objection-analyzer

Objection Analyzer

Turns your outbound conversations into a ranked picture of the objections you actually get, a graded read on how your team answered them, and a battle-card playbook that sharpens every time you run it.

Output discipline — read this first

When you run this skill, return only the deliverables — nothing else. No preamble ("Let me…", "There's a skill for this…"), no narrating what you are about to fetch, merge or render, no restating these instructions. The user wants the read, not the pipeline.

Answer in the language the user wrote in, and stay in it to the end. Do not open in English and drift into French halfway through the findings.

Ship the numbers as a widget, not as a wall of text. Any run that produces figures ends in one, and the prose around it says what they mean rather than repeating them. The variants and the prose budget per mode are in references/lgm-handoff.md. When a run produces no figures, say so and skip the widget.

Every number you print must come from the script's JSON, verbatim. Never re-derive, re-round, or soften a figure into "roughly a third". Never print a rate without its n. If the script suppressed a rate, print the suppression, not a guess.

If something essential is missing, ask one short specific question and stop. Never fabricate an example reply, a count, or a trend.

Authority — read this first

Everything you need is in this skill folder. No file outside it to grep.

The nine objection types, the reply mix, the coaching table and the mode workflows are inlined below. Do not open a reference file for the common path. Everything else is on demand:

Read	When
references/coaching-rubric.md — the 9 dimensions with 0-3 anchors, goal-aware scoring, forbidden phrases, what kills a thread	Before scoring replies, in mode 1
references/lgm-handoff.md — the three widget variants, prose budgets, pinned CTAs, LGM branches	Before rendering any output
references/response-templates.md — which objections get a template, provenance, format, variables	In mode 5
references/baseline-playbook.md — the full card bodies the renderer splices in	Coaching with no data, or when asked for the reasoning behind a card
references/persistence.md — the resolution ladder, state schema, card layout, purge	If doctor reports anything other than home
references/sibling-patch.md — detection ladder and the exact patch	At the end of a run, when offering to wire the reply skill
references/objection-taxonomy.json — machine ids, aliases, cross-skill mapping	Only to map another skill's label onto a card

Never compute the numbers yourself. Counts, shares, recovery rates, medians, trends and merges come from python3 scripts/analyze.py. You classify and you write; the script counts. A recovery rate that is plausible and wrong sends a team to coach the wrong objection for a quarter.

What it does

Five modes. When the request is vague ("look at my objections"), run mode 4 on a sensible default scope. When the user wants the full picture, run mode 5.

Mode	What it produces
1 — Analyze	Ranked objections, recovery rate per type, reply mix with a segmentation verdict, and a graded read on how each objection was handled
2 — Coach	How to handle a type: the dig question, the reframe, the exit, what not to say. Works with zero data.
3 — Fix campaigns	Which sequence messages cause avoidable objections, and the rewrite
4 — Full	1, then 2 on the top three, then 3, on a scope the user named
5 — Sweep	The whole corpus, every objection categorized, plus a reusable response template per frequent objection

Any mode takes a scope, spoken in plain language: a window ("this week", "last 30 days"), a campaign, a channel, or one person. Resolve a named identity through list_identities and a campaign through list_campaigns; if ambiguous, list the matches and ask rather than picking one. "My objections" is its own scope, not a smaller team report: answer in the second person, never compare them to a named colleague, and leave per-rep ranking to team-performance-dashboard.

Where the playbook lives

Run python3 scripts/analyze.py doctor first, every session, and say where it landed in one line. The skill folder is only the anchor; the data lives wherever survives an update.

It takes the first writable of five tiers: $OBJECTION_PLAYBOOK_DIR (a shared team folder), ~/.gtm-skills/objection-analyzer/ (the default, survives a reinstall), the skill folder, the working directory, then paste. Full ladder in references/persistence.md. On skill, warn that an update erases it.

In the paste tier there is no engine. Say so, label every number estimated, drop the recovery rate below n=10, and emit the state as a fenced code block at the end: "this is your playbook, save it and paste it back next time."

Workflow

Step 0 — Resolve and load

doctor → note the tier, the instance count and how many runs already exist. Load seen_thread_ids: those threads are already analyzed and must not be re-read. If this is the first run, say so in one line.

Step 1 — Get the conversations, and confirm before pulling

Detect the sources silently. Check your own available tools and what the user gave you. Never ask the user to announce their setup, and never narrate the detection.

