A corroborated first reading of sales pipeline effectiveness at Sunshine Power, across seven capabilities and six of eight invited stakeholders. Behaviour holds wherever something checks it, and drifts or stops wherever nothing does. Of the 73 things a mature pipeline needs, 21 are fully in place, 29 are half-built and 23 are absent — and not one above Level 3 was confirmed complete.
No consultant analysis time went into producing this. Six people answered a fifteen-minute survey and the platform did the rest. Part one sets out the finding and what it costs. Part two proposes what to do about it. Part three holds every reading the argument rests on, so that nothing above is asserted without somewhere to check it.
The finding
Every capability was read twice — once for the artefacts a mature pipeline requires, once for whether the people doing the work still hit the problems those artefacts exist to prevent. Corroboration takes the lower of the two readings, never the average.
Both readings came back at once. 21 of the 73 artefacts are fully in place, 29 are half-built and 23 are absent — and every one of the 21 sits at Level 2 or Level 3. 40 of the 73 problems are still being reported, 19 of them at Level 4 alone.
Nothing here was abandoned. It was started, checked at the gate, and never watched again. Sunshine Power is not short of process — it is short of the thing that makes process hold: a way of seeing, between the checkpoints, whether any of it is still happening. The question is not what was bought. It is what observes it.
Read level by level across all seven capabilities. Above: how much of what each level asks for was found in place. Below: how many of that level's problems people report living with.
Not one Level 4 artefact was confirmed fully in place, 62% are absent, and nine in ten of the Level 4 problems are being reported right now. At Level 2, by contrast, every required artefact is at least started and only 14% of the problems are reported. The solid band simply stops at Level 3 — and so does the checking.
The proof
Seven capabilities down. Four maturity levels across. Within each level, one column per dimension — and within each column, the evidence reading stacked above the lived-experience reading. Nothing is summarised here; this is the assessment itself. Appendix A2 breaks it out capability by capability.
Dark or hatched over white, everywhere. Every Level 2 artefact is at least started and only three problems are reported. This is a defined way of working, and you have it.
Not one solid mark. Eight hatched, thirteen hollow — and nineteen of the twenty-one problems below them reported. Sales Execution is entirely hollow at this level: nothing built, nothing working.
Twenty-nine artefacts sit half-built, clustered at Levels 3 and 4. Work started, checked once, and never carried through — the largest single category in this assessment, and cheaper to finish than to start.
One row is shaded on the left: Demand and Pipeline Creation, at 1.7, which sets the firm-wide level on its own. Read it across and the pattern is unmistakable — hatched marks almost the whole way, and no problem reported until Level 4. Nothing ever signalled that it was unfinished, so nobody finished it.
Where you stand
Maturity here is non-compensatory: a pipeline is a chain of dependent activities, so a strong capability cannot carry a weak one. The band you have cleared is set by your weakest capability, not by your average. Demand and Pipeline Creation has not cleared Level 2, so the firm has cleared Level 1 — a full band below where the average would put it.
| Capability | Score | Band | Conf. | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demand and Pipeline Creation | 1.7 | Initial Pipeline Setup | 86% | Sets the floor |
| Opportunity Qualification | 2.2 | Defined Pipeline Processes | 79% | Thin evidence |
| Pipeline Foundations | 2.3 | Defined Pipeline Processes | 90% | Drift between gates |
| Sales Execution | 2.3 | Defined Pipeline Processes | 92% | Best evidenced |
| People and Skills | 2.3 | Defined Pipeline Processes | 85% | — |
| Governance and Improvement | 2.3 | Defined Pipeline Processes | 84% | No confirmed findings |
| Technology and Data | 3.3 | Consistent Pipeline Delivery | 73% | Least evidenced |
| Firm-wide, non-compensatory | 1.7 | Cleared Level 1 | 84% | |
Left, how far the evidence goes. Right, how far lived experience goes. On this reading the evidence is the binding reading in four of seven capabilities — the file is weaker than the experience, which is the opposite of what most people expect.
Only five items across all 73 have an artefact confirmed fully in place and the problem still reported. The two robust ones are both here, and both are between-gate: practice followed at the gates and worked around in between (0.79), records complete at transition and stale in between (0.75).
