The revenue chain, with a figure per stage
From demand generation to close and cash, you see where volume or conversion breaks.
A Revenue Diagnostic in under four weeks, with scope and timeline fixed before we start.
Closed scope and a fixed timeline, agreed before we begin.
Before you hire a sales director, it helps to know what they'd have to fix.
The Revenue Diagnostic walks your sales chain with your own data, from first contact to cash. It tells you at which stage you lose the most, what it costs and what to attack first.
For B2B companies with complex sales — several business lines or markets, marketing and sales as separate teams, a buying committee, long cycles — and for the CEO, MD or founder who has to decide where the next commercial euro goes without a number to back it.
What do you get?
Every bottleneck, prioritised
Each one comes with a name, a number, its impact and a priority. The assumptions stay in plain view, so you can argue with them.
A thesis, with its confidence stated
What we think is going on and how sure we are, so you know what is evidence and what is inference.
A decision checkpoint
A session where you validate what we produced and decide whether to continue.
What a head of revenue would take months to see, in writing, in weeks.
How to read your revenue chain, stage by stage.
The chain runs from demand generation to close and cash. We put a figure on every stage, so you can see where it breaks and what that break costs you.
01Limited
Visibility and discovery
11.2%visibility in answer engines outside branded questions
02Healthy
Demand generation
61.6%of revenue comes from new clients
03Limited
Capture
0%of opportunities have their source recorded
04Limited
Qualification
58%of this year’s opportunities are still open
05Limited
Opportunity development
52 → 40 daysmedian cycle for won deals
06Limited
Proposal and negotiation
100%of invoicing under a single item
07Broken
Close
≈3×value lost versus won over 24 months
08Broken
Onboarding and expansion
27%of last year’s clients came back
The loop back, from a delivered campaign to the next sale, is still to be built.
Brokenone critical or two high bottlenecks
Limitedone high or medium bottleneck
Healthyno bottlenecks
Your revenue chain with a figure per stage.
How does it work?
The clock startsUnder four weeks
- 01With you
Kick-off session
The clock starts here, once we have your data.
- 02Our work
We work with your data
We ask for it as it stands and organise it ourselves. You only answer questions about gaps and contradictions.
- 03With you
Decision checkpoint
You see the diagnostic and decide, with the work in front of you, whether to go further.
Go furtherStop, if there’s nothing actionable
< 4 wksUnder four weeks from kick-off.
2–3 hof your time in total, with the data to hand.
fixedScope and timeline set in the proposal before we start.
Scope and timeline are set in the proposal before we start, and they don't change unless the scope changes.
If we don't find actionable bottlenecks, we stop.
The Diagnostic tells you whether it's the moment: if there's nothing actionable, we stop.
We show you a real diagnostic before we talk about price.
A real diagnostic, anonymised, open in a viewer on this page. You see the deliverable before you ask for a conversation.
Where revenue slows down at a B2B marketing services company
A real diagnostic, anonymised. Names, the specific sector and absolute figures have been replaced; percentages and ratios are kept as they were.
RevOS Diagnostic · Phase: Diagnostic · Final version
Every bottleneck, with its number and an order in which to tackle it.
What this diagnostic is based on
The company. A B2B marketing services company. It designs and runs campaigns for brands' marketing departments and bills by project. An in-house sales team sells directly to those brands and, now and then, through agencies. Delivery relies on an operational network with low direct cost and on the company's own results-tracking system.
Where the data comes from.
- Previously validated deliverables: client master brief, knowledge base and competitive analysis.
- No CRM connection: the client chose not to export its opportunities. Pipeline and revenue figures are aggregates from its CRM and invoicing software, reported by the client with data as of mid-month 9 of the current year.
- Our own measurement: visibility in AI answer engines (a nine-day window, 808 conversations) and web research.
How to read the labels.
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| MEASURED | Measured by RevOps Studio |
| DECLARED | Supplied by the client from its own systems; not measured by RevOps Studio |
| ESTIMATE | Consultant's calculation based on measured or declared data |
| ASSUMPTION | Working assumption, with a criterion that would disprove it |
| HYPOTHESIS | Plausible explanation not yet verified |
| MISSING DATA | Information needed but not available |
Revenue figures are shown as an index: previous year = 100.
