We fired the entire sales playbook 4 months after a Β£28m acquisition.
Best decision the PE firm ever made.
Here's what they'd been doing wrong:
The client came to us with revenue flat, and the team demoralised.
"But we interviewed our customers," they said. "We did the work."
I looked at their questions:
- Are you satisfied?
- What could we improve?
- Would you recommend us?
Corporate theatre. Zero insight into replication.
The questions that actually print money:
- What problem were you trying to solve the day you called us?
- What made you choose us over the competitor you were already talking to?
- What almost made you walk away?
- When did you know this was working?
We ran 15 of these interviews in 2 weeks.
The pattern was brutal: Their best customers ALL had the same trigger event 30 days before buying.
They'd ALL tried the "obvious" solution first and failed.
They converted in 4-6 days, not the 45-day cycle the sales team assumed
The acquiring company's playbook assumed a completely different buyer journey.
No wonder nothing was working.
Within 60 days: Rewrote all outbound to target the actual trigger event.
Cut the pitch deck from 27 slides to 6.
Removed three "qualification" steps that were killing momentum.
Result: 34% increase in close rate without changing the product or pricing.
The brutal truth: Your customers already know what works.
You're just not asking them the right questions.