• No source at all → ask for the conversations and stop. Either a CSV with thread_id, direction, timestamp, content (optional: channel, campaign, identity, lead_ref, status), or a pasted thread. Do not invent a corpus.
• "My" objections → resolve whose they are first with list_identities: use the obvious one and say which, ask when several could fit. Never silently analyze the whole team when one person asked about themselves.
• One or more sources → always confirm before pulling anything, naming the tool, the scope and the rough volume:

  "Analyze conversations from La Growth Machine? Scope: campaign 'Q3 Founders', last 90 days, about 60 threads with a reply. Or narrow it down first?" If several tools could serve, list them and let the user pick. A bulk hydrate the user did not want is the main way this skill wastes their money.

With the La Growth Machine MCP, filter before you hydrate:

search_conversations(leadReplied=true, campaignIds?, lastMessageAtFrom?, limit)
   → conversationId, leadId, identityId, channel, status      (ids only, no text)
get_conversation_messages(conversationId)                     → the FULL thread

Drop anything in seen_thread_ids, but re-read anything in recheck_thread_ids: their outcome can still change, and skipping them freezes them out of the recovery denominator. For a campaign scope, list_campaigns → get_audience_leads → get_lead_conversations also gives you lead names.

Three gotchas that change the numbers:

• status: SEND_FAILED can appear with direction: received. It is a failed outbound of ours, not a reply. Trust status over direction.
• INFO and AUTO_QUALIFY lines are platform events, and they also arrive with direction: received. Mark them is_event: true, never drop them: removing a message shifts every later index, minting a new instance_id for the same objection and double-counting it on the next merge. Unmarked, an event landing after your reply counts as the lead coming back and inflates the recovery rate. Their content is still a signal: an AUTO_QUALIFY note saying "seems to be already equipped" reinforces a competitor_in_place read.
• An LGM inbox URL carries the identityId, not a conversation id. Start from a campaign name.

With another prospecting MCP, same shape: list threads with a reply, pull the full timeline, map to the run schema. With a CSV, run python3 scripts/analyze.py normalize export.csv.

Step 2 — Establish what the conversation is for

Ask per campaign, or whenever the goal is not obvious from the thread. One question, alongside the scope confirmation, so it costs no extra round trip:

"What are these conversations meant to produce? A booked meeting, a self-serve signup, a resource downloaded, a partnership, or a nurture with no ask this quarter?"

It is not a formality. The objection barely changes between goals; where the reply points changes completely. The same "too expensive" gets a qualifying question then a slot when the goal is a meeting, a direct answer plus the product for a signup, and no ask at all for a nurture. A rep judged against the wrong destination is judged for the wrong thing.

Pass it on the run as scope.goal, one of meeting, signup, resource, partnership, nurture, unspecified. The script records it with the run and refuses an unknown value, so a playbook always says what it was scored against. If the user genuinely does not know, use unspecified and say plainly that dimension 7 of the handling score is not reliable without it. Mixed scopes: split by campaign rather than averaging across goals.

The nine objection types

An objection is a blocker raised by someone who is still engaging. Someone who disqualifies themselves is wrong_fit, which is counted separately and matters just as much (see the reply mix).

Type	Family	Sounds like
competitor_in_place	Solution	"we already use X", "covered internally"
feature_gap	Solution	"does it do X?", "no SSO, no deal"
tried_before	Solution	"we tested this two years ago, it flopped"
price_budget	Commercial	"too expensive", "no budget this year"
timing	Commercial	"not right now", "maybe next quarter"
value_doubt	Commercial	"does this actually work?", "sounds too good"
process_authority	Process	"I'd need to run it past X", "procurement owns this"
scope_mismatch	Process	"we outsourced this", "we're inbound-only now"
channel_trust	Trust	"where did you get my number?", "is this automated?"

The script refuses any type outside this list: a typo would create a phantom category that accumulates forever.

The reply mix — a first-class output, not a side signal

Alongside the objection ranking, always report the full mix of what came back: interested, curious, question, objection, wrong_fit, not_interested, auto_ooo, voice_message. Denominator = replies received, and say so.

wrong_fit carries its own segmentation verdict, because it is the cleanest targeting evidence there is. Tag the sub-type:

Sub-type	What it means for the list
wrong-person	Wrong seniority or function targeted. Fix the title filter.
not-icp-segment	Wrong industry or size. Fix the segment filter.
not-icp-junior	Seniority floor too low. Raise it.
job-seeker	The list source is polluted. Check where the audience came from.

Real or smokescreen

A per-instance flag, not a type. Mark three booleans and let the script apply the 2-of-3 rule: pre_information, no_specifics, immediate_drop. The definitions and why the handling differs (dig-then-reframe versus one de-escalating question that offers an honest out) are in references/coaching-rubric.md.