1. The starting point
| Indicator | Value | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue won in the current year, as of mid-month 9 | 104 (already above the whole of last year) | DECLARED |
| Gross margin | around 76%, thanks to a delivery network with low direct cost | DECLARED |
| Projected close for the current year | 135–149; 108–122 without the invoice from its largest account | ESTIMATE |
| Leadership's target for next year | 217, with more salespeople and no marketing spend | DECLARED |
2. The diagnostic's thesis
Most of the room for revenue growth comes after the campaign has been delivered.
Nobody owns the account once the campaign is over, and the third-party-verified proof isn't used to sell the next one. As a result, a large share of each year's revenue has to come from new business, and the year depends on one or two large accounts turning up.
Confidence in the thesis: medium.
- What supports it: repeat-purchase figures from the CRM, leadership's own description of how campaigns close, and the verified absence of the proof from sales communication on the website and in AI answer engines.
- What limits it: without an export, retention can't be split by segment or by salesperson, and the cause partly rests on an assumption (#20: nobody has an account target after the campaign).
3. The revenue chain today
01Limited
Visibility and discovery
11.2%visibility in answer engines outside branded questions
02Healthy
Demand generation
61.6%of revenue comes from new clients
03Limited
Capture
0%of opportunities have their source recorded
04Limited
Qualification
58%of this year’s opportunities are still open
05Limited
Opportunity development
52 → 40 daysmedian cycle for won deals
06Limited
Proposal and negotiation
100%of invoicing under a single item
07Broken
Close
≈3×value lost versus won over 24 months
08Broken
Onboarding and expansion
27%of last year’s clients came back
The loop back, from a delivered campaign to the next sale, is still to be built.
Brokenone critical or two high bottlenecks
Limitedone high or medium bottleneck
Healthyno bottlenecks
| Stage | Status | Key figure | Bottlenecks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visibility and discovery | Weak: relies on the buyer already knowing the brand | 11.2% visibility in AI answers outside branded questions, behind its competitive set MEASURED | #3 (high) |
| Demand generation | Driven by sales prospecting volume, with no marketing | 61.6% of current-year revenue comes from new clients DECLARED | — |
| Capture | Source not recorded | 0% of opportunities with a source other than the default value DECLARED | #2 (high) |
| Qualification | Stages set by each salesperson's estimate, with no shared criteria | 58% of opportunities created this year are still open DECLARED | #2 (high) |
| Opportunity development | Milestones yet to be defined | Median cycle for won deals: from 52 to 40 days between last year and this year DECLARED | #2 (high) |
| Proposal and negotiation | No price list; the proof has no price of its own | 100% of invoice lines billed under a single campaign item DECLARED | #3 (high), #4 (medium) |
| Close | Losses with no recorded reason | Value lost over 24 months is almost 3 times the value won in the same period DECLARED | #2 (high), #5 (high) |
| Onboarding and expansion | The relationship ends with the final report | Only 27% of last year's clients have come back DECLARED | #1 (critical) |
The return loop, from a delivered campaign to the next sale, has yet to be built.
4. Bottlenecks
#1 · Critical — The campaign ends with the report, not yet with the next sale
- Where
- Onboarding and expansion: the step from a delivered campaign to the next proposal.
- What happens
- The relationship closes with the final report. 73% of last year's clients had not bought again by mid-month 9, and 64.8% of clients from the last three years ran a single campaign. The repeat business that does exist is concentrated in a few accounts and comes at the client's initiative, with no process driving it. One large account does repeat (five campaigns in three years), but its spend swings widely: close to 80% of everything it has been billed fell in a single year.
- Why it happens
- Growing the account isn't yet anyone's target: the sales team is geared to opening new business. There is no results review with the client and no continuity proposal. The verified data that would justify a repeat purchase is handed over as a wrap-up, not as the case for the next one. There is no framework agreement and no service-tier pricing to encourage annual planning.