The mirror image. Not one Level 2 or Level 3 problem reported — no friction, no workaround, no complaint — while source recording, the coverage plan and in-period tracking all sit half-built. Nothing ever signalled it was unfinished. It scores 1.7 and sets the firm-wide level.
Same absence, two symptoms: drift where people are active, stall where they are content. Neither is people ignoring the system. Both are the system not being observed.
What kind of problem this is
Every root cause was classified by pairing the problem against what already exists to prevent it. On this reading the split is even — 20 need building, 20 need adopting — which rules out any single-track programme. Sorted by the work rather than the capability, the twenty recommendations tell you the sequence.
20 · 27%
Nothing in place and people are still hitting it. The clearest case for investment.
20 · 27%
Something exists and the problem persists. Building more will not move these.
3 · 4%
Works, but nothing protects it. A continuity risk, not a performance one.
30 · 41%
Handled and not causing problems. No action needed.
A build-only programme leaves half the causes untouched. So does a training programme. Whatever is commissioned has to do both — and the sequence matters, because this organisation demonstrably builds things and then loses them.
| What you would buy | Recs | Confirmed | The work |
|---|---|---|---|
| See between the checkpoints | 4 | 2 | Sample practice between gates, sample records between transitions, group-score live deals, compare two starters’ first months. |
| Close the loop | 3 | 0 | Track improvements to done, record an action per review finding and check it, track forecast accuracy across three periods. |
| Hold the rhythm | 2 | 2 | Deal review on cadence even when nothing is wrong; close checklist applied at stage exit. |
| Name who is accountable | 3 | 0 | A data quality owner with authority, a business-triggered change route, decisions recorded in the meeting. |
| Twelve above build the observation layer · eight below finish the artefacts | |||
| Finish or build the artefact | 8 | 5 | Coverage plan, source field, qualification information and re-check, RACI tie-break, stage criteria, capability framework, published gaps. |
| Twenty recommendations | 20 | 9 | Nine confirmed; eleven rest on an open question |
Twenty-three artefacts were confirmed absent, and nineteen of them are feedback loops: stall alerts, slippage warning, coaching records, win rate against qualification score, forecast accuracy, propagation between teams, a standing agenda that requires decisions. Everything describing how to do the work exists in some form; almost nothing that would tell you whether doing it worked exists at all. The eight builds are what the floor rests on. The twelve are what keeps them from going stale again. Appendix A4 lists all twenty-three.
Limits
Confidence is 84%. This is a first reading taken quickly: defensible, and not yet settled. Eleven open questions could change a capability rating, and only 30% of the evidence is corroborated across respondents; the rest rests on a single report. That difference matters commercially, so it is stated before the proposal rather than after it. Appendix A6 lists all forty-two.
Under Technology and Data, five of six respondents said people never keep spreadsheets alongside the system. Under Pipeline Foundations, Rob S wrote that half the team runs their own tracker because the CRM view does not match how they sell.
Both cannot be true, and this one is the falsifier for the whole positioning. If Rob S is right and half the team really does run trackers outside the CRM, this is partly a tooling-fit and compliance problem rather than purely an observation one. We are naming it so you can hold us to it. Technology and Data drew the fewest responses of any capability and carries the lowest confidence at 73%. Settling it takes about two days.
| Two capabilities have no confirmed findings at all | Technology and Data (73% confidence, four of six responses) and Governance and Improvement (84%, six of six) contribute six recommendations between them, and not one is confirmed. Those two are precisely where the observation story would live — so they are where the settle week earns its fee. |
| Two stakeholders did not respond | Six of eight is a good rate and the findings are corroborated across all seven capabilities. But the two absent voices are not randomly distributed — they are absences, and we would want them in before committing to the Technology and Data reading. |
| Nothing has been settled since baseline | This is the reading as it stood on 9 August, uncorrected. Settling a question later corrects what we now believe was true on that day; it is not progress, and it will not be presented as progress at remeasurement. |
The platform's analytical priority puts Pipeline Foundations first. The written conclusion points instead at Demand and Pipeline Creation and Opportunity Qualification. Both are defensible on this reading, and that is the problem: with eleven rating-movers open and 70% of the evidence unchecked, the sequencing question cannot yet be answered on evidence.
