Retainer kit
The engagement after the audit is delivered.
One payment of $149. Nine editable files you download and keep, with no subscription and no account.
Files
9 files
Formats
Word, Excel and Markdown
Method included
None. That is the course.
Licence
One person, your own work product
For a consultant who has delivered an AI-search visibility audit, been paid for it, and now has to decide what the next twelve months look like.
It contains no audit method. If you have not delivered an audit yet, there is nothing here to operate and the course is where to start.
Turn one delivered audit into a recurring engagement with a fixed cycle, a defensible comparison between cycles, and an ending you can plan.
Each file is listed with what it holds and, more usefully, what it forces into the open. Most of what goes wrong in a retainer is a conversation nobody had.
retainer-agreement-template.docx
Word
The recurring engagement: what each cycle delivers, what is excluded, the fee, the notice period and the renewal point.
Section 5 states what the provider does not control, in the document rather than in a conversation. Section 3 makes you list the exclusions before a client finds the gap.
cycle-operating-calendar.xlsx
Excel
Eight tabs: a Read Me plus seven working sheets, being the engagement register, cycle calendar, re-observation set, change log, scope requests, review agenda and renewal decision.
The change log has a column for what a change does to comparability, so altering the question set becomes a dated decision with a consequence rather than a quiet edit.
monthly-cycle-runbook.md
Markdown
The cycle day by day: open collection, collect, compare, draft, check, deliver.
It tells you when to skip a cycle and say so, rather than produce a report to justify an invoice.
quarterly-review-runbook.md
Markdown
How the quarterly review is prepared from the records and run as a decision meeting.
Two questions asked out loud, the first being whether the work still answers a question the client acts on. Hearing no in month four is better than in month eleven.
client-cycle-update-template.docx
Word
The two-page document the client reads each cycle: condition and evidence on page one, consequence, action and the decisions you need on page two.
The consequence section requires you to state what the evidence is not evidence of, in the same breath as what it is. The second page ends on a dated decision rather than a summary.
scope-refusal-scripts.md
Markdown
Four routes for a request outside scope: inside scope, change order, separate project, declined. With the words for each.
Every request takes exactly one route and gets logged the same day. A retainer dies by absorption, and this is the file that prevents it.
renewal-and-exit-guide.md
Markdown
Five dimensions scored before renewal, two of them about you, and how to end an engagement well.
It gives you the words for ending a retainer that is not working, which is the conversation most consultants avoid until the client has it for them.
Passages quoted from the files in the pack, not rewritten for this page. This is the standard the whole set is written to.
“A retainer that nobody acts on is a subscription, and renewing it is a decision to keep taking money for reports that are filed unread.”
Renewal decision
Cycle operating calendar, in this kit
“A retainer dies by absorption. Each request is small, each refusal feels petty, and by month five you are producing content for the price of an observation wave.”
Why the four routes exist
Scope refusal scripts, in this kit
“Clients remember the month you told them not to pay attention.”
When a cycle should be skipped
Monthly cycle runbook, in this kit
The honest boundary
What you get instead: a fixed cycle, a comparison between cycles that survives scrutiny, four ways to answer a request outside scope, and an ending you can plan.
An audit answers a question once. A retainer answers whether the answer is still true, and that only works if the question does not move.
Three products, one subject, split by where you are in the work. This one starts after delivery.
The engagement after the audit: cycle, agreement, review and renewal. It teaches no audit method.
The paperwork for selling and delivering one audit. It ends at the approval slide.
See the packThe method: the four-layer model, the observation protocol and the evidence workbook. Buy this first if you have not run an audit.
See the courseOne named person may use these templates for their own work, including paid client work, on as many engagements as they like. The licence covers the work you produce, not the files themselves, so handing a client the blank templates, or a second person at your firm using them, is not included. No offer we sell today adds either of those rights, and none of them reaches any file in this kit. The full wording is on the terms page.
No. It assumes you have delivered an audit and the client has approved its roadmap. The method is the AI Search Visibility Audit System, and if you have not run an audit yet this kit has nothing for you to operate.
No. Both the KPI dictionary and the ninety-day plan ship in the course workbook and in the client deliverable pack, and neither is repeated here. This kit begins where the ninety-day roadmap ends.
It fixes the question set between cycles and makes changing it a dated decision, so a comparison across months means something. It gives every request outside scope one of four routes and a log entry. And it puts the renewal conversation a cycle before the term ends rather than after a cancellation email.
Nothing can promise that, and the retainer agreement in this kit says so in a clause of its own. What the engagement promises is the observations, the records, the updates and the reviews. Anyone selling the other thing is selling a coincidence they will take credit for.
It is operational drafting material, not legal advice, and it says so on its face. Confirm it against your governing agreement, your local law, your professional insurance and your own approved commercial terms before it goes to a client.
$149
One payment of $149. Nine editable files you download and keep, with no subscription and no account.
Secure checkout by Lemon Squeezy. Instant digital delivery. One-time payment, files you keep.
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