You changed something in the business. The result barely moved. Find out what happened in between.
For B2B SMEs where more selling, more customers, more people or more product work did not improve the business the way management expected.
What changed - and what was supposed to improve?
The action itself may have been perfectly sensible. The job is to see what happened after it, where the expected link failed and which explanation the evidence supports.
The team is busier. The order book is not.
Delivery got busier. Profit did not.
The cost base grew. The pressure did not ease.
The product changed. Sales did not get easier.
Several explanations may sound right. I check which ones survive contact with the evidence.
This is not a sales-team scorecard. The reason may sit in Sales, Marketing, Product, Delivery, capacity - or between them.
Company, offer, market context, customer model and the change management made.
90 minutes with the owner, Sales Director, COO or person responsible for the overall result.
Up to five additional 30-45 minute conversations with the people who saw different parts of what happened.
A targeted sample of existing commercial and operational records, reports, cases, projects, proposals or other traces relevant to the question.
I write down the explanations that fit the story instead of settling on the first one that sounds convincing.
Each explanation is compared with the records, examples and accounts the business actually has - including evidence that points the other way.
The same disappointing result can come from very different things.
The diagnostic does not assume which one applies.
Sales worked harder, but there were not enough real opportunities - or the real limitation sat somewhere else.
More customers brought more promises, exceptions and delivery work than the business expected.
More people increased coordination and chasing without removing the thing slowing the work down.
Product effort went into improvements customers did not value enough to change what they bought.
Individual teams improved their own numbers while the overall business result stayed flat or worsened.
Commercial Diagnostic PDF.
A written explanation of what the evidence shows, not just notes from the conversations.
The action management took, the expected result and the observed mismatch.
The steps that were expected to turn the change into a better result.
What the available interviews and operational/commercial evidence actually show.
The explanations considered, and what supports or weakens each one.
The repeated point or pattern that best explains why the expected result did not follow.
A clear boundary between evidence, inference and questions the business cannot currently answer.
What the finding changes for Sales, Marketing, Delivery, Product, staffing or management information.
The smallest useful change, measurement or test justified by the evidence.
Activity, systems or initiatives that the diagnostic does not currently justify changing.
Focused diagnosis, not unlimited historical reconstruction.
I use a focused sample of the evidence that matters to the question. I do not reconstruct every historical customer, project or transaction inside the fixed price.
If answering the question properly requires a much larger data exercise, I say so and scope that separately.
Profit can be the signal without this becoming an accounting review.
If Finance or management already knows that profit, margin or another financial result changed, I can use that as the starting point and investigate what changed in the way the business sold, served, staffed or built the work around it.
I do not recalculate, audit or verify the accounts as part of this diagnostic.
If nobody can follow the story at all, map visibility first.
If the answer is scattered across systems, spreadsheets and people, the smaller Revenue Visibility Review may be the better first step.
Revenue Visibility Review · £595 →