A fixed-scope, fixed-price programme built on this reading would be priced against a picture that may not survive contact with the evidence. The proposal in part two therefore commits to one week of settling — the open questions are already listed, so it is a day and a half of work — and prices everything after that against the recalculated reading.
Everything in part one was produced without a day of consultant analysis. We could quote a twenty-six-week programme off it today. It would be priced against eleven open questions that could move a rating. But the assessment already lists every one of them, ranked, with the rating-movers flagged — so settling the reading is not an investigation to be scoped. It is a working session with the people who know, and the platform recalculates everything from the answers.
One and a half consultant days, inside one week, at £1,725. The recalculated assessment generates a roadmap with timescales, which we bring back to work through and agree with you — next week, not next quarter.
The next step
AXAT carries every unsettled question forward, ranked, with the eleven that would move a rating flagged. Nothing needs scoping and there is no write-up phase — the work is defined before day one, and each answer is recorded in the session it is settled in.
| # | Step | What happens | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Review what is still open | Forty-two questions, already listed and ranked, with the eleven rating-movers flagged. Twenty-seven were never checked; fifteen are disagreements between respondents. | ~30 mins |
| 02 | Work the list with stakeholders | Evidence sessions against the named artefacts — mostly “show me” rather than “tell me”, because most of the open questions are about how much of a half-built artefact actually exists. The two people who did not respond come in here, and so does the CRM contradiction on page 6: a manager opens the system and shows us. | ~1 day |
| 03 | Record the outcomes in TheAX | In the session as each question is settled, not written up afterwards. Every answer carries its source, so the corrected reading is auditable rather than asserted. | ~1 hour |
| 04 | The platform recalculates | Corrected scores, corrected floor, corrected classification of every root cause, regenerated outputs. No re-analysis and no second report to write. | ~10 mins |
| 05 | The roadmap | Sequence and timescales generated from the recalculated assessment rather than from a separate planning exercise. Brought back as a draft to work through and agree with you, not a plan to sign off. | ~2 hours |
| One and a half consultant days inside one week, at £1,150 per day. Forty-two questions over about six hours of session time is roughly one every eight minutes. | £1,725 | ||
A corrected assessment at materially higher confidence, every settled answer carrying its source, and a roadmap with timescales generated from it and agreed with you. All of it is yours whether or not you commission anything further — including the roadmap, which you are free to put out to tender.
That the problem is larger than it looks — three capabilities carry confidence below 85% and could drop. Or smaller: the 29 half-built artefacts may be closer to finished than reported. Both outcomes are worth £1,725 and a week to know before committing six figures.
Indicative
What the settled reading is likely to require, based on this first pass. Steps two to four are indicative — the recalculated assessment generates the sequence and the timescales, and those are what the programme gets priced against.
| Step | Activity | Timing | Effort | Fee | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One | Settle the reading42 questions worked through, recalculated by the platform, roadmap agreed | week 1 | 1.5 days | £1,725 | Committed |
| Two | Install the observation layerSampling between gates, cadence held, ownership named, loops closed — the twelve | weeks 2–13 | 30–38 days | £34,500–£43,700 | From the roadmap |
| Three | Finish and build the eight artefactsInside that layer, not after it | weeks 4–15 | 44–54 days | £50,600–£62,100 | From the roadmap |
| Four | Remeasure on the same instrument | weeks 16–17 | 4 days | £4,600 | From the roadmap |
| Indicative total across all four steps | 79.5–97.5 days | £91,425–£112,125 | — | ||
This organisation builds things and then loses them — that is the finding in part one, stated as a sequence. Sampling, cadence and ownership go in alongside the first artefacts, not after the last one. Build first and step three quietly recreates the problem step one diagnosed.
Quote a fixed price for steps two to four today. Any firm that does is pricing against a reading it has not checked — and here that reading is a week and a day and a half away, so there is no excuse for guessing. The range above is wide because eleven rating-movers are open and 29 artefacts are half-built by an unknown amount.
All 42 open questions closed, or explicitly carried with a stated reason. Outcomes recorded in TheAX with their source, the assessment recalculated, and a roadmap generated from it and worked through with you. £1,725 fixed: if it takes two days, that is our problem.
