Managed services, dev shops, integrators, consultancies. The work is good, the clients renew, and every engagement still arrived through somebody who already knew you. There is no version of the business where that scales.
None of that is a skills problem. It is an ownership problem. Nobody is assigned to it, so it happens when there is time, which is never.
Selling compliance rather than managed services? There is a ninety day program for that specifically, priced and bounded, built around the discovery conversation that decides the number.
The instinct is to start with new leads. That is almost always wrong. There is more revenue sitting in what you already have than in anything I could go and find in month one.
Every engagement you can remember and where it actually stopped. Usually it is one stage, and usually not the one you would guess.
One pipeline. Stages that describe what really happens here, not a template. Nothing that needs you to fill in a field you will not fill in.
The quotes nobody chased. The client who said call me in the spring. The unglamorous part, and usually where the first new revenue comes from.
Follow up that goes out on its own. A proposal you start from instead of a blank page. A weekly number that means something.
Then you do not need me, you need to back them. I would be a second cook.
No amount of pipeline hygiene fixes work clients are unhappy with. Better to find that out before we start than in month three.
The backlog pass moves things in weeks. Building something that keeps producing takes longer, and I would rather say so now.
Thirty minutes on how work actually comes in. You will get a straight read on whether this is worth doing, including if the answer is no.