How long does a Belief at First Touch engagement take?

The entry engagement covering Stages 1 through 3 of Belief at First Touch, the Read, the Audit, and the Map, typically runs four to six weeks. The timeline depends on the complexity of the organisation, the number of portraits being mapped, and the breadth of the belief ecosystem being examined. Organisations with multiple stakeholder groups, multiple markets, or significant external complexity will take longer. The Embed stage, where scoped, runs on its own separate timeline agreed once the Map is complete.

What do I walk away with at the end of the entry engagement?

The entry engagement produces a complete belief map. It shows how your business is currently understood across every external touchpoint by every portrait that matters to your next move. Every gap is named. Every priority is clear. Every function in your organisation, your marketing team, your agency, your board, has a single source of truth to brief from. Most clients take the Map back to their own teams and execute from there. The work is complete. What comes next is theirs to direct.

The entry engagement covering Stages 1 through 3 of Belief at First Touch starts from SGD 15,000. The fee scales with the complexity of the organisation, the number of portraits being mapped, and the breadth of the belief ecosystem under examination. The Embed stage is scoped and priced separately once the Map is complete and the full picture is clear. Because the Map tells us exactly what is needed, the Embed scope is always precise and never speculative.

How is this different from working with a brand or creative agency?

A brand or creative agency executes. It produces websites, campaigns, content, and assets. Belief at First Touch diagnoses. It examines how the business is understood from the outside in and identifies precisely where belief is forming and where it is not. The Map that comes out of the Belief at First Touch engagement tells an agency exactly what to build and why. Most clients find that the engagement makes every subsequent agency brief sharper, faster, and more effective than anything they have commissioned before.

Who runs the engagement?

Every Belief at First Touch engagement is run by Selene Chin, Principal Consultant of The Progress Practice. There is no team behind the scenes, no junior handoff, no account management layer. The person you speak to in the diagnostic conversation is the person who does the work.

What is Embed and how is it scoped?

Embed is Stage 4 of the Belief at First Touch methodology. It is the doing stage. Once the Map is complete, Embed aligns what exists and builds what is missing. No additions for the sake of it. Only what moves the needle. The scope of Embed varies significantly by organisation. Some need a website overhaul. Others need a content architecture rebuilt. Others need internal alignment work before anything external changes. Because the Map tells us exactly what is needed, the Embed scope is always precise. It is agreed and priced separately once Stages 1 through 3 are complete. Most clients choose to take the Map back to their own teams and agencies and direct the execution themselves. Belief at First Touch gives them the territory. What they build on it is their decision.

Do you work with companies outside Singapore?

Yes. The Progress Practice is Singapore-based and works with organisations globally. If you are based outside Singapore, start with the diagnostic conversation.

Your market decides in seconds. What are you showing them?

Your market decides in seconds. What do they believe? Learn about Belief at First Touch

60 videos in 3 months. 10 creative variations in five hours. Leads not coming in? More ads. Not enough repeat purchases? More emails. No brand awareness? More posts. More influencers. We obsess over output. And somewhere between all of that, alignment gets lost. And from the inside, you can't quite see why.

Whether it's food, banking, or software, the moment someone encounters your brand, they make an instant, almost subconscious assessment: are you believable? Because without belief, there is no next step. Belief at First Touch is the work of engineering belief.

This work is more urgent now. Before your market forms an opinion, a machine already has one. AI tools like Google's AI Overview, ChatGPT, Claude are now the first stop for anyone researching a business: a potential partner, an investor, a recruit, a customer who just heard your name. They don't read between the lines. They don't give you the benefit of the doubt. They read what's publicly available and return a picture. If that picture is inconsistent, outdated, or incomplete, that is the belief your market inherits before anyone ever reaches you.

In a world where everything can be generated, the only thing that can't be faked is belief.

The Belief framework

This isn’t purely Branding or marketing. Think of it as applying a lens to every corner of your business - from website to sales brochure, to the first impressions of your store. here’s how we do it.

