Revenue System Readout · about 4 weeks · fixed fee
New business slowed. Everyone has a theory.Four weeks to find out what is actually blocking revenue, ranked by what it costs and how hard it is to fix.
Sales says the leads are bad. Marketing says the reps do not follow up. The board says the market turned. Someone is right, and nobody has the evidence. I read your CRM and funnel data, interview people across every function and the executive team, and come back with the three to five things actually in the way. Not a sales audit. The whole revenue system, and the people running it.
If you already know what is broken, the Readout is shorter and I validate rather than discover. If you are not sure, I find out.
Sound familiar?
What it looks like from the inside.
- The forecast is a negotiation.Twenty-five pipeline stages, no exit criteria, and a number that moves every time someone asks about it.
- Reps are busy and pipeline is flat.Activity is up, conversion is not, and nobody can say which stage is leaking.
- You bought the tools. Nothing changed.A new CRM, a new intent platform, a new AI add-on, each layered onto a process that was never defined.
- Marketing and sales blame each other for lead quality.Because they are working from two different definitions of the customer, and nobody has written down either one.
- Customers churn at month fourteen.Sales promised a capability that technically exists, onboarding discovered six weeks of unscoped work, and customer success inherited an account that never reached first value.
- You hired a VP of Sales to fix it. Then another one.Average tenure is 18 to 24 months. When the third one is struggling, it is probably not the person.
What I look at
Field notes, not frameworks.
Before I was a revenue leader I was an archaeologist, and then a Peace Corps volunteer. Both jobs are the same job: show up somewhere you do not yet understand, observe carefully, read the evidence, form a hypothesis, test it against what people tell you, and get something built inside a culture that is not yours. That is still how I work.
The system
ICP and segmentation, pipeline stages and definitions, the handoffs between marketing, sales and customer success, comp and territory design, the CRM and the data. I read these against your own numbers and against what the market is doing right now, with longer cycles and slower decisions, not against a benchmark from a different year.
The people running it
Does the executive team share one view of the mission, the top three priorities, and who owns what? Usually not, and usually nobody has said so out loud. I say so, with evidence, and then we fix it. The Leadership Alignment Check is built into every Readout, because a system fix the leadership team does not agree on does not survive the quarter.
The fix
Not a list of projects. A sequence built for where you are. First we stop what is not working: the meetings, processes and tools that run on habit. That frees the time and attention to double down on what is working. Then we add the few things worth testing, and scale only what proves out.
How the four weeks go
Data first. Then people. Then the readout.
Week 1
Read the data
CRM and funnel data, stage by stage. Conversion and time in stage by segment. Unit economics. Where the systems overlap or conflict. I form hypotheses before I talk to anyone, so the interviews test them rather than lead them.
Weeks 2–3
Talk to the people
Confidential one-on-ones up, down and across the organization: executives, sales, marketing, customer success, RevOps, and the people who touch the handoffs. About 45 minutes each. Patterns get reported; names do not.
Week 3
Check the leadership team
The Leadership Alignment Check, running alongside: is the executive team aligned on customer, priorities and ownership? The process problems almost always sit on top of a disagreement nobody has named.
Week 4
The readout
To the leadership team: the three to five things actually blocking revenue, what each costs, how hard each is to fix, and a sequenced 90-day plan that starts with what to stop. Then we decide together what happens next.
Larger organizations, or slower data access and scheduling, can take it to six weeks. The pace is mostly set by how quickly I get the data and the calendar time.
What the Readout found
The problem is rarely where the company thought it was.
Health-tech software company, entering a new market
A company with a strong product and no track record in the market it was expanding into. The Readout found 25 CRM stages, no shared qualification, and focus spread across too many motions. We rebuilt the sales process to six buyer-signal stages, cleaned the pipeline so leadership could finally read the forecast, retrained the team on one process and core selling skills, and designed and hired the first two senior customer success managers.
Founder-owned software company, decades old, new logos stalled
Everyone assumed a closing problem. In four weeks the Readout showed a 43 percent opportunity-to-close rate, well above typical, beside a 0.18 percent visitor-to-lead rate and no outbound motion at all. The problem was never closing. Then playbooks, RevOps, a season as interim Head of GTM, and executive coaching for the CEO and COO.