A named floor target, a set of countable adoption thresholds measured weekly from your CRM, and a remeasurement on the same instrument. We will put fee at risk against the artefacts and commit jointly on the behaviours — one week from now, against a reading we have checked.
Level 4. Nineteen of the 21 Level 4 problems are being reported right now and no Level 4 artefact was found complete. That is a second programme, and the first honest conversation about it is a year out.
A commitment made against an unchecked reading is not a commitment. It is a guess with a signature on it. One week from now we will give you one worth holding us to.
Conditions
Your baseline was attributed, not anonymous. Six named people told us how their pipeline actually runs. There is an obvious temptation, later, to use those answers as evidence about the people who gave them.
Assessment responses are never an input to any decision about an individual. If they were, the remeasurement would be worthless — everyone would answer defensively — and you would have punished candour you asked for. Any judgement about people rests on observed practice against a written standard, and that standard does not exist yet: the capability framework is one of the eight artefacts still to be built.
| The two stakeholders who did not respondOne session each | Without them, Technology and Data stays at 73% confidence and the Demand and Pipeline Creation floor stays unproven — and that floor is what sets the firm-wide level. |
| Diaries cleared enough to do it in five daysThe real constraint | A day and a half only works if the sessions can be scheduled back to back. Spread them over a month and the elapsed time, not the effort, becomes the cost. |
| A sales manager who can open the CRMIn the session, not afterwards | The CRM contradiction cannot be settled by asking the same question again. It is settled by someone showing us the system and saying whether trackers exist alongside it. |
| Whoever can say what was actually built, and whenOften not the sponsor | Twenty-nine artefacts are half-built and most of the 27 never-checked questions are about them. Someone knows why each one stopped, and that is the fastest route to settling it. |
Everything in part one rests on one claim: that behaviour holds where something checks it and drifts where nothing does. If the settle week confirms Rob S — if half the team really does run trackers outside the CRM — this is partly a tooling-fit and compliance problem, not purely an observation one.
What we do: We have named the falsifier rather than burying it. It is one of the fifteen disagreements and it is settled inside the stakeholder sessions, by asking someone to open the system rather than by asking the question again. If it goes against us, the step two scope changes and we will say so when the roadmap is generated.
Validating evidence usually finds less than was reported. Only 30% has been checked, and three capabilities carry confidence below 85%. Technology and Data at 3.3 is the most exposed — it is the highest score on the fewest responses.
What we do: Better to learn that for £1,725 in week one than in month four of a fixed-price programme. This is the central argument for the settle week existing at all, and we would rather present it as a risk than as a selling point.
A corrected assessment with no delivery behind it is a report. Sunshine Power already has plenty of things that were produced, filed and never carried through — twenty-nine of them are half-built right now, and they are listed in A4.
What we do: The roadmap is generated with sequence and timescales attached and worked through with you in the same week, so it arrives agreed rather than filed — and it can be acted on by us, by you, or by whoever you put it out to.
The deepest risk, and the one the assessment itself demonstrates. Sampling, cadence and named ownership are exactly the kind of thing this organisation starts and stops.
What we do: Stage two is sequenced ahead of stage three deliberately, and every observation item is signed off on evidenced use rather than on delivery — a sample actually taken, a review actually held with attendance recorded, a decision actually logged.
Part three
Nothing in parts one and two is asserted without a reading behind it. This appendix holds those readings: the method, the capability-by-capability detail, the full root-cause classification, the missing artefacts, the verbatim comments, the forty-two open questions, and all twenty recommendations the platform produced.
Appendix A1
Most assessments ask people how mature they think they are. This one takes two independent readings of the same capability and refuses to average them.
For each maturity level we name the specific artefacts that level requires and establish whether each is in place, partly in place or missing. On this first pass 30% are corroborated — more than one respondent independently accounting for the same artefact. The remaining 70% rest on a single report, and are marked as such in the platform record.
For the same level we ask the people doing the work how often they hit the specific problems those artefacts exist to prevent, on a five-band scale from never to always. A problem counts as present when the weighted mean of answers crosses the threshold.
