Revenue & Margin Diagnostic
A defensible answer to one growth decision.
Before you commit the money, find out whether the decision is worth its cost and risk. We examine the evidence, compare the alternatives, estimate what each is worth in gross profit, and hand you a recommendation and a next step. Sometimes the right answer is to keep the current plan.
- Duration
- Usually 2 to 4 weeks
- counted from when access is in place
- Price
- Typically $7,500 to $15,000
- fixed, quoted before work starts
- Scope
- One decision
- agreed in writing up front
- Ownership
- Yours to keep
- files included, no obligation to hire us after
Best fit: an established company with
A consequential decision coming up
A bigger budget, a new hire, a pricing change, or a platform someone is recommending.
Enough operating data to investigate it
Usually 12 to 24 months of sales, financial, and marketing records.
A decision-maker who can act on the findings
Someone who can approve the work and change the plan, with a finance contact involved.
Led by Eddie Zaldivar
You work with the person doing the analysis.
- Former head of marketing science, working with large national brands.
- More than $1 billion in ad spend managed, for clients including Unilever, Mercedes-Benz, Diageo, Cisco, Virgin Voyages, HP, and Apple.
- Media mix models and matched-region experiments to settle where budgets should go.
- Data scientist and Google certified cloud architect. English and Spanish.
- The decision
- Where should a budget spread across many channels go, when each platform’s own reporting told a different story?
- What we found
- A media mix model across the whole channel mix found one platform driving far more registrations than its own dated reporting could attribute. Because the model also accounted for crypto price volatility, it showed when people were most interested in signing up.
- What changed
- The media mix shifted to make more of the under-credited channel.
“He can build just about anything! … he does not stop until he has figured it out.”
A worked example
The agency wants to double the ad budget. Should you?
A home services company with about $20 million in revenue. Its agency proposes raising paid social from $40,000 to $80,000 a month. The diagnostic weighs that against the other ways the same money and effort could grow gross profit.
Hypothetical company. Illustrative numbers, not a client result.
| Option | Evidence | Added gross profit / yr | Added cost / yr | Confidence | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Double paid social, $40k to $80k a month | EstimatedPlatform-reported conversions. The last increase overlapped peak season. | $150k to $600k | $480k | Low | Hold. Test +$15k a month in matched regions first. |
| Answer every lead within an hour | EstimatedLeads answered within an hour booked at 31%, the rest at 17%. | $250k to $400k | $65k | Medium | Do it, rolled out on alternating weeks so the effect can be measured. |
| Win back past customers by email | TestedA three-week holdout test, run in the slow season. | $40k to $120k | $10k | Medium | Repeat the test in peak season before scaling. |
| Minimum charge on small jobs | HypothesisCompetitor prices only. No data on lost quotes. | Not yet estimable | Under $5k | Low | Record lost quotes for six weeks, then decide. |
Tested: a designed comparison. Estimated: analysis of existing records, resting on stated assumptions. Hypothesis: not yet measured. Confidence is judged separately: the email test is real, but short and off-season, so it stays at medium.
The recommendation
Do not approve the full increase yet. Fix lead response first: it has the largest expected gain for the least cost.
The financial case
Lead response: about $250k to $400k a year in added gross profit for about $65k. The full social increase: anywhere from losing $330k to gaining $120k a year, after the added spend.
The next action
An eight-week regional test of +$15k a month in paid social, with the metric, comparison regions, and decision rule agreed before it starts.
Still uncertain at handoff: whether fast response causes the higher booking rate, or whether better leads simply get answered faster. The alternating-week rollout answers that.
What you receive
A decision package your CFO, team, or agency can pick up without us in the room.
The recommendation
A decision brief: the question, the alternatives, what we recommend, the evidence for it, and what is still uncertain. It can be “keep the current plan” or “don’t spend the money.”
The financial case
A model of each option in gross profit, with baseline, conservative, base, and upside cases, costs, and timing.
The next action
A test plan and implementation brief: the metric, the comparison, the decision rule, the owner, the cost, and the checkpoints.
- Opportunity map
- Every option weighed, as in the example above.
- Evidence register
- Each source and definition, and which statements are tested, estimated, or hypotheses.
- Working files
- The models and calculations. Yours to keep, so anyone can check the work.
How it runs
Two to four weeks, once access is in place.
Before
Fit call and proposal
A fixed-scope proposal names the question, the access needed, the deliverables, the schedule, the price, and what you pay if we stop after the readiness review.
Once access is in place
Readiness note
Within the first week we check whether your records can answer the question. If they can’t, we say so and agree with you to narrow the question, rescope, or stop.
Weeks 1 to 3
Investigation
Reconcile the numbers, compare competing explanations against the records, model the economics, and talk with the people closest to the work.
Final week
Decision and walkthrough
The package, walked through with your leadership, finance included.
What the diagnostic can establish
It works from records you already have.
It does not run a live experiment. When the answer needs one, you receive the test design; the test runs afterward, with your team or as a separate engagement.
Evidence and confidence are rated separately.
A finding can come from a real test and still be uncertain, if the test was short or ran in an unusual season. Each finding says both.
You know what is still open.
At handoff you know what is settled, what remains uncertain, and what it would take to find out.
What we need from you
- A sponsor who can approve the work and a finance contact.
- The current proposal or business case, if one exists.
- Read-only access to the relevant sales, financial, and marketing records, usually 12 to 24 months.
- Time with the people closest to the work.
Named accounts only. No shared passwords, and no personal data we do not need.
What it is not
- A company-wide audit.
- A guarantee of savings or growth.
- A live experiment. We design the test; running it is a separate step.
- Implementation. That is a separate, optional step.
Fair questions
- What if the answer is to do nothing?
- Then that is the recommendation, with the reasons. Avoiding a bad hire or a budget increase that would not pay for itself is often the most valuable result.
- Our agency already reports on this.
- It should. We look at whether those reports settle the decision you are making, including the economics and the alternatives. If they already give a credible, reviewable answer, you do not need us, and we will say so.
- We have an analyst.
- Good. We work with them. The question is whether this decision needs outside judgment, a particular skill, or extra capacity for a few weeks.
- Why not just hire someone?
- For a lasting full-time need, hiring may be right. The diagnostic is for a bounded decision, and it can help define the role you actually need.
Bring the decision you are weighing.
A 20 to 30 minute fit call. If a diagnostic is not the right next step, we will say so.