The question behind the book

How much are we losing, and why?

I asked an executive what percentage of loss was acceptable in a pipeline. He said fifty.

It stuck with me because we had no competitor. If half the people who talked to us walked away, that wasn’t the industry. That was us.

We celebrate what we win and assume nothing could be done about the rest. This book is about the rest.

What we assumeWhat nobody checks

We focus on what we sold.Not on what we lost.

We use a CRM.Whether it’s used right.

The pipeline says $10M.Whether anyone would bet on it.

We hired good people.Whether busy means working.

Churn is 25%.Why.

The assumption

To grow, you have to do “more” of something.

That is how almost every growth plan begins. If the number has to go up, something has to go up with it — the lead count, the headcount, the tool stack, the budget, the hours.

Sometimes adding works. Often it just costs more to stand still, and next year the same conversation happens again with a bigger number attached.

This book asks the other question. Not what to add. What is already leaving, and where it goes.

What you get

Every one of the thirteen follows the same pattern.

Thirteen losses, one per chapter, each worked the same way. Whichever one you open, you get the same three things.

A loss you recognizeA story from a real company, names changed, that you will have seen a version of.

A figure you can defendWorked on Veridian, the book’s $50M example company, with the table you need to run it on yours.

A fix, not a theoryWhat to change, who owns it, and what it costs to leave alone.

You do not have to finish it to use it. Any chapter works on its own.

What’s inside

13 patterns.

Not a comprehensive list — every company has its own version of waste and friction. These are the patterns that show up most often, in most places.

Decisions made on pipeline numbers nobody fully trusts

Fighting the same problems instead of fixing what causes them

Underperformance that stays invisible, carried by everyone around it

Meetings, interruptions and admin eating the hours you pay for

Good people screened out before anyone ever meets them

Systems that quietly teach people the wrong behavior

Two reps, the same quota, completely different work behind it

Customers who erode away long before anyone calls it churn

Ideas that die before they reach anyone who could act on them

Processes kept only because they have always been there

Spend nobody checks, and revenue earned but never collected

No capacity left to fix what keeps causing the problems

The price you charge drifting away from the price you think you charge

Before you decide

Read the end of chapter thirteen.

The closing pages of chapter thirteen, in full and unedited — the story, the turn, and the line it lands on. If you don’t like the way it reads, you have saved yourself the money.

Read The Excerpt

The book

Get a copy.

Kindle pre-order is open now at $2.99 through launch week, then $7.99. Paperback ($17.99) ships September 29.

Pre-order On Amazon — $2.99 Read A Page First

Bulk copies for a leadership team, or a copy for a review — email me at jrandall@metrixgrove.com.

Free companion · after you read it

The book’s own tables, as a spreadsheet you can fill in.

Every calculation in the book is worked on Veridian, a fictional $50M company carried from the first chapter to the last so you can watch one business leak in thirteen places. The workbook is those same tables, with an empty column for your numbers.

Ch 1 · Manual work one of fifteen tabs

	Veridian	Yours
Reps	20
Hours per rep per week on CRM admin	8
Loaded hourly rate, rep	$100
Annual rep labor cost	$832,000

Where to find it: ask three reps how long they spend each week on CRM admin, and average it.

Fifteen tabs, all built like that one.

Send me the workbook

One field. The file is on the next page.

I keep the address, and I may write to you about the consulting practice. That is the whole trade. No drip campaign, no follow-up series, nothing else happens.