No consultant analysis time went into it. Eight people were invited, six completed a fifteen-minute survey, and the platform did the rest — scoring both readings, applying the floor rule, classifying all 73 root causes, ranking the recommendations, listing what it could not settle, and generating this document. Start to finish, about thirty minutes of set-up and review. That is why it can be put in front of you before anyone has been asked to fund anything: producing it cost almost nothing, and it is still specific enough to argue with.
The lower reading sets the score. If the file says a capability has cleared Level 4 and the people doing the work report Level 4 problems every week, the capability has not cleared Level 4 — it has a Level 4 document. The gap between the two readings is not noise to be smoothed away. On this engagement it is the entire finding.
A pipeline is a chain of dependent activities. A strong capability cannot carry a weak one: if opportunities are qualified inconsistently, it does not matter how good the reporting is — you are reporting accurately on a pipeline that was mis-sorted at the front. The band cleared firm-wide is therefore set by the weakest capability, not the average. Sunshine Power averages 2.4 and clears Level 1, because Demand and Pipeline Creation sits at 1.7.
Presence is binary: a problem either counts or it does not, with no partial credit. That makes the measure sharp but brittle at the margin. Six people answering “rarely” produces a mean of 0.25 and counts as absent; five answering “rarely” with one “sometimes” produces 0.29 and counts as present. One respondent moving one band can flip a classification.
Roughly eight currently-absent symptoms sit within a single answer of that line. Combined with 42 unsettled questions and only 30% of the evidence corroborated, this is why the proposal in part two commits to one week of investigation — a day and a half of work against a list that already exists — and prices everything after that from the recalculated reading.
| Model | AXAT Test Sales Pipeline Effectiveness v1.0 · five levels · seven capabilities · 21 dimensions |
| Assessment mode | AXAT corroborated — stakeholder assessment triangulated against evidence and reported symptoms |
| Baseline | 09 August 2026 · fixed, and uncorrected. This is the first reading; nothing has been settled since. |
| Participation | 6 of 8 invited, attributed (not anonymous). Per-capability response counts vary from 4 to 6 — see A2. |
| Calculated by | TheAX · maturity approach non-compensatory, floor sets the level · scores 0–5 |
| Self-rated position | 2.5 · corroborated position 2.4. Self-assessment and corroboration are close, so these findings should not meet denial. |
Appendix A2
Ordered by corroborated score, weakest first. Each capability read twice; where the two diverge the corroborated score takes the lower, so the reading that caps each capability is named in the card.
How new opportunities are generated, where they come from, and whether the sources are understood well enough to plan.
How accurately and consistently opportunities are assessed, and whether objective criteria are applied.
How sales roles are defined, whether there is a standard sales process people actually follow, and how consistently the CRM is used and kept accurate.
How deals are progressed once qualified — the disciplines of running an opportunity to close.
Appendix A2
Whether the sales team has the capability it needs, and whether that capability is developed deliberately.
How the pipeline is governed, how performance is reviewed, and how improvements are made and propagated.
Whether the tooling supports the sales motion and whether the data it holds can be trusted for decisions.
Demand and Pipeline Creation, People and Skills, Technology and Data and Opportunity Qualification are all capped by what could be found rather than by what people report. In the first three the people report materially fewer problems than the file supports. Where nobody feels friction, nothing signalled that the artefact was unfinished — so nobody finished it.
Appendix A3
Each of the 73 problem statements was paired against the artefact that exists to prevent it. The pairing produces four classifications, and on this reading the split between building and adopting is even.
| Classification | Count | Share | State, and what it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build it | 20 | 27% | Nothing in place and people are still hitting it. The clearest case for investment: a reported problem with no answer to it. |
| Make it land | 20 | 27% | Something exists and the problem persists. Building more will not move these; the work is adoption. |
| Write it down | 3 | 4% | Held together by people. Works, but nothing protects it. A continuity risk rather than a performance one. |
| Leave it | 30 | 41% | Handled and not causing problems. No action needed beyond finishing what was started. |
| Worth acting on | 43 | 59% | An even split — no single-track programme reaches all of it |
The same 73 problems and 73 artefacts, counted level by level. This is the numeric form of the chart on page 2, and it is where the finding lives.