Dental laboratory group, sales team in transition
A sales organization with no documented process and a leadership change underway. Skills and process analysis across the team, a CRM review, a documented sales process and core sales training where there had been neither, and a handover report written for the incoming CRO so nothing had to be re-learned.
Education company, enterprise team
A mid-market pilot with no shared language. The Readout delivered one set of GTM terms and definitions across the enterprise team, a pilot plan with measurement built in, and 90-day activation plans for each GTM leader so they could lead at the right altitude.
Who brings me in
Usually when the plan and the engine disagree.
The CEO or founder
Who has heard every department’s theory, hired for two of them, and wants someone with no horse in the race to say what is actually happening.
The PE operating partner
Who has a portfolio company whose plan assumes 40 percent growth and wants an independent read, in about a month, on whether the revenue system can deliver it, and what to fix first if it cannot.
The new CRO, COO or head of RevOps
Who inherited the stages, the forecast and the tools, and would rather know in four weeks what they are dealing with than discover it over four quarters.
After the Readout
Find out. Fix it. Keep it fixed.
01
Run the plan yourselves
The readout and the 90-day plan are yours. Some teams take it from here, with a check-in a quarter later to see what moved.
02
Build & Lead
I come in as interim or fractional head of GTM to carry it out with your team: sales process and playbooks, RevOps and CRM, comp and territory design, hiring, training, and the operating cadence. Typically 13 to 20 hours a week on a monthly retainer.
03
Leadership Alignment & Coaching
Ongoing facilitation and ICF-certified coaching for the leadership team and the leaders carrying the change, so the fixes stick and the team stays on one page.
FAQ
Questions leaders ask about the Readout.
What is a Revenue System Readout, and how is it different from a sales audit?
A sales audit looks at the sales team. A Revenue System Readout looks at the whole system that produces revenue: marketing, sales, onboarding, customer success, RevOps, the data, and the leadership team running it. Over about four weeks I read your CRM and funnel data, interview people across every function and the executive team, and come back with the three to five things actually blocking revenue, ranked by what they cost and how hard they are to fix, with a sequenced 90-day plan. It routinely finds that the problem is not where the company thought it was.
How long does it take?
About four weeks. Larger organizations, or ones where data access and interview scheduling take longer, can run to six. The pace is mostly set by how quickly I get the data and the calendar time.
What if we already know what the problem is?
Then the Readout is shorter and cheaper, because I validate rather than discover. But I will tell you honestly if the evidence points somewhere else. One client was sure they had a closing problem; the data showed a 43 percent close rate and a 0.18 percent visitor-to-lead rate with no outbound motion at all. The problem was never closing.
What do you need from us?
Read access to your CRM and reporting, about two hours from each executive and 45 minutes from each person I interview, and a point of contact who can schedule and chase. Interviews are confidential; the readout reports patterns, not who said what.
Do you benchmark us against other companies?
I read your numbers against your own history and against what the market is doing right now, with longer cycles and slower decisions, not against a benchmark from a different year. Twenty-five years inside revenue teams and six years of readouts from $20M to $350M tell me what a pattern means. Your data tells me what it is.
What do we get at the end?
A readout to the leadership team: the three to five things actually blocking revenue, what each one costs, how hard each is to fix, and a sequenced 90-day plan that starts with what to stop. Plus the Leadership Alignment Check findings, because the process problems almost always sit on top of a leadership-team disagreement.
What happens after the Readout?
Three options, and many companies do more than one. You take the plan and run it yourselves. I come in as interim or fractional head of GTM to carry it out with your team. Or I work with the leadership team through an ongoing alignment and coaching program so the fixes stick.
Do you work with private-equity-backed companies?
Yes. Operating partners bring me in when a portfolio company's plan assumes a growth rate and they want an independent read on whether the revenue system can deliver it, or when a new leadership team needs to get aligned fast. The Readout is built to answer that question in about a month.
Find out what is actually blocking revenue.
Tell me what has stalled, what your best theory is, and what you have tried so far. Thirty minutes is enough to know whether a Readout is the right first move.
Or leave a note here and I will come back to you within a business day.