SAMPLE
Business System Inspection
Written reportWhy revenue has been flat for two years.
Prepared forSample Mechanical Services
Commercial HVAC service and install, about 40 people (synthetic company)
ScopeRemote Inspection of one problem area: flat revenue. Billing and collections were out of scope.
The short answer
It isn't a lead problem. Quotes for non-standard jobs wait on the owner to price them, and install crews are booked solid while service crews have open days. Fix the pricing bottleneck and the crew mix before spending on marketing or another salesperson.
The call on deeper work
Not needed now. Handle it in-house with the 90-day path on page 4.
In this report
- Issue map
- Evidence reviewed
- Likely cause versus visible symptom
- Priority moves and a 90-day path
- Is deeper work worth it?
01 Issue map · 02 Evidence
1. Issue map
What the owner told us: "We need more leads. Sales has been flat for two years and the sales team says the phone isn't ringing."
We traced how work moves from first call to finished job, and marked where the evidence points.
LeadsLead count steady for 24 months.Not the problem
QuotingAbout 1 in 3 quotes waits on the owner to price.Bottleneck
SchedulingInstall work booked about 4 weeks out.Strained
DeliveryService crews booked about 60% of available days.Uneven
BillingOutside this Inspection's scope.Not reviewed
2. Evidence reviewed
| What we looked at | Source | What it showed |
|---|
| Profit and loss by service line, last 24 months | Accounting export | Install margin down about 3 points; service margin steady. |
| The 50 most recent quotes | Estimating spreadsheet | Non-standard quotes took a median of 9 days to send; standard quotes, 2. |
| Six weeks of the dispatch board | Scheduling software export | Install crews fully booked; service crews had open days every week. |
| Lead and quote log | CRM export | Leads flat but steady; win rate fell on the slow quotes. |
| Conversations | Video calls | Owner (60 min), operations manager (45 min), lead estimator (30 min). |
| Self-assessment result | SweetSpot report | Primary: Owner Bandwidth. Secondary: Capacity and Scheduling. |
03 Cause vs symptom
3. Likely cause versus visible symptom
What it looks like
Not enough leads.
- Revenue flat for two years.
- Sales team says the phone isn't ringing.
- Owner is considering a marketing agency and a second salesperson.
What the evidence says
The owner is the pricing bottleneck, and the crew mix doesn't match the work being sold.
- Leads held steady; quotes slowed down.
- Quotes sent within 3 days won about twice as often as quotes that waited more than 7.
- No written pricing rules: every non-standard job goes to the owner.
- Install is booked out while service crews have slack.
Why more leads would not fix it
More leads mean more quotes into the same queue. The wait gets longer, the win rate on slow quotes stays low, and the install backlog grows. A second salesperson adds cost to the front of a line that is stuck in the middle.
How sure we are
Moderate to high. What would change the read: if the slow quotes were waiting on customers, not on the business. We checked 12 of them; 10 were waiting on the owner's pricing.
04 Priority moves
4. Priority moves and a 90-day path
Fix first
Write pricing rules for the five most common non-standard jobs.The lead estimator quotes them without the owner. The owner reviews only quotes above a set dollar limit.
Move service slack onto the install backlog.Cross-train two service technicians on the most common install tasks.
Track quote age every week.One number on the Monday meeting sheet: quotes older than 5 days.
Leave alone for now
A marketing agency. More leads into a slow quote queue.
A second salesperson. Adds cost in front of the bottleneck.
A new CRM. The current log already showed the problem.
Estimating software. Write the rules first; tools can come after.
The 90-day path
Days 1–30Pricing rules for the first two job types. Start the weekly quote-age count.
Days 31–60Rules for the other three. Cross-training begins. Target: no quote older than 5 days.
Days 61–90Compare win rate and install backlog with the baseline. Keep, change, or come back.