Cycle length blamed on regulation
Timing absorbs blame that coordination should carry.
Who we helpEnergy & Utilities
Project revenue and recurring revenue pull the same system in two directions.
Very long cycles, buying committees split across technical and commercial roles, and revenue arriving partly as projects and partly as service. The commercial system rarely gets designed for that shape.
Sector read
Two revenue shapes, one commercial team.
Technical and commercial split
Two buyers inside one committee pulling in different directions.
Two revenue shapes, one system
Project and recurring revenue managed through the same motion.
Committees outlast the pipeline stage
Approval moves through bodies the CRM has no field for.
Renewals treated as administration
Recurring revenue is processed after the fact rather than sold.
Two revenue shapes, one motion
External timing explains part of the delay. Not all of it.
Permitting and procurement are real. So is a proposal sitting unreviewed on an internal desk, and the two are rarely separated before the cost is counted.
The symptom is reported at the surface. The cause sits underneath it.
Cycles blamed on regulation
Extended timelines are attributed to permitting and procurement by default.
Surface · what gets reportedTwo revenue shapes, one motion
Project work and ongoing service run through the same pipeline and the same forecast.
Structure · what produces itThe technical-commercial handoff is unowned
The engineer who evaluates and the person who signs are different people with different criteria.
System · where it breaksMargin hidden in the mix
Which part of the business actually carries the margin stops being visible.
Consequence · what it costsCause and consequence rarely surface in the same place.
What it looks for here
Read project and recurring revenue as one operating system.
The dysfunction families do not change for energy, and the diagnostic does not assume whether regulation, coordination or commercial design is carrying the loss. It separates what the regulatory and grid environment genuinely dictates from internal coordination burden, then reads project and recurring revenue as connected motions.
- Business development
- Sales engineering and delivery
- Regulatory and channel owners
- Permitting and grid timelines
- Procurement cycles
- Commercial-to-engineering handoffs
Two revenue shapes under external timing change how the strain presents.
What tends to break first
The technical-commercial handoff goes first.
Long cycles hide the order in which things fail. Where engineering judgement and commercial ownership sit in different functions, that seam is usually the earliest to strain.
Handoff ownership
The person who evaluates technically and the person who signs commercially work to different criteria, and nobody owns the transition between them.
Two revenue shapes, one motion
Project work and recurring service behave differently, and a single commercial motion applied to both starts mispricing effort on one of them.
Margin visibility
Mix effects absorb the difference. The blended number looks stable while the underlying economics separate.
Cycle attribution
Delay gets attributed to regulation, which is often real and always unfalsifiable, so the part of the cycle that is actually internal stops being examined.
What happens next
Three ways in, depending on what the evidence already says.
Executive Workshop
Three hours with the people who can change the system. One condition named, in writing, before any evidence is gathered.
Explore the Workshop →Diagnosis
Interviews, the records you already produce and your own rates. What is breaking, what it costs, what to change first.
Explore the Diagnosis →Strain Check
Ten questions, two minutes. A first read on which part of your commercial system is carrying the most strain.
Take the Strain Check → FAQ
Before you assume the timeline is fixed.
Our cycles run for years, does a six to eight week diagnostic actually capture that?
The diagnostic reads the system that produces the cycle, not the full length of a single deal. Interviews and pipeline history reveal where the time genuinely goes long before any one project reaches close.
How do you handle the mix of project sales and recurring service revenue?
They are read as two different systems, because they behave differently and fail differently. Running them through one pipeline is often itself part of what the diagnostic surfaces.
Regulation and grid connection drive our timelines, what can a diagnostic change?
Not the regulation itself. What it can change is how much of the delay is external versus the commercial system waiting on its own handoffs, which is usually more than teams assume until it is measured.
Our asset owners and operators are spread across regions, does that affect the interviews?
It shapes who gets interviewed rather than whether the method applies. A geographically distributed commercial system is exactly the kind where coordination cost tends to hide, and the interview list is agreed with you upfront.
Get started
Project and recurring revenue pull two ways. A number shows where the pull costs most.
Use 30 minutes to define the operating question, test what evidence exists and decide whether Kihon has a role at all. No scope is proposed before that is clear.
Discuss the operating problem