From Scattered Pipeline to Structured Growth Engine

Company Profile

Business: IT services and managed infrastructure

Stage: 4 years in business, €7.5M ARR

Team: CEO/founder, 4 sales reps, 1 marketing coordinator

Growth: 8% year-over-year (market average: 22%)

Current State

• CRM existed but was inconsistently used. Pipeline data unreliable.
• Marketing generated leads but sales called them "garbage." No feedback loop.
• Each rep sold differently. No shared methodology or qualification criteria.
• Revenue forecasting was guesswork. CEO had no visibility into pipeline health.

Acquisition

• Marketing optimising for lead volume (CPL) not lead quality
• MQL-to-SQL conversion rate: 12% (leads that sales actually accepted)
• No lead scoring. Content downloaders treated same as demo requests.
• Attribution completely broken: no one knew which channels produced revenue
• Marketing and sales operated in silos with mutual distrust

Conversion

• Pipeline inflated: 45% of deals were "zombies" (no activity in 30+ days)
• No stage exit criteria. Reps moved deals forward based on feeling
• Average sales cycle: 92 days (benchmark for their segment: 45-60 days)
• Main bottleneck: Proposal-to-Close gap averaging 34 days
• Win rate varied wildly by rep (from 14% to 31%) with no coaching system
• No deal inspection framework. Pipeline reviews were status update meetings.

Retention

• Churn rate: 18% annual (benchmark: 8-12%)
• Client onboarding: ad hoc. No structured kickoff, no milestones
• Sales-to-CS handoff: nonexistent. CS inherited deals with unknown expectations
• No health scoring. At-risk clients identified only when they cancelled.
• NRR: 88% (the existing client base was eroding)

Operations

• CRM completeness score: 38% (deals missing close dates, values, sources)
• No revenue dashboards. CEO relied on rep-by-rep verbal updates
• Compensation plan rewarded activity (meetings booked) not outcomes (revenue)
• No documented sales process. Each rep had their own approach.

We mapped the full revenue funnel to identify where value was leaking. Here's what we found:

Primary Leaks Identified

Total addressable revenue recovery: €1.2M annually.

We implemented a 28-week structured program across three phases, starting with data foundations, moving to process discipline, and ending with intelligence and optimisation.