| Level | Artefacts sought | In place | Half-built | Missing | Problems reported |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 2 Defined | 21 | 15 | 6 | 0 | 3 of 21 · 14% |
| Level 3 Consistent | 21 | 6 | 12 | 3 | 8 of 21 · 38% |
| Level 4 Managed | 21 | 0 | 8 | 13 | 19 of 21 · 90% |
| Level 5 Optimised | 10 | 0 | 3 | 7 | 10 of 10 · 100% |
| Total | 73 | 21 | 29 | 23 | 40 of 73 · 55% |
Every one of the 21 fully-complete artefacts sits at Level 2 or Level 3. Above that line nothing was confirmed finished — which is the same line at which the reported problems jump from 38% to 90%.
| Capability | Live problems | Build | Adopt | Nature of the work |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pipeline Foundations | 9 | 4 | 5 | Largest single block; drift between gates |
| Opportunity Qualification | 8 | 5 | 3 | Most build-heavy capability |
| Sales Execution | 6 | 3 | 3 | Genuine build at Level 4 |
| Governance and Improvement | 6 | 3 | 3 | Even; nothing confirmed |
| People and Skills | 5 | 3 | 2 | Build-weighted, small |
| Demand and Pipeline Creation | 4 | 1 | 3 | Sets the floor on evidence alone |
| Technology and Data | 2 | 1 | 1 | Smallest; least evidenced |
| Forty live problems | 40 | 20 | 20 | An even split |
Appendix A4
Sort the missing artefacts by what they do and they concentrate hard. Nineteen of the twenty-three are feedback loops — the things that would tell you whether the work is working.
| Capability · dimension | Level | Artefact |
|---|---|---|
| Level 3 — three | ||
| Opportunity QualificationData Behind the Criteria | 3 | Completeness check on qualification fields |
| Opportunity QualificationOngoing Re-qualification | 3 | Re-check required at defined stage transitions |
| People and SkillsCapability Framework | 3 | Capability framework for sales roles |
| Level 4 — thirteen | ||
| Pipeline FoundationsDefined Sales Roles | 4 | Named deputy for each role, tested during planned leave |
| Pipeline FoundationsStandardised Sales Processes | 4 | Adherence reported on a defined cadence |
| Opportunity QualificationData Behind the Criteria | 4 | Win rate reported against qualification score |
| Opportunity QualificationOngoing Re-qualification | 4 | Defined review cadence for stalled or disqualified opportunities |
| Demand and Pipeline CreationMarketing Handover | 4 | Closed-loop reporting from opportunity back to campaign |
| Sales ExecutionDeal Progression | 4 | Stall criteria defined, with an alert |
| Sales ExecutionCoaching and Review | 4 | Coaching record against sellers |
| Sales ExecutionClose Discipline | 4 | Slippage tracked and reported before period end |
| Technology and DataReporting and Insight | 4 | Forecast accuracy tracked over consecutive periods |
| People and SkillsOnboarding | 4 | Time-to-productivity tracked for new starters |
| People and SkillsOngoing Development | 4 | Development targeted at assessed gaps, with outcome measured |
| Governance and ImprovementGovernance Rhythm | 4 | Standing agenda with decisions required at each item |
| Governance and ImprovementPerformance Review | 4 | Performance managed against a defined model |
| Level 5 — seven | ||
| Pipeline FoundationsStandardised Sales Processes | 5 | Register of approved exceptions and propagated improvements |
| Pipeline FoundationsConsistent CRM Usage | 5 | Configuration backlog managed against sales motion changes |
| Opportunity QualificationQualification Criteria | 5 | Change log for the qualification criteria |
| Opportunity QualificationOngoing Re-qualification | 5 | Disqualification analysis feeding the criteria |
| Technology and DataReporting and Insight | 5 | Forecast adjustment method based on tracked error |
| People and SkillsOngoing Development | 5 | Named owner for the capability model |
| Governance and ImprovementImprovement Loop | 5 | Propagation record for improvements across teams |
| Nothing missing at Level 2 | Twenty of the twenty-three sit at Level 4 or above | |
Six at Level 2, twelve at Level 3, eight at Level 4 and three at Level 5. The heaviest concentrations are Demand and Pipeline Creation (seven of its eight non-complete artefacts are partial rather than absent) and Governance and Improvement (four partial at Levels 3 and 4). In both cases the work was started, checked once, and never carried through — which is cheaper to finish than to start, and is why the settle week works through them before anything is priced.
