01
Software & Technology
ARR moves faster than the rules that qualify a deal, and the forecast pays for the difference.
Breaks first: qualification
Industries
Same leak, six different disguises.
Profit leaks by industry take the shape of the contract: what you sell, who signs it and how long it runs decide where the money goes. Each page says what breaks first in that sector.
By industry
Find the sector your revenue comes from.
Six sectors, one way of reading them. Read yours to the end; the next step is the same on every page.
02
Energy & Utilities
Tenders that take years, engineers and buyers on different sides of the committee, and service contracts run through the same pipeline as the projects.
Breaks first: the handoff
03
Industrial & Manufacturing
Technical products sold on long relationships, by territories drawn around whoever was there and never redrawn.
Breaks first: coverage
04
Financial Services
Mandates passed from relationship to product to risk, with nobody owning the weeks between the sign-offs.
Breaks first: ownership
05
Professional Services
Partners who win the work also bill it, so a missed pitch and an overrun engagement come out of the same hours.
Breaks first: new work
06
Private Equity & VC
A value-creation plan that funded the hires and assumed the ramp, with an add-on doubling the handoffs the model never held.
Breaks first: the ramp assumption
Across all of it
Sector changes what the leak looks like, not how we find it.
ISEOR's research says where a company loses money without seeing it, and it holds in every sector. The five steps below are the same on every page; what changes is which leak costs most, and how it hides.
- KKey breakFind the leak
- IInputsGather the evidence
- HHidden costPrice it
- OOrderFix list, in order
- NNamed ownersHand it over
The evidence
Four figures that hold in every sector.
The published figures below come from samples that span sectors, and they describe the same leak. Each one is a number you can set beside your own.
- 01
45%
The share of chief sales officers who report their organisation met several of its 2024 strategic goals, across industries: more than half of the commercial plans a board approved did not land, and the plan is rarely what gets reopened.
Gartner, press release "Less Than Half of CSOs Report Their Organization Met Several 2024 Strategic Goals", 243 CSOs and senior sales leaders, November to December 2024, 21 May 2025
- 02
18% to 3%
Win rate by how long a late-stage deal has slipped: 18% at a week, 13% at a month, 8% at three months, 5% at six and 3% beyond; the deal your forecast still carries is worth less each week it waits.
Ebsta and Pavilion, GTM Benchmarks Report 2025, 655,000 opportunities at 387 companies, vendor survey, March 2025, p. 20
- 03
1% to 6%
What the fix cost as a share of the hidden cost it removed, in 82% of the cases ISEOR has measured, with the return on that spend between 210% and 4,000% and the payback between under a month and six months: the leak is expensive, closing it is not.
ISEOR, Savall and Zardet, "Le concept de coût-valeur des activités", Sciences de Gestion 64, 40 company cases 1984 to 2007, pp. 81 and 82
- 04
73.4%
The share of sales leaders who estimate their teams lose more than a quarter of their time to technology that gets in the way, 26.2% putting it above half, across manufacturing, software, corporate services, finance and media: the leaders' own estimate, which your calendars can confirm or correct.
monday.com, The State of Sales Technology 2025, 500 sales leaders at mid-sized and enterprise companies in the US and UK, vendor survey, March 2025, p. 12
Where it fits
Where this does not fit.
Sector points to where the leak is likely to be. Three situations leave nothing to read, whatever the sector.
- Pure self-serveNo sales team means no sales process to read; the leak, if there is one, sits elsewhere in the business.
- Pre-revenueNo contracts yet means no history to measure from, so there is nothing to say where you started.
- No authority to changeWhere nobody with authority will change how the commercial team works, the fix list has nobody to act on it.
Not sure? Book a strategy call →
Where to go next
Three more places to look.
- 01
See it by growth stage instead
The same leak moves as the company grows; six stages say where it sits at each.
- 02
See what gets measured
Six places the money leaks, the signs that give each one away, and how each turns into a cost.
- 03
Find out where it leaks
Two months of interviews and records, ending in a figure at your own rates: the leak, its cost and the first fix.
FAQ
Before you pick a sector.
We are pre-revenue with no sales team yet, is the Diagnosis useful for us?
Not yet. The Diagnosis needs contracts with some history behind them, and a pre-revenue company has too few for a pattern to show. Before that point, Build writes the commercial system down.
We sell across more than one of these sectors, which page applies to us?
The one carrying the most revenue or the most strain, as a start. The Diagnosis reads your company, not a sector page, so the work adapts once it begins.
Does company size matter more than sector?
Growth stage matters more than either. Size decides how much a leak costs; the stage decides where it sits, and the sector decides what it looks like.
Our sector is not on this list, can you still work with us?
Yes. The six are where the practice looks first, not a limit. The question is the same in any B2B company with contracted revenue and a commercial team: where does the profit go between the contract and the accounts.
Get started
The sector says where to look. Your records say what it costs.
Thirty minutes on your contracts, your commercial team and which records would show where the money goes between the two. The sector narrows the search; the call starts it.