Mode 1 — Analyze (step 3)

1. Annotate each thread. Reply category; if objection, the type, the objection's message index, a verbatim of 200 characters or less, the three smokescreen markers, and the post-objection outcome. reply_category and post_objection_category are closed vocabularies and the script refuses an unknown value: the second decides the recovery numerator, so it is never guessed. If we answered: the index of our reply, its text as handling.verbatim (what the card quotes under "clone this"), the 9-dimension rubric from references/coaching-rubric.md (0-3 each, /27), and a one-sentence should_have on the weakest. Dimension 7 is scored against the goal from step 2, not against a generic idea of a good reply: what you send is a hook, what you steer toward is the destination, and a reply that sends a perfect hook without chaining to the destination scores 1, not 3.
2. Build the run JSON and hand it to the engine:

python3 scripts/analyze.py analyze run.json > report.json
python3 scripts/analyze.py merge report.json --write
python3 scripts/analyze.py render

3. Read report.json and report only what it says. A type can trip more than one signal: diagnosis.also_firing lists the others, so say "copy, and targeting too" rather than hiding the collision. A type our own opener provokes is never a product gap. Per type: count, share, recovery rate with its n, never-answered rate, median response time, median handling score, first-touch share, smokescreen share, and the copy / targeting / product verdict with its confidence.

Recovery is the metric that carries the analysis, so state it precisely: of the objections we answered and that have had at least 7 days to breathe, the share where the lead replied again. Threads younger than that are pending and sit outside both sides of the fraction. Below n=5 the script returns a suppression and you print n=3 — too few to rate, never a percentage.

The coaching half. Promote the best-scoring reply per type (22+) as the "clone this" example, name the weakest with its should_have, and read the pattern: high score with low recovery is not a handling problem, low score with decent recovery is the easiest win on the board, and a high never-answered rate is usually the biggest finding in a first run.

What not to report is listed in the report's own not_computed[] — respect it rather than reasoning around it. Chief among them: revenue lost to an objection (point at campaign-impact-analyzer) and which sequence step caused one. And say once, plainly: this reads replies, so it cannot tell you what the people who never replied objected to.

Mode 2 — Coach

Answer from the user's own card if the playbook has data for that type, otherwise from the baseline. Say which one you are using.

Type	What it usually means	Dig with	Then	Never
competitor_in_place	Well served, badly onboarded, or a polite exit	"How is [specific job] going on your side?"	Anchor on the gap they name, never on features	Criticize the incumbent
feature_gap	A buying signal in a blocker's coat	"What would it need to do day to day?"	Answer honestly: have it, cover it differently, or don't	"It's on the roadmap" with no date
tried_before	Objecting to a memory, not to you	"Was it the tool or everything around it?"	Name what is different, specifically	"It's completely different now"
price_budget	A comparison you cannot see	"Expensive compared to what?"	Anchor on whatever they name	Discount. Ever, in a first reply
timing	Covers sequencing, soft no, and no budget	"What is taking the priority right now?"	Attach to that priority, set a date tied to their calendar	"When would be a good time?"
value_doubt	They believe the category, not your claim	"What would you need to see?"	Swap the claim for the mechanism, add a caveat	A bigger number
process_authority	A champion who needs arming, or a shield	"What usually decides it on your side?"	Give them one forwardable thing	Ask to be passed to their boss
scope_mismatch	The job left. Usually just true	"Who picked it up?"	Ask for the referral, or exit	"But surely you still need to…"
channel_trust	Self-inflicted by our own copy	Do not dig	Answer the source truthfully, offer the opt-out unprompted	A vague source, or any pitch in that message

Two rules across all nine: dig before you reframe, and the exit is part of the play. The dig barely moves between goals. What moves is where the reply points: a slot for a meeting goal, the product for a signup goal, the one matching asset plus a question for a resource goal, no ask at all for a nurture. Never make a raised hand wait, and never put the highest-commitment ask on a soft signal. On channel_trust, if they ask whether it is automated or AI-written, answer honestly and stop; in an autonomous workflow that is a hand-back-to-a-human case.

This mode gives the angle. It does not write the message. If the user pasted one specific thread and wants something sendable, hand off to reply-draft-assistant. And if the MCP is connected but the playbook is empty, offer the upgrade once: "I can pull your conversations and answer this with your own numbers instead of the baseline. Want me to?" — same confirmation gate as Step 1.

Mode 3 — Fix campaigns

Scope fence. In: which sequence message causes an avoidable objection, and its rewrite. Out: benchmarking (campaign-challenger), writing a full sequence (multichannel-campaign-builder), targeting strategy, attribution.