Appendix A5
Three respondents volunteered written comments. All three describe something official that exists, and a working reality that drifted away from it without anyone noticing.
“Half the team still runs their own tracker because the CRM view does not match how we actually sell.”
Rob S · Pipeline Foundations · reported as a problem“Nobody tells us when the playbook changes. I found out from a customer.”
Jack Voss · Pipeline Foundations · reported as a problem“There is a territory map in the shared drive that predates the reorg — people still use it.”
Amara Diallo · Pipeline Foundations · offered as a documentA playbook nobody is told has changed. A territory map that outlived the reorganisation it described. A CRM view that lost touch with the sales motion. None of these is a missing artefact — each is an artefact that stopped being connected to the work, and in every case the disconnection was invisible until someone was asked directly. All three came from the same capability, and no other capability drew any written comment at all. Rob S’s comment is also the falsifier for the positioning: see A6.
Most survey findings are a spread of opinion. These are not. Each block is one respondent; solid means the strongest available answer.
“Improvements made by one team do not reach the others.” “Campaign learning stays with the team that ran it.” “Items are discussed repeatedly without resolution.” Unanimous, from three separate capabilities. Sunshine Power learns things constantly and has no mechanism for a lesson to travel.
All eight sit at Level 4 or Level 5 and all eight score 0.96 or above against a presence threshold near 0.27. They are the most stable signals in the assessment and they do not depend on any of the forty-two open questions — which is why they can be relied on now, and why the measurement layer they point at is priced from the roadmap rather than argued away.
Appendix A6
| Reason | Count | What it limits |
|---|---|---|
| Never checked, and it matters | 27 | The evidence was neither corroborated nor reliably reported. Most sit behind the 29 half-built artefacts, where the question is not whether something exists but how much of it does. |
| Answers disagree | 15 | Respondents gave materially different accounts of the same artefact or problem. One of these is the CRM contradiction below. |
| Total open | 42 | Of 73 investigated · only 30% of evidence corroborated across respondents |
Under Technology and Data, five of six respondents said people never keep spreadsheets alongside the system — scoring the Level 2 symptom at 0.00, the cleanest possible result. Under Pipeline Foundations, Rob S wrote that half the team runs their own tracker because the CRM view does not match how they sell.
Both cannot be true. Part one argues that behaviour holds where something checks it and drifts where nothing does. If Rob S is right, this is partly a tooling-fit and compliance problem instead. Technology and Data drew the fewest responses of any capability and carries the lowest confidence at 73%. It is settled inside the stakeholder sessions in the settle week, by asking someone to open the system rather than by asking the question again.
| Capability | Confidence | Responses | Unconfirmed recs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Execution | 92% | 6 of 6 | 1 | Best evidenced |
| Pipeline Foundations | 90% | 6 of 6 | 0 | All findings confirmed |
| Demand and Pipeline Creation | 86% | 5 of 6 | 1 | Sets the floor |
| People and Skills | 85% | 5 of 6 | 2 | — |
| Governance and Improvement | 84% | 6 of 6 | 3 | No confirmed findings |
| Opportunity Qualification | 79% | 5 of 6 | 1 | Most build-heavy |
| Technology and Data | 73% | 4 of 6 | 3 | No confirmed findings |
| Overall | 84% | 6 of 8 invited | 11 of 20 | Six of the eleven sit in the bottom three rows |
Nothing has been settled since the baseline. This is the reading as it stood on 9 August, uncorrected. Settling a question later corrects what we then believe was true on that day; it is not progress, and it will not be presented as progress at remeasurement.
