FRAMEWORK 01 / THE SIX READS
They are not the same problem and they do not have the same fix. Most companies treat all six as a pipeline problem and hire more reps.
Six questions, no email.
THE ARGUMENT
The number is short. Somebody says pipeline. Somebody else says the reps need training. A third person suggests a tool. Then a decision gets made in a room where nobody has looked at the record, and six months later the number is still short and the company has spent money finding that out.
The shape of the funnel tells you which problem you have. Not precisely, and not on its own, but well enough to stop you fixing the wrong thing. Six reads, six shapes, six different projects.
I run these before anything else on every engagement, because the cost of starting in the wrong place is not the money. It is the two quarters.
READ 01
Which way is revenue moving, and does anyone know why?
Growing is not the interesting answer. Growing and nobody can explain it is the one to worry about, because it means the result is not attributable, which means it is not repeatable, which means it is a streak.
Flat after a period of growth usually means a motion stopped working and nothing replaced it. Down is easier to diagnose than flat, because flat hides two things moving in opposite directions.
POINTS AT
Nothing on its own. This read frames the other five.
READ 02
Are there enough first meetings to hit the number if the close rate held?
Most teams cannot answer this, which is itself the answer. If nobody has done the arithmetic backwards from the number through the close rate to the meetings required, then the pipeline target is a wish.
Not enough meetings is a targeting or motion problem. It is almost never a rep effort problem, though that is where it usually gets assigned.
POINTS AT
Targeting, motion selection, the target list.
READ 03
What happens to the meetings you do get?
Four different failures hide here and they look identical on a dashboard.
They convert, and there is no problem. They start well and go quiet, which is qualification. You lose them to a named competitor, which is enablement. Or they were never real, which is targeting again, and the most expensive of the four because everyone worked hard.
POINTS AT
Qualification, enablement, or targeting depending on which.
READ 04
Is there a stage where deals go to die?
One specific stage holding deals longer than the rest is the most diagnosable shape there is, because the gate is telling you exactly what is missing.
Stalling everywhere is different and worse. That usually means the stages do not mean anything consistent, so deals are not stalling at all, they are just sitting in whatever stage the rep last remembered to update.
POINTS AT
Stage definitions, exit criteria, or the entry gate.
READ 05
What is happening to average deal size?
Shrinking is a packaging problem far more often than a discounting problem, though it always presents as discounting. Reps discount because they have nothing else to trade.
An average so volatile it is meaningless is its own finding. It usually means you are selling two different things to two different buyers and calling it one motion.
POINTS AT
Pricing, packaging, what you sell versus what gets bought.
READ 06
How much of last year’s growth came from customers you already had?
Almost none is the most common answer and the most expensive. New logo revenue costs several times what expansion costs, and most companies are buying all of their growth at the highest available price.
The second sale usually has no owner, no number and no trigger. A renewal shows up as a deadline rather than a motion.
POINTS AT
Expansion, the post-close motion, churn signal.
THE SEVENTH ANSWER
The finding is not a funnel problem. It is that the data cannot support a diagnosis yet.
That is not a criticism and it is extremely common. It also means every conclusion currently being drawn from that data is a guess with a chart attached, which is worse than no chart.
The first project in that case is not strategy. It is making the record readable, starting with where deals enter.
WHAT USUALLY TURNS UP FIRST
Not slightly. Often by half. The CRM says fourteen days, and that is not because deals close in two weeks, it is because nobody controls where a deal enters the pipeline. Half of them appear at stage two, already qualified by a conversation that happened somewhere the system never saw.
An undefined entry gate corrupts everything downstream: cycle length, win rate, stage conversion, forecast accuracy, capacity planning. Every number you would use to make a decision.
ON YOUR OWN
Run the six questions in the browser. It takes about three minutes and you get the name of the problem rather than a score out of a hundred.
RUN THE SIX READS →PROPERLY
The same six, answered from your actual record rather than your impression of it. That is the first two weeks of an engagement, and the gap between what a team believes and what the data says is usually the most useful thing in the read.
THE READ, $7,500 →Each of the six eventually gets its own piece. These are the ones written so far, and each links back up.
Six questions, three minutes, no email wall.
Or bring your top priority to a thirty minute call and leave with a validated approach and a sequence. No deck and no discovery script. If I am the wrong person you find out on that call, free.