- Impact
- More than 60% of revenue has to be won again every year through new business, the most expensive and least predictable part of the chain. ESTIMATE Winning back half of last year's clients who haven't returned, at the average deal size, would add around 25 index points a year, roughly 12% of the target, without a single new client. This is illustrative: the average deal size is skewed by the long tail.
- Evidence
- DECLARED repeat and retention figures from the CRM · diagnostic interview: the closing report rarely leads to a new opportunity · ASSUMPTION #5, #16 and #20.
- Confidence
- Medium-high on the figures; medium on the cause.
- Impact × effort
- High × medium.
#2 · High — The sales engine runs with little visibility
- Where
- Capture, qualification, opportunity development and close. It runs through the whole chain.
- What happens
- 0% of opportunities have a recorded source or loss reason. Stages reflect the probability each salesperson estimates, with no milestones yet, and revenue forecast records sit alongside real opportunities. Value lost over 24 months is almost 3 times the value won, with not one loss reason recorded, and the average lost deal is 29% larger than the average won deal. Each campaign's operational data stays in the operations system and never reaches the CRM.
- Why it happens
- Nobody owns the quality of sales data: fields aren't mandatory and stages have no written definition. It isn't a tooling problem, as the company automates other processes well. It's a matter of definitions and ownership.
- Impact
- Nobody knows who the company loses to, why, or which price works. The fall in win rate (52.8% → 23.1% between year Y-2 and last year) may largely reflect a change in how deals were recorded (ASSUMPTION #6). Nor can anyone tell which channel or salesperson brings in the clients who come back, so growth decisions are made without data.
- Evidence
- DECLARED the client's written answers on CRM completeness · call with leadership · ASSUMPTION #6 and #12.
- Confidence
- High: the client acknowledges the gap.
- Impact × effort
- High × low.
#3 · High — The differentiating proof hasn't reached the buyer yet
- Where
- Visibility and discovery; proposal and negotiation.
- What happens
- The company has a differentiator that's rare in its category: delivery of its campaigns is backed by third-party verification. Yet on the website that verification comes sixth out of six selling points, and no case studies are published. In questions about trust and verification, the company appears in 0.8% of AI answers, and outside questions that name it, its visibility is 11.2%, the lowest in its set.
- Why it happens
- The proof stays inside operations: it isn't packaged, priced or published. There is no marketing function or budget (ASSUMPTION #8). Some public claims about leadership and volume also need reviewing, as the internal systems don't currently back them up.
- Impact
- In acquisition, a buyer who doesn't know the brand won't find it. In the sale, objections about price and uncertain results have no evidence-based answer. In repeat business (#1), the same verified data that would justify a renewal never becomes a case study. HYPOTHESIS Some of the largest losses are "do nothing" decisions that verified proof could tip. Falsifiable criterion: if salespeople put the last ten losses down to capacity, timing or product rather than trust or expected results, the hypothesis falls.
- Evidence
- MEASURED visibility in AI answer engines · MEASURED review of the public website · trade press and the verification published by the third party.
- Confidence
- High on the asset existing and being absent from communication; low on its effect on conversion.
- Impact × effort
- High × medium.
#4 · Medium — Pricing and packaging, still to be formalised
- Where
- Proposal and negotiation.
- What happens
- Price is set proposal by proposal, with no price list or discount policy (ASSUMPTION #17). The year's largest invoice is about 600 times the smallest. A fixed price per campaign, the majority, sits alongside per-unit billing on a minority of invoices. 100% of invoice lines are billed under a single campaign item: tracking and verification are included, with no price of their own.
- Why it happens
- There's no package that makes the proof count, and the proof is underused because it isn't packaged: each problem feeds the other. A package would open the door to proposing an annual plan.
- Impact
- Margin depends on each negotiation, price can't be defended with the extra value delivered, and there's no tiered annual plan to make repeat business easier (#1). HYPOTHESIS Unit prices vary widely between clients, judging by how public volume claims square with the per-unit rate. Low confidence.
- Evidence
- DECLARED invoices from the invoicing software and the client's written answers · pricing HYPOTHESIS with low confidence.
- Confidence
- Medium on the facts; low on the impact.
