Read this before your interview · about 20 minutes

What you'd actually be selling, and who actually needs it

You do not need to memorise this. You need to finish it able to explain, in your own words, what goes wrong in a small business when nobody can answer the phone — and what Aimee does about it. That is the whole interview.

1. The problem you're actually solving

Picture a plumber. He is under a sink with both hands wet. His phone rings in his van, forty metres away. By the time he gets to it there is a missed call and no message.

That person did not leave a voicemail. They rang the next plumber on the list. He will never know that call happened, never know what it was worth, and never get a complaint about it. The money just quietly went somewhere else.

Now widen it out. That same person is also the receptionist, the scheduler, the quoter, the bookkeeper and the debt collector. He does the actual trade during the day and the office at night. His partner does the invoices at the kitchen table. Nobody in that house is off the clock.

This is who you are talking to. Not a corporation with a procurement process. A person who is tired, who knows they are losing work, and who has not had time to fix it.

2. What Aimee does, in plain English

Aimee is an AI receptionist. When a call the owner cannot take is forwarded to her, she picks up in the business's name, has a real conversation with the caller, works out what they need and how urgent it is, and captures their details. The owner gets a clean summary instead of a missed-call notification.

If the owner has connected a calendar and turned confirmed booking on, she can also book the job into a real time slot the owner actually has free.

• The owner keeps their existing number. Customers ring the number already on the van, the website and the invoices. Nothing is reprinted and nobody is retrained.
• The owner chooses which calls she takes. Only missed calls, only after hours, or every call. Any call they pick up themselves stays theirs.
• They can switch it off themselves. Forwarding is controlled by their phone carrier, not by us. That matters to a suspicious owner — say it early.
• It sits alongside what they already use. If they already run ServiceM8 or Tradify or a shoebox of receipts, they keep it. Aimee is the front door, not a replacement.

The specifics depend on what each owner sets up — their calendar, their phone carrier, their hours. Never promise a capability without saying what has to be switched on for it to work.

3. Past the phone: the jobs nobody has time for

The missed call gets you in the door. What keeps the customer paying is everything after it. Learn these — this is where an owner goes from "interesting" to "how much?".

4. What Aimee will not do — and why that matters

This section wins you more deals than any feature list. Owners are frightened of AI doing something stupid in their name. Being first to say what it won't do is what makes them relax.

• She never invents a price. Prices come from the owner's own rates or from the owner. She will not guess, discount or negotiate.
• She never commits the owner to work. Anything with real consequences waits for a human yes.
• She never says something happened unless it did. If a booking didn't write to the calendar, she says so instead of showing a green tick. If a message didn't send, that stays visible.
• She doesn't touch their money. Customer payments go to the owner's own account. Mango never sits in the middle of it.
• Their customer list is theirs. They can export and leave. Their data is not a hostage.

5. How you get paid, with the actual arithmetic

You are an independent contractor on commission. Nobody pays you a wage, there is nothing to buy, and there is no fee to join. Here is exactly how money reaches you.

You earn 50% of the first five qualifying subscription payment cycles that Mango actually receives from a customer attributed to you. Cycles run every 30 days. So the arithmetic on the most common plan looks like this:

The parts people get wrong

• The US$5 phone activation earns you nothing. It is not commissionable. Only real subscription payments after the trial count.
• The free account earns you nothing. A signup is not a sale. Money moves when the customer's first post-trial payment lands.
• It stops at five. There is no sixth cycle and no trailing income. If a payment is later refunded, that commission is offset against your future commission.
• You are paid by PayPal. Give us your PayPal address early — commission you have genuinely earned cannot be released until we have it, and it will sit there waiting.
• You cannot earn from recruiting other consultants. There is no downline and no override for bringing people in. You earn from customers, full stop.

6. How the conversation goes

You are not doing a pitch. You are doing a diagnosis. The shape is always the same: ask about their phone, listen, name the cost, offer the demo.

Notice what you did not do: you did not describe features, you did not mention AI, and you did not say a price. You asked four questions and let them work out the cost themselves. That is the whole method. The live demo does the convincing — get them to it.

7. The five things people will say to you

"I don't want a robot answering my phone."

Fair. Have you heard her? Most people ring expecting a robot and are surprised. And it only answers the calls you're already missing — the ones currently going nowhere. Any call you pick up yourself stays yours.

"I already use ServiceM8 / Tradify / something else."

Keep it. This isn't a replacement — it's the front door in front of it. It answers the phone, which your job system doesn't do.

"Two hundred a month is a lot."

It is real money. So the question is just whether it brings in more than one job a month that you'd otherwise have missed. If it doesn't, you cancel. What's a job worth to you?

"I'll think about it."

Of course. Before you go — what's the bit you're not sure about? (Then answer that. Do not re-pitch. Ask once, answer honestly, and let them go if they want to go.)

"Is this one of those AI things that makes stuff up?"

This is your best question to get. It never quotes a price you haven't set, never commits you to work, and never tells you something happened unless it actually did. If a booking fails, it says so rather than pretending.

8. Rules you must not break

9. What the interview asks

It is about 10 to 15 minutes with Aimee herself, by voice — and you can ask for a written version instead if voice is difficult for you, for any reason. Just reply to the invitation email and ask.

You are scored on four things:

• Communication — can you make yourself understood and get to the point. Accent and fluency are explicitly not scored. English does not have to be your first language.
• Product understanding — can you explain what Aimee does and, critically, that she works alongside existing tools rather than replacing them.
• Ethics — would you tell a customer the truth even when a lie would close the deal. This one is not tradeable against being good at selling.
• Reliability — would you follow up, and do what you said.

How to do well

• Give real, specific answers. Short generic answers score badly. A genuine story about a time you helped someone beats a polished non-answer every time.
• Ask questions. Asking about commission, training or how the role works is not held against you. Being evasive is.
• Do the role-play properly. You'll be asked to pitch and to handle an objection. Attempt it. An honest attempt scores; refusing to try doesn't.
• Don't pretend to be experienced if you're not. Inconsistent or invented answers get flagged. "I haven't sold before, but here's how I'd handle that" is a perfectly good answer.
• Use a quiet room. It's a voice conversation. Give yourself a fair go at being heard.