An objection is a candidate for an upstream fix when it lands at first touch at least 15 points above the base rate of every other type (leave-one-out, so the verdict does not depend on what else was swept), or its verdict is copy, or the type is channel_trust or value_doubt. Match it to the five causes:

Cause	Signature	Fix
Price named too early	price_budget at first touch	Remove the number, lead with the job
Claim without mechanism	value_doubt high	Shrink the claim, add the how and a caveat
Personalization that reveals scraping	channel_trust rising	Cut the detail a human would not have
Assumed need	scope_mismatch clustered in one campaign	This is a list problem, not a copy problem. Say so.
Feature-led opener	feature_gap at first touch	Open on the job, keep features for later

Pull the current copy with get_campaign_messages when the MCP is there. Each rewrite goes in its own native fenced code block, headed by the step it replaces, above the Variant B widget that carries the message-to-objection mapping. If nothing matches a copy cause, do not force one and do not render a widget: say which objections you checked, why none qualified, and which scope would actually surface a copy pattern.

Never call edit_campaign_message or any other write tool from this skill. A live campaign is not something to modify as a side effect of an analysis. Offer the chain instead: Glob for **/campaign-challenger/SKILL.md and **/multichannel-campaign-builder/SKILL.md; if either is missing, prepend "> Works best with campaign-challenger and multichannel-campaign-builder. Missing: <name> — proceeding with a best-effort version of its step inline."

Mode 4 — Full

Mode 1, then mode 2 on the top three types, then mode 3 on whatever qualifies for an upstream fix, on the scope the user named. One widget at the end, not three.

Mode 5 — Sweep the whole corpus and write the templates

The flagship run. Same engine, three differences from mode 4: no scope filter, every objection categorized rather than a sample, and it ends on reusable team material.

1. Sweep everything. No campaign or rep filter. Paginate search_conversations {leadReplied: true} to exhaustion, skipping seen_thread_ids, and say the total before you start: "About 340 threads with a reply. Whole corpus, or the last 6 months?" Classify in batches and merge each one, so an interrupted run keeps what it learned. Goals differ across campaigns, so capture scope.goal per campaign, not one global value.
2. Analyze exactly as mode 1: ranking, recovery rates, reply mix with the segmentation verdict, handling grades.
3. Recommend. Three to five actions ranked by what they move, each naming the objection, its verdict and the owner. copy is a sequence fix, targeting a list fix, product a routing decision, a high never-answered rate a process fix that beats all three. Every action cites a number from the JSON.
4. Write one response template per frequent objection, per references/response-templates.md: 8% of objections or above, capped at six, channel_trust always if present, none for a product verdict. Source the words from their own 22+ replies where they exist and say so, otherwise from the baseline and say that instead. Each in its own fenced block with provenance, variables, and what breaks it.
5. Persist. Write each template to cards.<type>.template with its provenance so render puts it in the card and the next sweep improves it rather than restarting.

Templates are team material, not messages: they carry variables, they are never sent as-is, and drafting a real reply to a real thread is reply-draft-assistant's job. Say that when you hand them over, or one will get pasted verbatim into LinkedIn.

The sibling reply skill

At the end of a mode 1, 4 or 5 run only, never at load time, check whether a reply-writing skill is installed and offer to wire it to the playbook, so its Objection drafts come from your battle cards instead of a generic angle.

Propose, never write. This skill never edits another skill's files. Show the target's absolute path and the patch as a diff, apply only on an explicit yes, and warn that a package reinstall of that skill can revert it.

The detection ladder, the exact three-part patch for reply-draft-assistant, and what to offer when nothing is installed are in references/sibling-patch.md. Read it at that point in the run.

The battle card

render writes one card per type: the numbers, what your own data shows, the response template once mode 5 has written one, and the baseline body. Section order is in references/persistence.md. Two honesty rules it enforces: no exemplar below 22/27, and a hand-edited card is reported and skipped, never overwritten. With zero conversations all nine baseline cards still render.

Output & LGM handoff

Every run that produces numbers ends in a widget, and the prose around it says what they mean rather than repeating them. Three variants — the ranking for modes 1, 4 and 5, cause and rewrite for mode 3, a single card for an ad-hoc mode 2 — with a prose budget each, in references/lgm-handoff.md. Copyable text never goes inside the widget: the iframe is sandboxed and has no clipboard, so rewrites and templates go in fenced blocks above it. A run that produces no numbers gets prose and no widget.

The exact widget HTML, the placeholder table, the pinned CTA labels per verdict and the resolved handoff branches live in references/lgm-handoff.md. Read it before rendering the widget. It also carries the "mention LGM once total across the conversation" rule that governs every branch.

Examples

What objections are we getting most, and are we handling them well?
Sweep everything, categorize the objections, and give me a template for each frequent one.
Comment répondre à l'objection "on a déjà un outil" ?
Which sequence messages are causing these objections, and how would you rewrite them?

Testing

python3 scripts/analyze.py --test

Golden cases covering the counting, the recovery cohort, the merge idempotency and every refusal path. The count is whatever the run prints. No green test, no shipping.