Your sales team sells hard.
Your margins say otherwise.
Revenue is growing. Margin is flat. Uncontrolled discounting, pipeline fog, and quoting delays bleed 3–8% of revenue. You don't need more sales training — you need sales operations that protect every dollar your team earns.
The revenue you earn. The margin you lose.
Six symptoms we see in almost every manufacturer we walk into.
Your top rep discounts 12% and still hits quota
Because quota rewards revenue, not margin. You designed the comp plan years ago and nobody has pressure-tested it since. Your reps are rationally optimizing for what you incentivize — volume over value.
Your CRM has 200 opportunities. You trust maybe 30 of them.
Pipeline reviews are storytelling sessions. Stages are subjective. Close dates slip every month. You cannot forecast with confidence — and your sponsor notices.
A quote takes four days. Your competitor quotes in four hours.
Engineering is the bottleneck. Approvals stack up. By the time your quote reaches the customer, two competitors are already on the desk. Speed is not a nice-to-have. Speed is margin.
Discounting ranges from 5% to 45% across your team, with no governance
Same product, same customer tier, wildly different pricing. The discount a customer gets depends on which rep picks up the phone. That is not a pricing strategy — that is a lottery.
Your win/loss data says “price” was the reason. But was it?
Most lost deals cite price. But was it price — or quoting speed, value articulation, relationship depth, spec alignment? Without structured win/loss analysis, you are solving the wrong problem.
Your sales team spends 30% of its time on non-selling activity
CRM data entry, quote configuration, internal approvals, chasing engineering. Your highest-paid people are doing your lowest-value work.
The Sales Quotient™: where your sales operation actually stands
Five dimensions, one score, and a clear path from sales activity to margin performance.
Pipeline
Forecast integrity
Stage-gate discipline, conversion rates by stage, forecast accuracy against actuals.
Process
Quote to order
Quoting speed, deal structure, approval workflows, and the deal-desk function.
CRM
Data you can act on
Hygiene, adoption, field completeness, and predictive scoring that reps actually trust.
Accounts
Coverage economics
Territory planning, quota allocation, customer segmentation, share-of-wallet gaps.
Compensation
Incentive alignment
Whether the plan pays for margin or just for revenue — and what behavior that buys.
The sales pillar is one of three scored inside the Margin Quotient™, benchmarked against more than 1,000 scored companies. See the full methodology →
Behavior follows structure — so we build the structure first
Strategy
Where your sales operation stands
The free Margin Scan scores pipeline, discounting and win-rate practices against more than 1,000 scored companies — before anyone is engaged.
Discovery
Sales Quotient assessment
Discount analysis, pipeline audit, win/loss review. You get a prioritized roadmap with dollar-value opportunities attached to each lever.
Projects
Build the infrastructure that changes behavior
Discount guardrails, deal desk setup, comp plan redesign, CRM governance. Behavior follows structure, not exhortation.
Results
Keep the system working
Monthly dashboards, quarterly recalibration, coaching scorecards. The gains compound because the system keeps running after we leave.
Already delivered, before the platform
Discounts brought back inside one pricing structure
Building materials manufacturer · more margin
Tariff costs passed through, line by line
Aftermarket distributor · more margin
Value the customer pays for put back in the quote
Industrial manufacturer · more margin
Start where it hurts
Free, self-serve. Tell us where it hurts in fifteen minutes; then the Scan benchmarks your sales operations — before you commit to anything.
Explore the full Margin Architecture™
Sales governance holds only if pricing and supply chain hold with it.
Pricing Excellence
Price waterfalls, discount governance, and value-based pricing that recover 1–3% of revenue.
Supply Chain Excellence
SIOP maturity, inventory optimization, and procurement savings that protect service levels.
The full methodology
Margin Architecture™ — 46 integrated frameworks across sales, pricing, and supply chain.
Ready to protect your revenue?
Every month without sales governance is margin walking out the door. Tell us your revenue band and where it hurts — we will come back with a scope and a number.