor the buyer is also evaluating, which Voicify feature the buyer is fixated on, which objection the buyer keeps circling back to — and most of that signal evaporates between the call and the CRM note. The signal that survives lands as a one-line free-text note in the CRM activity log, where it cannot be counted, aggregated, or compared across reps. Quarterly, sales enablement tries to reconstruct field signal from CRM notes and runs into the same wall: the data is there, but it cannot be queried. The refresh runs on anecdote, the slot decision tree's signal weighting calibrates against memory, and the cards drift toward stale framings nobody has the data to challenge.
The capture workflow solves the structure problem at the point of capture rather than at the point of aggregation. Reps do not write down what they saw in free text and hope it can be parsed later; they pick a capture point inside the existing deal motion and the structured artifact gets the entry. The capture form constrains the shape — slot tag, category tag, reason code from a fixed list — so the data is countable on day one. Aggregation becomes a SQL query against the artifact, not an archaeological dig through unstructured notes.
The Five Capture Points
Capture points are pre-defined inside the existing deal motion. Reps do not improvise them; the points are stage gates or fixed-cadence events the rep is already required to complete. Five points cover the deal lifecycle from discovery through closed-won or closed-lost.
| Capture point | When it fires | What gets captured | Writes into |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Discovery brief submit | Before the discovery call, gate to enter Discovery stage | Initial slot assignment (A or B) from the 12-field brief | Slot-flip log (initial slot row) |
| 2. Post-demo debrief | Within 24 hours of demo, gate to move Demo to Proposal | Actual slot run, slot-flip reason if applicable, new objections heard with slot and category tags | Slot-flip log (actual slot row), objection backlog (Tier 3 new entries) |
| 3. Mid-cycle competitor mention | Anytime a buyer name-drops a competitor not on the original brief | Competitor name, slot reassignment if needed, context one-liner | Slot-flip log (if reassigning), objection backlog (if attached to an objection) |
| 4. Closed-won handoff | At deal close, gate to mark Closed Won | Final slot run, objection that closed the deal, slot-tagged win theme | Win-loss debrief stack (win entry, slot-tagged) |
| 5. Closed-lost debrief | Within 5 days of close-lost, gate to mark Closed Lost | Final slot run, the objection that lost the deal, the competitor that won (if known), slot-tagged loss theme | Win-loss debrief stack (loss entry, slot-tagged) |
Two of the five capture points (discovery brief submit, post-demo debrief) are hard CRM stage gates — the deal physically cannot progress without the entry. One (closed-lost debrief) is a soft gate with a five-day SLA enforced by the AE manager. Two (mid-cycle competitor mention, closed-won handoff) are cadence captures the rep is responsible for triggering. The gating exists because capture compliance collapses immediately if it is optional; the soft gates exist because not every capture point can be tied to a stage transition.
The Three Artifacts
All capture flows into one of three artifacts. The artifacts are deliberately separate because their downstream consumers are different — the slot-flip log feeds the slot decision tree's threshold calibration, the objection backlog feeds the six pre-loaded objections per slot, the win-loss debrief stack feeds the theme synthesis the quarterly refresh runs against the six-category objection map.
The Slot-Flip Log
Owned by the AE manager. Six fields per row: deal ID, date, buyer-account name, brief-assigned slot, actually-run slot, one-line reason code from a fixed list. The reason codes are constrained — new signal surfaced in call, original signal misread, buyer self-corrected on tech stack, dental-pure competitor already in pilot, pricing-tier mismatch, other. The fixed list is what makes the log countable. When 'other' exceeds 10% of entries in a quarter, the reason-code list itself gets an entry added in the next quarterly refresh — the workflow self-extends rather than getting compressed into a useless catch-all.
The Three-Tier Objection Backlog
Owned jointly by AE manager and sales enablement. Three tiers. Tier 1 is the six pre-loaded objections currently on the A-slot and B-slot cards. Tier 2 is candidates being tracked for promotion. Tier 3 is one-off mentions logged at post-demo debrief or mid-cycle capture. Every objection entry has a slot tag (A or B), a category tag from the six-category map, a buyer-account reference, and a date. Tier 3 promotes to Tier 2 on three independent mentions across different reps in a 60-day rolling window. Tier 2 promotes to Tier 1 at the quarterly refresh, displacing a Tier 1 objection that has aged out — defined as a Tier 1 objection that drew zero captures in the prior 90 days.
The Win-Loss Debrief Stack
Owned by sales enablement, sourced by AE manager. One entry per closed-won and closed-lost deal, slot-tagged so the quarterly refresh can read win-rate by slot rather than in aggregate. Each entry references the deal ID, the slot run at close, the objection that closed or lost the deal, the competitor that won (if a loss), and one paragraph of unstructured context the rep adds — the only free-text field in the entire capture workflow. The structured fields feed the refresh; the unstructured paragraph feeds the qualitative review at the day-seven owner meeting. Both have a role.
How Promotion Decisions Work
The promotion rules exist so the objection list on the cards reflects current field signal rather than the objections the team has always carried. Tier 3 to Tier 2 requires three independent mentions in 60 days — independent meaning three different reps, not three deals from one rep who is obsessed with one objection. The 60-day window prevents single-quarter noise from promoting a Tier 3 that will not recur. Tier 2 to Tier 1 happens only at the quarterly refresh, with two conditions: the Tier 2 entry has sustained mention rate across the full quarter, and there is a Tier 1 objection eligible to age out. The displacement requirement is deliberate — the cards always carry six pre-loaded objections per slot, and the list does not grow indefinitely. If no Tier 1 is eligible to age out but multiple Tier 2 entries are eligible to promote, the Tier 2 entry with the highest slot-tagged mention count wins. Ties break on most-recent mention date.
Capture Compliance and Enforcement
The workflow falls apart immediately if capture is optional. Two enforcement points keep compliance steady. The first is structural: discovery brief submit and post-demo debrief are deal-stage gates in CRM — the rep cannot advance the deal without the entry. The second is process: the AE manager reviews capture completeness as part of weekly deal review. Closed-lost deals without a debrief entry within five days get flagged; mid-cycle competitor mentions that surface in pipeline reviews but were not logged get a same-day backfill request. The AE manager is the steady-state owner of capture compliance. Sales enablement only intervenes when a structural problem with the capture form itself is causing the misses — for example, when reps consistently log 'other' on a slot-flip reason code, that is a form problem, not a rep problem, and it gets fixed in the next quarterly refresh.
What the Capture Workflow Is Not
The capture workflow is not a research function. Reps do not go scout new competitors, generate hypotheses about the dental AI market, or write narrative analyses of Voicify's product direction. Those are product marketing's job, and they show up in the quarterly refresh through a separate input. Reps capture what happens in deals they are already running. The asymmetry is the point: reps have the bandwidth to log structured entries inside motion they are already completing, but they do not have the bandwidth to do parallel competitive research on top of their quota. The workflow respects that constraint by keeping capture inside existing deal motion and pushing research work to the function that actually owns it.