The Traction Canvas is a one-page sales playbook co-created by Brandy Old and Craig Elias that incorporates their Traction Readiness Levels – below.

They first teamed up almost 10 years ago with the common goal of helping grow the start-up community and tech sector in Canada.

Since then, they have helped hundreds of early-stage companies globally de-risk their businesses, perfect their pitches, capture customers, and attract investors.

In the spring of 2023, they turned their attention to the problem that plagues almost every start-up and scale-up looking to become a $100 million company  – TRACTION!

Leveraging over 35 years of sales and startup experience, and reformatting their earlier work titled Sales for Startups and Scaleups, the Traction Canvas demystifies and simplifies how to capture early customers, helping early-stage companies cross the well-known technology chasm.

Complete the form found below to receive an email with links to:

  • A fillable Traction Canvas template in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format
  • Slides from a one-hour session on the 10 boxes in the canvas
  • The recording from a one-hour session that covers all 10 boxes
  • A link to a free Traction Playbook maker created by Drew Williams 

Traction Readiness Levels

The Traction Canvas incorporates the ten associated Traction Readiness Levels that demonstrates knowledge of :
  1)      Problems: Focus on problems that happen often & implications are expensive
  2)     Bifurcation: 3 questions to create your Ideal Client Profile (ICP)
  3)     Competition: What other ways is your ICP solving the problem
  4)     Seven Second Sale: Say the impact, so they ask you “How”
  5)     Enrolling: Only tell people ½ of what you have
  6)     Trigger Events: Be proactive when an ICP has the first event and wants to change
  7)     Disqualifying: Keep only your most qualified opportunities in your sales funnel
  8)     Emotional Favourite: Leverage propinquity to become the preferred vendor
  9)     Won Sales Analysis: Don’t analyze the deals you lose  
  10)   Marketing Moat: Make it less likely they find your competition when Word Of Mouth (WOM) happens 

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