they-ask-you-answer

name	they-ask-you-answer
description	Use when building an evidence-led buyer-question content and assignment-selling system for a premium agency; do not use for writing a single article without the broader research, sales-use, and publishing context.
metadata	{"portable":true,"compatible_with":["claude-code","codex"]}

They Ask You Answer

Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com, [phone].

Use when

• A premium agency needs buyer questions turned into an authority library, editorial priorities, video plan, and assignment-selling workflow.
• Sales and content teams need a shared evidence register connecting Big 5/Selling 7 assets to real objections and buying stages.

Do not use when

• The request is one article, landing page, or sales document without system planning; use the relevant writing skill.
• The request is social channel execution; use social-media after the authority plan is approved.
• No buyer-question or sales evidence exists; run research rather than inventing a calendar.

Required Inputs

Input	Source	Required	If absent
Ideal buyers, offer, sales process, objections, and qualification criteria	Discovery and sales evidence	yes	Stop the editorial plan and request buyer/sales inputs.
Buyer questions from calls, search, email, support, and proposals	First-party/research sources	yes	Produce a research plan, not fabricated questions.
Claims, case evidence, pricing posture, owners, and publishing capacity	Client/agency records	yes	Exclude unsupported claims and reduce cadence to feasible scope.

Workflow

1. Read the current business context and the concrete task to solve.
2. Stop editorial planning when buyer-question evidence, claim proof, ownership, or publishing capacity is missing.
3. Use only the relevant detailed guidance and references for the request at hand.
4. Use premium-commercial-writing when buyer-question content must become premium website copy, SEO/GEO pages, articles, sales documents, or offer-page sections.
5. Prioritise questions by buyer frequency, sales friction, strategic fit, evidence, and feasible publishing capacity.
6. Decide format, proof, CTA, assignment-selling use, owner, cadence, and measurement for each selected item.
7. Validate claims, confidentiality, native-language needs, SEO intent, and sales adoption before handoff.
8. Recovery: if proof or capacity fails, reduce scope, preserve the research register, and rerun prioritisation after evidence or ownership is restored.

Quality standards

• Every priority question traces to buyer or sales evidence and an intended sales/content use.
• Claims, examples, prices, results, and case material are verified, consented, or excluded.
• Cadence reflects named owners and sustainable production capacity.

Anti-patterns

• Inventing buyer questions. Fix: trace them to calls, search, email, support, or proposals.
• Publishing claims without proof. Fix: verify, qualify, or remove them.
• Producing content with no sales use. Fix: assign a buying stage, owner, and touchpoint.
• Padding an infeasible calendar. Fix: reduce cadence to named capacity.
• Exposing confidential client material. Fix: obtain approval, anonymise safely, or exclude it.
• Do not produce generic framework dumps with no decision made.
• Do not invent facts to complete the output.
• Do not ignore the actual audience, offer, or business constraints.
• Do not invent buyer quotations, results, prices, case studies, or expertise.
• Do not publish transparency content that breaches confidentiality, consent, or client agreements.

Outputs

Artefact	Consumer	Observable acceptance condition
Buyer-question and content-priority register	Sales, content, SEO, and leadership	Every item traces to evidence, maps to a buying stage/use, and has an owner.
Editorial and assignment-selling plan	Writers and sales team	Names format, brief, proof, CTA, sales use, channel, cadence, and measurement for each item.

Evidence Produced

Evidence	Format	Acceptance condition
Question provenance register	Source, date/range, wording/theme, frequency, confidence	Distinguishes direct buyer language from editorial inference.
Content-use review	Asset, sales touchpoint, usage, outcome, revision	Does not claim pipeline impact without attributable evidence.

Capability Contract

Research and planning default to read-only access to approved sales/content evidence. Drafting is allowed when requested; publishing, contacting buyers, using confidential material, changing CRM records, or spending requires explicit authority and consent.

Degraded Mode

When interviews, call notes, search evidence, case proof, or publishing capacity is unavailable, return a qualified research plan and mark inferred questions not assessed as buyer truth.

Decision Rules

Choice	Action	Failure or risk avoided
Repeated high-friction buyer question	Prioritise a direct evidence-backed answer	Editorial irrelevance
Answer needs confidential or unsupported proof	Reframe, anonymise with approval, or stop	Breach or fabrication
Asset can shorten a named sales step	Add assignment use and owner	Content disconnected from sales
Capacity cannot sustain cadence	Reduce frequency and protect quality	Content churn

Worked Example

If proposal calls repeatedly ask why a premium site costs more, trace the question to call notes, build a comparison article with verified scope and trade-offs, assign it before discovery follow-up, and measure qualified follow-through. Do not invent a price range or promise close-rate improvement.

References

• Use references/buyer-question-research-method.md when turning buyer questions into strategy, SEO, trust, and content inputs.
• Use references/big-5-article-templates.md and references/assignment-selling-templates.md for Sheridan's Big 5 article structures and the Assignment Selling sales-cycle templates.
• Use references/content-inc-audience-model.md (Pulizzi) when building the agency's own audience-first publishing strategy: sweet spot, content tilt, the base, MVA, the 18-month runway, monetisation paths, the 7-step Content Inc. model.
• Use references/show-your-work-practices.md (Kleon) for the daily-dispatch discipline, "work behind the work" sharing, three-act story shape, teaching-as-marketing — applied to a B2B agency register.
• Use references/agency-content-plan.md when designing the agency's own website and authority library: 6 site layers, cornerstone + cluster architecture, where each Selling 7 video lives, the 18-month build order.
• Use ../premium-commercial-writing/references/blog-and-authority-writing.md when buyer questions become authority articles, pillar pages, sales-enablement posts, or content clusters.
• Use ../premium-commercial-writing/references/document-and-sales-enablement-writing.md when buyer-question content becomes pre-call assignments, sales guides, proposal inserts, lead magnets, or one-pagers.
• Use references/editorial-calendar-and-rhythm.md when installing the recurring weekly/monthly/quarterly/annual cadence: Dream 100 ritual, sales follow-up cycle, case-study collection, referral asks, pipeline review, 30/60/90-day proof of life.

Continental publishing rhythm (Phase 12 integration)

The editorial calendar integrates with Phase 12's continental-presence workstream:

• Quarterly cornerstone authority piece. Africa-specific topic (low-bandwidth performance, mobile-money UX, multilingual design at scale, African trust patterns). Published on the agency site and offered to one African design/developer media outlet (TechCabal, TechPoint Africa, WeeTracker, Disrupt Africa, Smashing Magazine African contributors).
• Quarterly open data or benchmark release. Tied to the public scorecard regeneration; each release names a concrete metric, pattern, or finding.
• Quarterly community guest contribution. One piece from an invited African contributor per quarter; reciprocates the authority-sharing posture.
• Conference talk or hosted workshop. At least one per year at DevFest Africa, DroidConKE, PyCon Africa, ForLoop Africa, Africa Tech Summit, or a sector conference.
• Media relationships. Relationships maintained with at least three African design or developer media outlets.

Publishing cadence feeds and is fed by the quarterly public scorecard regeneration and the cross-client experimentation review.