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Revenue

Business development

Route to market, pipeline and partnerships built on what a buyer will actually sign, rather than on the size of the addressable market.

Most early revenue problems are not marketing problems. They are a mismatch between what a company has built and what somebody has a budget line for. We start by finding the budget line, then work backwards to the offer, the pricing and the conversation that closes it.

That means talking to buyers before writing collateral, testing a price by asking for it, and being willing to conclude that the product needs to change. We would rather deliver an uncomfortable finding in week three than a polished funnel in month six.

Pipeline diagnosisFive pipeline stages in sequence: reach, interest, qualified, proposal and closed. Each carries the question that stage answers, from whether you are talking to people with the problem through to whether the price survives procurement. The diagnostic question is which stage the drop-off happens at, because the failing stage is rarely the one being worked on.STAGEReachRight list
Are we talking to people with the problem?
InterestRight message
Do they recognise it when we describe it?
QualifiedRight buyer
Can this person actually sign?
ProposalRight offer
Is what we sell the shape they can buy?
ClosedRight price
Does the number survive procurement?
Find the stage that leaks before changing the one that is loudest.
Figure. The question each stage answers. Most pipeline work goes into the stage that is loudest rather than the stage that leaks, and they are usually different.

What you get

Named artefacts, not a slide pack. Each one is a thing your team can open, run, or hand to an auditor.

ArtefactWhat it contains
Buyer mapWho signs, who blocks, who has to be convinced first, and which budget the money would come out of. Named roles, not personas.
Offer and pricing testA priced proposition taken to real buyers, with what they said written down verbatim rather than summarised into agreement.
Qualification criteriaThe explicit test for whether an opportunity is real, so time stops going into ones that are not.
Pipeline instrumentationA CRM configured to the stages your sale actually has, with the exit criteria for each written down.
Outreach sequencesWritten to be read by a person who owes you nothing. Reviewed against reply rate, not open rate.
Partnership structureWhere a channel makes sense: commercial terms, referral mechanics, and who owns the client relationship.

How it runs

  1. 01 · 1–2 weeks

    Frame

    Where revenue comes from today, what has already been tried, and which assumptions the plan currently rests on.

  2. 02 · 3–5 weeks

    Prove

    Conversations with real buyers against a priced offer. The output is evidence about demand, including evidence that there is none.

  3. 03 · 6–12 weeks

    Build

    The repeatable motion: qualification, sequences, CRM, proposal templates, and pricing that holds under negotiation.

  4. 04 · 2–4 weeks

    Hand over

    Your team runs the motion while we sit in. We leave when the pipeline moves without us in the room.

What we use

Chosen per engagement against your constraints. We have no reseller relationships and no incentive to recommend one of these over another.

Pipeline

HubSpotPipedriveTwentyAirtable

Outreach

Email sequencingLinkedInWarm introductionsPartner referral

Research

Companies HouseContracts FinderSector registersBuyer interviews

Measurement

Cohort conversionStage exit ratesWin/loss review

What we do not do

Knowing where our usefulness stops saves everyone a procurement cycle.

  • We do not buy lists or run high-volume cold outreach. It damages the brand it is meant to build, and it converts badly in the considered B2B sales this work usually involves.
  • We do not work on pure commission. Contingent fees quietly select for the deals that close fastest rather than the ones that should be signed, and you end up paying for that twice.
  • We do not write growth projections we cannot support. If you need a number for an investor deck, we will help you build one and show its assumptions, but we will not manufacture a hockey stick.
  • We do not take over your customer relationships. Every conversation we open is introduced to your team early enough that it does not leave with us.

Questions we are asked

How quickly will this produce revenue?

We do not know, and anyone who gives you a date at this stage is guessing. What we can commit to is a date by which you will have evidence: usually five to seven weeks to a clear read on whether the offer, at the price, moves real buyers. That evidence sometimes says stop. Getting to that answer in seven weeks rather than seven months is most of the value.

Do you sell on our behalf?

We open and run conversations during the Prove and Build stages, because a motion cannot be designed from outside it. But the intent throughout is transfer. Your people are in the calls, the CRM is yours, and the relationships are introduced across before we leave. If you want a permanent outsourced sales function, we are the wrong firm.

What if the finding is that the product is wrong?

Then that is the finding and we will say it plainly. It is the most valuable thing this engagement can produce and the most uncomfortable. We have had that answer on our own products, which is why one of the three write-ups in our portfolio ends in a decision not to launch.

Do you work with pre-revenue companies?

Yes, and often the work is smaller and sharper: prove somebody will pay before building the machinery to take their money. The failure mode we see most in pre-revenue businesses is building the funnel before validating the offer, which produces a very efficient system for not selling anything.

Related

Start with what is in the way.

Most of this work is shaped by the obstacle rather than the ambition. A deal that keeps stalling at the same stage, a process nobody owns, a product that will not sell, a decision that has been open for months. Tell us yours and we will say honestly whether we are the right people for it.