Sample Strategic Revenue Audit (anonymised).

1. Executive summary

Client: Anonymised B2B SaaS business, headquartered in UK-headquartered, ARR £4.6m (placeholder). 22 commercial heads across sales, marketing, RevOps and customer success. PE-backed (Series B).

Mandate: Independent diagnostic of the revenue function ahead of the FY plan, with a board-ready report and prioritised intervention list.

Headline finding: The plan is achievable but the current capacity model under-counts ramp by an estimated 22 percent of expected new ARR. Three interventions account for over half of the recoverable gap and should be sequenced inside the first quarter.

Top three interventions (recommended sequence):

1. Reset stage-exit criteria in the CRM and rebuild the forecast cadence around them.
2. Hire a Head of Enablement against the scorecard at Appendix C.
3. Restructure AE territories on a named-account basis for the top two segments.

2. Strategy and ICP

The business has a clearly articulated ICP on paper (mid-market UK and Northern European industrial manufacturers, 200-2,000 FTE). In practice, win rates show that 71 percent of closed-won ARR over the last four quarters came from a sub-segment (UK manufacturers, 500-2,000 FTE, multi-site). The top-of-funnel and outbound effort is still calibrated to the broader ICP.

Recommendation: Restate the ICP to the demonstrated sub-segment for the next four quarters. Re-tier the named-account list against this restated ICP. Expect a short-term reduction in top-of-funnel volume and a meaningful rise in conversion. Detailed model at Appendix A.

3. Structure and capacity

The current AE bench is six heads against a planned ten by the end of the year. The recruitment plan adds four new AEs in Q1 and Q2. Capacity modelling against ramp time of nine months and observed attainment of 64 percent in year one shows the plan delivers an estimated 78 percent of expected new ARR, not 100 percent.

Recommendation: Bring two of the four hires forward into the current quarter and accept the financial cost in H1 to unlock the run-rate gain in H2. Detailed capacity model at Appendix B.

4. Process and pipeline

Stage-exit criteria in the CRM are loosely defined. Stage 3 ("Qualified") in particular admits opportunities that have not yet had a meaningful conversation with an economic buyer. Forecast accuracy at the start of the quarter has averaged 64 percent against actuals over the last four quarters.

Recommendation: Tighten stage-exit criteria and rebuild the forecast call cadence around them. Expect short-term forecast volatility as historic pipeline is reclassified, then a material improvement in forecast accuracy from Q2 onwards.

5. Compensation and motivation

AE OTE is calibrated against a London market that is not the market this business hires from. Top performers are paid roughly 12 percent above the regional market median, which is sustainable. The quota-to-OTE ratio sits at 4.1×, which is at the upper end of what we would expect to drive the right behaviour and is contributing to sandbagging at quarter end.

Recommendation: Hold OTE flat. Ease quota-to-OTE ratio to 3.6× by raising OTE accelerator payouts above 100 percent of quota. This is broadly cost-neutral against plan and removes the quarter-end behaviour we are seeing in the data.

6. Tooling and operating cadence

The stack is broadly fit for purpose. The forecast call is happening but is being run as a status update rather than a forecasting session. The QBR cadence has lapsed in the last two quarters under the pressure of in-quarter activity.

Recommendation: Restart the QBR at the beginning of the next quarter on the agenda set out at Appendix D. Re-shape the weekly forecast call to be commit-and-best-case-driven, not a roll-up of activity.

7. Prioritised intervention list

The full report appendix sequences fourteen interventions across the five workstreams above with owner, effort, dependency and expected impact. The top three (forecast cadence, Head of Enablement hire, named-account territory reset) account for an estimated 58 percent of the recoverable gap to plan.

Appendices (in the full report, not shown here)

• Appendix A: ICP model and segment fit heat-map
• Appendix B: Capacity model with ramp and attainment scenarios
• Appendix C: Head of Enablement scorecard
• Appendix D: QBR agenda and operating cadence design
• Appendix E: Comp plan recommendations with worked payout examples