Appendix A7
The platform produced twenty recommendations, each tied to a named root cause and dimension, and ranked six as priority. Grouped here by the work rather than by the capability, because that is the grouping that determines the sequence. Nine rest on confirmed findings; eleven rest on an open question and would not be spent against until it is closed.
| Capability · dimension | What is behind it | What to do | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEE BETWEEN THE CHECKPOINTS — 4 | ||||
| Pipeline FoundationsStandardised Sales Processes | A documented process exists but people work around it | Sample practice between the gates, not only at them. | Confirmed | |
| Pipeline FoundationsConsistent CRM Usage | CRM use is patchy, so the pipeline view is incomplete | Enforce at the stage transition, then sample between transitions. | Confirmed Priority | |
| Opportunity QualificationQualification Criteria | No agreed criteria, so judgement varies by person | Score three live deals as a group and reconcile where you disagree. | Open Priority | |
| People and SkillsOnboarding | Onboarding depends on who happens to run it | Compare two recent starters’ first months and fix what differed. | Open | |
| CLOSE THE LOOP — 3 | ||||
| Governance and ImprovementImprovement Loop | Improvements are agreed but not tracked to completion | Track each improvement to done and close it publicly. | Open | |
| Governance and ImprovementPerformance Review | Performance is reviewed after the period rather than managed in it | Record an action against each review finding and check it next time. | Open | |
| Technology and DataReporting and Insight | Forecasting is not tested against what happened | Track forecast accuracy for three periods before trying to improve it. | Open | |
| HOLD THE RHYTHM — 2 | ||||
| Sales ExecutionCoaching and Review | Coaching happens only when something has gone wrong | Put deal review on a cadence and hold it even when nothing is wrong. | Confirmed | |
| Sales ExecutionClose Discipline | Closing steps are left to the individual seller | Apply the checklist at stage exit so it is not a last-week scramble. | Confirmed | |
| NAME WHO IS ACCOUNTABLE — 3 | ||||
| Technology and DataData Quality Controls | Data quality has no owner | Name an owner for data quality with the authority to change the system. | Open | |
| Technology and DataTooling Fit | Platform changes happen on a release cycle, not when needed | Add a business-triggered route alongside the release calendar. | Open | |
| Governance and ImprovementGovernance Rhythm | Reviews happen when somebody calls one | Record decisions in the meeting, not afterwards. | Open | |
| FINISH OR BUILD THE ARTEFACT — 8 | ||||
| Demand and Pipeline CreationCoverage Planning | Coverage is not planned against a target | Build the coverage plan from what closed, not from what is hoped for. | Confirmed Priority | |
| Demand and Pipeline CreationSource Mix | Where pipeline comes from is not recorded consistently | Make source a required field before trying to analyse it. | Open Priority | |
| Opportunity QualificationData Behind the Criteria | Criteria are answered from opinion rather than evidence | Make the missing information visible rather than letting it be guessed. | Confirmed Priority | |
| Opportunity QualificationOngoing Re-qualification | An opportunity is qualified once and never revisited | Require the re-check at transition and make skipping it visible. | Confirmed Priority | |
| Pipeline FoundationsDefined Sales Roles | Roles are not written down, so people guess at the edges | Write the tie-break rule before the next disputed deal, not after it. | Confirmed | |
| Sales ExecutionDeal Progression | How a deal is run depends entirely on who is running it | Define entry and exit criteria in the system. | Open | |
| People and SkillsCapability Framework | What good looks like in a sales role is not written down | Assess against the framework once and plan from the gaps it finds. | Confirmed | |
| People and SkillsOngoing Development | Development happens when somebody asks for it | Publish where the gaps are so development can be aimed at them. | Open | |
| Twenty recommendations · twelve observation, eight build | Six carry priority weight | 9 confirmed, 11 open | ||
Twelve of the twenty build the observation layer; eight finish or build an artefact. That tracks the even 20/20 root-cause split closely enough to be consistent, and it gives a sequence rather than a list: the eight are what the floor rests on, the twelve are what stops them going stale again. Six of the eleven unconfirmed recommendations sit in Technology and Data and Governance and Improvement — the two capabilities with no confirmed findings at all, and precisely where the observation story would live. That is where the settle week earns its fee.
Sales pipeline effectiveness — first reading, next-stage proposal and supporting appendix. Baseline 09 August 2026. Assessment conducted by BIG Consultants Inc using AXAT corroborated assessment on TheAX platform; maturity calculated non-compensatory, with the floor setting the level.
Based on 6 of 8 invited stakeholders across seven capabilities, 73 evidence items and 73 problem statements, 30% of evidence corroborated across respondents. Forty-two questions remain open, eleven of which would move a rating; they are set out in A6. Overall confidence in the reading: 84%.
Commercial in confidence. Fees exclude VAT. Proposal valid until 30 September 2026.