- Impact × effort
- Medium × medium.
#5 · High — Revenue is concentrated in a few accounts and a few people
- Where
- Close, and the financial year as a whole.
- What happens
- A single account makes up 24.7% of the current year, with no confirmed repeat yet. The top five add up to 54.6%. 57% of deals won over the last two years are recorded under one person on the team; on another base given by the same source it would be 43%, unreconciled, and the record owner isn't always the person who sold. As of mid-month 9, the current year is 50% ahead of last year at the same point. The large account's invoice explains about three quarters of that gap. Without it, the year would still close 8–22% above last year (index 108–122). The part that could be sustainable improvement is 12% over last year.
- Why it happens
- It follows directly from #1: without a base that repeats, the difference between a breakout year and a modest one is a large account nobody planned for. And with no shared process or data (#2), knowledge about closing stays with whoever closes.
- Impact
- When one unplanned large account weighs this much, forecasting the year gets harder: revenue is volatile and the forecast loses reliability. There is also key-person risk at the close.
- Evidence
- DECLARED account concentration from the invoicing software and record owners from the CRM · ASSUMPTION #15 and #19.
- Confidence
- High on account concentration; medium-low on concentration in one person.
- Impact × effort
- High × high.
5. Causal pattern
How the bottlenecks connect.
- A sales engine with little visibility (#2) hides the real problem: the fall in win rate is read as the first symptom, when the figure that best describes the business is repeat purchase (#1), and that one is in the system.
- Without repeat business, the year has to be rebuilt from new business. With no marketing and no visible proof (#3), that acquisition is expensive, slow and dependent on hiring salespeople.
- Price is negotiated case by case (#4) because there's no package that makes the proof count, and the proof isn't used because it isn't packaged.
- The overall result is dependence on one or two large accounts and on whoever closes them (#5).
Root causes.
| Root cause | What it means | Explains |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The account isn't yet a unit of management | The sale ends at signature and the campaign ends at the report. There's no role with the target, process and incentive to turn a brand that has tried the service into one that plans its year with the company. | #1 and #5, and partly #4 |
| 2. The sales engine lacks data and proof | What happens in the sale isn't captured in the system yet, and what the company does best, third-party-verified delivery, stays inside operations. There's room to decide with data and sell with proof. | #2, #3 and #4 |
Confidence: medium. It rests on the call with leadership, assumptions #16 and #20, and system figures.
6. The lever to pull: repeat business brings the target closer
To reach the target (index 217) from the current year's projected close, new business would need to grow by:
| Scenario | Growth needed in new business |
|---|---|
| Revenue retention stays at today's 40%, measured at mid-month 9 (a floor: the year hasn't closed yet) | 73–98%, nearly doubling |
| Revenue retention rises to 60% | 41–65% |
ESTIMATE The gap between the two scenarios is 20 points of retention on the projected close, roughly 27–30 index points of new business a year. Acquisition works: between last year and this year, won deals grow by 48% and opportunities by 29%, at an annualised rate. Neither lever is enough on its own; the one with the most headroom today is repeat business.
Base: projected close of 135–149, with 61.6% of revenue from new clients. Medium confidence.
7. What isn't the problem
| What you might think | What the data says | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Not enough pipeline volume | Pipeline created last year was 6.2 times the value won | Medium |
| The fall in win rate | Largely an effect of how deals were recorded (ASSUMPTION #6) | Low-medium |
| Direct competitors | Most losses are to "not running the campaign at all" or to other budget lines (ASSUMPTION #21) | Low |
| The tooling | The current CRM is enough; what's missing is deciding what's mandatory and who looks after it | Medium-high |
| Investing in media first | There's publishable proof to make use of first | Medium |
| Opening new markets | It would take low repeat business into more markets | HYPOTHESIS |
In the only comparable years (last year and this year, ASSUMPTION #24), won deals grow faster than opportunities: this year's improvement comes more from converting better than from creating more volume.
