Diagnose
Understand before you build
In this video
Everything the video says.
Lesson 1Who really pays: the ideal customer
Reality
Ask a company who its customer is and you will hear "everyone who needs us."
The problem
"Everyone" is not a customer. It is a way of spending money on the wrong people.
What it costs
Marketing, sales and every system you build end up aimed at nobody in particular.
The idea
The ideal customer profile (ICP) is who pays the most, stays the longest and costs the least to win — taken from real sales, not from wishes.
How to do it
- Look at the best customers from your money map.
- Find what they have in common: size, industry, need, trigger.
- Write the profile, and who is NOT a fit.
Example
A company thought its customer was "small businesses." The data showed its best customers were businesses with several locations.
Your turn
Write the ideal customer of one business in three lines — and one line on who is not a fit.
Lesson 2What customers say: objections and playbook
Reality
Every day, customers tell the company exactly why they buy and why they don't.
The problem
Almost nobody writes it down. Each salesperson answers in their own way, and the lessons stay in their heads.
What it costs
The same objections lose the same deals, month after month.
The idea
Listen to the real conversations, find the frequent objections, and see whether a playbook exists — or should.
How to do it
- Listen to calls or read messages from won and lost deals.
- List the five most frequent objections.
- Check: is there a written way to answer them?
Example
"It's too expensive" appears in most lost deals. Nobody had a standard answer, so every rep improvised.
Your turn
Write the three most common objections in a business you know, and how they are answered today.
Lesson 3Market and competitors
Reality
A company can look healthy inside and still be losing outside.
The problem
Many teams do not know who they compete against, or why customers choose someone else.
What it costs
Prices, offers and messages get decided blind, while competitors take the market.
The idea
Understand the field: how big the market is, who else is in it, and what makes a customer choose.
How to do it
- List the main competitors a customer actually considers.
- Compare offer, price and promise.
- Ask lost customers who they chose and why.
Example
A business kept lowering its price. Lost customers said the real reason was speed: the competitor answered first.
Your turn
Pick one business and name its three real competitors. What does each one promise?
Lesson 4Pipeline, CRM and forecast
Reality
Every company has a pipeline, even if it lives in a notebook or a spreadsheet.
The problem
The CRM says one thing, the salespeople say another, and the forecast is a guess.
What it costs
Leadership decides on numbers nobody trusts, and deals get lost between stages.
The idea
Check whether the pipeline reflects reality: clear stages, updated deals, and a forecast based on data, not hope.
How to do it
- Review the pipeline stages: do they match your money map?
- Check how many deals are stuck or not updated.
- Compare last period's forecast with what actually happened.
Example
The CRM showed 80 open deals. Half had not been touched in two months — the real pipeline was much smaller.
Your turn
Describe how one business tracks its sales today, and one reason not to trust that number.
Lesson 5Data: quality, consistency and who owns it
Reality
Every system you build will run on the company's data.
The problem
That data is usually disorganized, disconnected and duplicated — and often nobody is in charge of it.
What it costs
Build on bad data and every result you show can be questioned.
The idea
Before building, measure the data: is it complete, consistent, connected — and does someone own it?
How to do it
- Take a sample and count empty, duplicated or wrong fields.
- Check whether systems agree with each other.
- Ask: is there a data person on the team?
Example
A contact list had a third of its phone numbers in the wrong format. No system could call them until that was fixed.
Your turn
Open any list you have access to. How many records are incomplete or duplicated?
What the video doesn't have time for.
Why diagnosis comes before building
Automating a mess only produces a faster mess. A diagnosis tells you what the business really is: who pays, why deals are lost, where the market is going, what the pipeline says and whether the data can be trusted.
The one-page diagnosis
Keep it to one page. If it does not fit, you have not understood it yet.
- Ideal customer: who pays the most, stays the longest and costs the least to win — and who is not a fit.
- Conversations: the top objections and the answers that work.
- Market: the two or three alternatives the customer compares you with.
- Pipeline: the stages, the numbers in each and the forecast you can defend.
- Data: what is missing, what is duplicated and who owns fixing it.
Where to find the information
- Real sales and lost deals in the CRM.
- Recorded calls and the questions customers repeat.
- A short conversation with the people who sell and the people who serve.
Common mistakes
- Accepting "everyone" as the ideal customer.
- Trusting the CRM without checking how the data got there.
- Writing a 40-page report nobody reads.
Take it to a company
Present the diagnosis in fifteen minutes and end with one question: "Which of these problems costs you the most right now?" That is where you build first.
A one-page diagnosis: customer, conversations, market, pipeline and data.