Read

We start with inside. Your Purpose as you articulate it. Your Process as you believe it operates. Your Practice as you think the market experiences it. We internalise your innovation, growth, aspirations, real or to-be-realised. We hear about your business - your competitors, your customers and how you do business.

We come back with a report that synthesis what we hear - you’d be surprised how much of it is new to you.

Audit

We go outside and read your business the way your most important stakeholders do. We examine every touchpoint they may encounter when the first know about your business. Today, this includes running your business through the AI tools your stakeholders are increasingly using first - Google's AI Overview, ChatGPT, Claude - to see what picture forms before any human interaction happens. We test your Purpose, Process, and Practice against what the market actually finds: what is being said about you, what is being surfaced, and what is conspicuously absent. We come back with a point of view on where your belief is weakest, what the gap between your inside and outside voices is.

Map

We lay out the full picture. Every belief gap named. Every portrait mapped against the moments that matter most to your next move. Every priority ranked against what it is actually costing you to leave it unaddressed. The complete territory your leadership, your team, and your agency can brief from independently.

You will receive your touchpoint map, cross referenced against key portraits and their triggers. Now you have a planning template whenever you need to launch a campaign, reach out to a new portrait., start a new product line. Here is where we hand off if you already have the resources to move this forward.

Embed

This is where we make belief. From the map, we will prioritise the most urgent areas that need to be refreshed. Assign timelines and tracking to be sure that belief is embedded and working for you.

See your business the way your market does.

Start with a Belief Diagnostic.

Book a conversation

Frequently Asked Questions

The entry engagement covering Stages 1 through 3 of Belief at First Touch, the Read, the Audit, and the Map, typically runs four to six weeks. The timeline depends on the complexity of the organisation, the number of portraits being mapped, and the breadth of the belief ecosystem being examined. Organisations with multiple stakeholder groups, multiple markets, or significant external complexity will take longer. The Embed stage, whenscoped, runs on its own separate timeline agreed once the Map is complete.
The entry engagement produces a complete belief map. It shows how your business is currently understood across every external touchpoint by every portrait that matters to your next move. Every gap is named. Every priority is clear. Every function in your organisation, your marketing team, your agency, your board, has a single source of truth to brief from.
Most clients take the Map back to their own teams and execute from there, or, they may opt to appoint The Progress Practice to work alongside them to embed the belief messages.
The entry engagement covering Stages 1 through 3 of Belief at First Touch starts from SGD 15,000. The fee scales with the complexity of the organisation, the number of portraits being mapped, and the breadth of the belief ecosystem under examination.
The Embed stage is scoped and priced separately once the Map is complete and the full picture is clear. Because the Map tells us exactly what is needed, the Embed scope is always precise and never speculative.
A brand or creative agency executes. It produces websites, campaigns, content, and assets. Belief at First Touch diagnoses. It examines how the business is understood from the outside in and identifies precisely where belief is forming and where it is not.
The Map that comes out of the Belief at First Touch engagement tells an agency exactly what to build and why. Most clients find that the engagement makes every subsequent agency brief sharper, faster, and more effective than anything they have commissioned before.
Every Belief at First Touch engagement is run by Selene Chin, Principal Consultant of The Progress Practice.
Embed is Stage 4 of the Belief at First Touch methodology. It is the doing stage. Once the Map is complete, Embed aligns what exists and builds what is missing. No additions for the sake of it. Only what moves the needle.
The scope of Embed varies significantly by organisation. Some need a website overhaul. Others need a content architecture rebuilt. Others need internal alignment work before anything external changes. Because the Map tells us exactly what is needed, the Embed scope is always precise. It is agreed and priced separately once Stages 1 through 3 are complete.
Most clients choose to take the Map back to their own teams and agencies and direct the execution themselves. Belief at First Touch gives them the territory. What they build on it is their decision.
Yes. The Progress Practice is Singapore-based and works with organisations globally. If you are based outside Singapore, start with the diagnostic conversation.