8. Prioritisation: what to do first
ImpactHigh
- #2The sales engine runs with little visibility
- #1The campaign ends with the report, not the next sale
- #3The differentiating proof hasn’t reached the buyer
- #5Revenue is concentrated in a few accounts and people
ImpactMedium
- #4Pricing and packaging, still to be formalised
ImpactLow
LowEffort
MediumEffort
HighEffort
Firsthigh impact, low or medium effort
- #2The sales engine runs with little visibility
- #1The campaign ends with the report, not the next sale
- #3The differentiating proof hasn’t reached the buyer
Structuralhigh impact, high effort
- #5Revenue is concentrated in a few accounts and people
Latereverything else
- #4Pricing and packaging, still to be formalised
First high impact, low or medium effort
Structural high impact, high effort
Later everything else
Critical
High
Medium
Source: anonymised sample diagnostic · B2B marketing services company · consultant’s judgement on impact and effort
Confidence in the prioritisation: medium. It's the consultant's judgement on impact and effort, based on declared data.
| Quick wins (high impact, low or medium effort) | Structural (high impact, high effort) | Second line |
|---|---|---|
| Instrument the CRM · #2. Mandatory source and loss reason from a closed list, stages as verifiable milestones, forecasts kept apart from opportunities, and a named owner for the data. | Create the account function. An annual plan per client, service tiers and a repeat-business target. | Pricing and packaging · #4. Using loss data and once the promise is defined. |
| Renewals with an owner · #1. Starting with the accounts that already repeat without a process, to understand why and formalise it. | Reduce concentration · #5. More recurring accounts, mid-sized and large. | Delivery network capacity. Measure it before scaling. |
| Publish the proof · #3. Verified case studies on the website and in proposals, verification as the lead argument, and public claims reviewed. | Agency channel. Depends on whether this year's large account repeats. |
9. Recommended sequence
| When | What | Why in this order |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1–2 | Instrument | Costs almost nothing and makes everything else measurable. The current quarter is peak season, when the most data comes in. |
| From month 1 | Renewals | Tackles the critical bottleneck with what already exists: clients who know the service, and closing reports. |
| Months 1–3 | Proof | Feeds both renewals and acquisition. Little investment and a lot of decisions: which promise and which figures. |
| Months 3–6 | Pricing and package | With loss data and the promise already defined. |
| 12 months | Structural | Account function, reduced concentration and network capacity, towards the target. |
HYPOTHESIS Many brands plan the following year's launches in the last quarter, which makes it the moment to propose continuity. It's worth confirming with clients when they sign off the relevant budget line.
10. Implications for Design
The engagement covers Diagnostic only. If the work continues into Design, this is what each piece would solve:
| Design work | Scope | Priority | Solves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Positioning and messaging | Essentials | 1 | #3; shapes #4 |
| Turning campaigns into accounts | Essentials | 1 | #1 |
| Execution roadmap | Essentials | 1 | The sequence |
| Demand system, light version | Essentials | 2 | Acquisition |
| Sales process | Complete | Yes | #2 in detail |
| Measurement framework | Complete | Yes | Retention |
Recommendation: Essentials as a minimum, plus the sales process and the measurement framework. CRM instrumentation doesn't need to wait: the team can set it up now. The process by account quadrant (deal size × repeat rate) is part of turning campaigns into accounts.
11. For the checkpoint: what we can decide now
- Whether repeat business is the missing lever. Hiring salespeople sustains acquisition; if retention also rises, the growth needed in new business drops from 73–98% to 41–65%.
- Who owns the account after the campaign. And who manages the highest-value accounts.
- Whether third-party verification becomes the central promise. Along with the review of public claims that this implies.
Confidence in the diagnostic: 3 out of 5. It would rise with the year's actual close, knowing whether the large account repeats, and a post-mortem of the most recent losses.
12. Gaps, assumptions and hypotheses
Missing information
- MISSING DATA Opportunity export. The client chose not to share it. Without it, we can't quantify the effect of recording practice on win rate, split retention by segment and salesperson, or measure the cycle of lost deals.
- MISSING DATA Loss reasons. They can't be recovered from the system; salespeople's recollection stands in for them (ASSUMPTION #21).
