The Selection Method.
An operating model: one unit of work, one source of truth, one loop and one measure. It replaces the brief → make → report cycle.
The unit of work is the moment, not the deliverable.
A moment is one kind of buyer at one step of their journey: the owner comparing quotes, the marketer shortlisting, the user deciding whether to renew. Every brand has a grid of them. Today an agency sells one row of that grid (the website, the social, the coverage) and hopes the rest takes care of itself.
A blog post is not a deliverable. “Get named when owners compare quotes” is.
In the Selection Method, work is scoped, priced and reported by the moments it’s meant to win. In the book’s worked example, a 60-person consultancy has 8 choosers, 10 journey steps and 5 buying modes: 64 live cells and 149 moments, each traced to its source. How to map them →
Seven rungs. Fix the lowest broken one first.
At every moment a brand climbs the same ladder, and it can fall off at any rung. The rung that breaks first is where the work starts. Tap a rung.
Does AI know this brand exists, with facts it can find?
The usual fix lives in: Entity data, listings, the BrandGraph.
The play for it: The Entity Fix →
Is it named when buyers ask?
The usual fix lives in: The site, content, earned sources.
The play for it: The Answer Build →
Is the answer the buyer needs actually there?
The usual fix lives in: Answer pages, tools, FAQs.
The play for it: The Answer Build →
Is there proof, and is nothing wrong?
The usual fix lives in: Reviews, case studies, coverage, claim checks.
The play for it: The Proof Drive →
Is there a reason to pick it over the rival?
The usual fix lives in: Positioning, the offer, the difference.
The play for it: The Rival Gap →
Do the pages carry the reason, the proof and the next step?
The usual fix lives in: Landing pages, proposals, sales follow-up.
The play for it: The Close Fix →
Do clients stay, renew and say so where AI can read it?
The usual fix lives in: Onboarding, service, advocacy.
The play for it: The Kept Loop →
The loop.
Four steps, every quarter, starting each time from the new lowest broken rung.
Score the brand: ask the questions each buyer asks at each step, and read who gets named, believed and preferred. Every finding carries a receipt.
The true, provable thing that would make this brand the obvious pick at the moments it loses. Written into the BrandGraph with its evidence, then given the idea, the design and the story that make it impossible to miss. This is the agency’s craft, and the step AI can’t do for you.
Change what sits behind the lowest broken rung, in whichever channel it lives. Every claim is checked before it ships.
Re-read the same moments and show what moved, with a before-and-after receipt.
Five principles.
The measure, and its honesty rules.
The Selectability Score hears every moment where it happens: asked of machines, asked of people and places, and inside a deal.
How the Score works →- A check that wasn’t measured is shown as not measured, never guessed.
- Questions that name the brand don’t count towards Found.
- Every number carries a range. A move inside it proves nothing on its own.
- The weights are judgement: published, and open to challenge.
The Brand Journey, in eleven steps.
Each step answers one question and reads only the steps before it. RocMode’s Brand Journey, the book and RocMode for Agencies use the same names.
The argument behind all of this is the book Seen Isn’t Selected →