- MISSING DATA Internal sales materials. They exist but haven't been shared, so we don't know whether proposals use the verification and the case studies.
- MISSING DATA When brands sign off the relevant budget line. This sets the timing of renewals.
- MISSING DATA Voice of the client. There's no structured post-campaign feedback.
- MISSING DATA Why the recurring large account keeps coming back: who decides, which budget line pays, and what role the closing report plays. That's what would need replicating with this year's large account.
Assumptions, with their falsifiable criterion
| # | Assumption | It falls if… |
|---|---|---|
| #6 | The fall in win rate is largely due to the change in how deals were recorded | The export shows conversion falling just as much under the same recording practice |
| #20 | Nobody has an account target after the campaign | Leadership shows a role with an assigned repeat-business target |
| #22 | Delivery network capacity doesn't limit current volume | Leadership acknowledges campaigns limited by the network in the last two years, or can't show spare capacity to double volume |
| #24 | The CRM change that explains deals logged as already closed happened before last year, so last year and this year are comparable | Leadership places the change within last year |
| — | There have been no earlier structured attempts at account management or at changing the sales process that would affect adoption | Leadership names an earlier attempt at the checkpoint |
Consultant's hypotheses, with their falsifiable criterion
- HYPOTHESIS The website and contact form bring in little demand. It falls if salespeople attribute most of this year's new clients to inbound or referrals.
- HYPOTHESIS Some high-value losses are "do nothing" decisions that verified proof could tip (#3). It falls if the last ten losses are explained by capacity, timing or product.
- HYPOTHESIS Price weighs on high-value losses (#4). Without loss reasons, this can't be confirmed.
- HYPOTHESIS Brands plan their launches in the last quarter. It falls if clients sign off the budget line at another time of year.
- HYPOTHESIS Opening new markets before fixing repeat business would multiply the same leak.
Contradictions found
- Dependence on individuals reported as none, against 57% of won deals recorded under one person.
- Two different bases for won deals in the same client answer (57% against 43%), unreconciled.
- "We work little with agencies", against an agency being the year's top client.
- "No marketing tools", against a visitor-identification tool listed in the privacy policy; a web form, against zero opportunities with a web source.
- Public claims against system figures.
External dependencies
- If this year's large account repeats, the no-intervention baseline rises and the gap to target narrows, though concentration (#5) gets worse.
- If the year's actual close falls outside the projected range, the roadmap's starting point changes.
- If brands keep shifting activation budget towards retail media, competition for the budget line grows, whatever the company does.
- If a competitor obtains comparable third-party verification, the #3 differentiator becomes track record and verified volume, not exclusivity.
What the Diagnostic let people decide.
How a B2B marketing services company decided where its growth really was
Read the case →How a creative studio decided to give every account an owner before hiring
Read the case →Questions people ask before booking
It's set in the proposal, after you've seen a sample diagnostic. Scope and timeline are fixed before we start, so you know what you're agreeing to.
A free audit is a sales pitch; a paid diagnostic is work you can decide on. You pay for the diagnosis, not for the pitch behind it, and because we take no platform commissions, nothing in it depends on which tool you buy next.
We ask for what you already have, as it stands: whatever you use to sell, invoice and measure. Usually that means invoicing by client and month, your record of opportunities (a CRM export or the spreadsheet you use), the proposals you've sent, contracts with recurring clients and access to your web analytics, if you have it. We organise it ourselves, so you don't prepare templates.
We ask you only about gaps and contradictions, once we've been through what you gave us. Three moments: a kick-off session, our questions on gaps and contradictions, and the checkpoint session. If you have the data to hand, it takes no more than two or three hours in total.
At the checkpoint you decide, with the diagnostic in front of you. Nothing moves forward without your sign-off.
We start from the process, not the platform, so the CRM you use doesn't decide whether the Diagnostic works. We are not a HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive partner and take no platform commissions. We've worked with Pipedrive and HubSpot, from an export or from summary figures, and without a CRM, from spreadsheets.
If we don't find actionable bottlenecks, we stop. That's the exit guarantee: the Diagnostic tells you whether it's the moment, and if there's nothing actionable, we say so.