Audit: Commercial Readiness & Sales Excellence

What it is

A diagnostic that maps what is actually happening in your commercial function against what you believe or officially state is happening, benchmarked against how strong commercial organizations operate. It also tests whether the problem as first framed is the real one, or just the visible symptom of something else.

The visual outputs allow executives and sales leadership to sit around looking together at the same picture of the challenge, rather than getting lost and confused in the pursuit of the silver bullet to commercial performance.

It is for leadership teams who sense that effort and results do not match, and who want a shared picture of why before they decide what to change.

Sound familiar?

Everyone has a theory — cheaper pricing, better marketing, a different CRM — and they rarely agree, because none of them started by actually breaking the problem into its real, distinct parts. That decomposition, not another opinion, is usually where clarity starts
Everyone’s genuinely trying — real effort, real energy, real hours — and the results still aren’t showing up
Multiple things clearly need attention, but nobody’s sure what to fix first, what depends on what, or whether something that worked for another company would actually work here
Revenue forecasts aren’t something anyone can actually rely on
The sales process that’s documented on paper isn’t the one people actually follow — everyone’s running their own version
A lot of time disappears into admin, meeting notes, and pipeline updates, and no one’s sure exactly how much, or where it’s going

The cost of waiting. Without a shared picture, organisations often fix the wrong thing: a new tool, a new hire, another training. Each costs money and time, and the real cause stays in place.

Is this the one you need?

Whatever the eventual course of action — operational, tactical, strategic, or transformative, touching process, tools, or people — the step that’s almost always missing is genuine consensus on what the problem actually is. Not the view from inside the day-to-day, where everyone’s read is shaped by where they sit, but with enough distance to see the whole picture. That has to come first, with or without our help. There’s no real commitment to evolution or transformation without shared agreement on the problem itself — skip it, and whatever follows, ours or anyone else’s, isn’t built to last.

It fits when

Leaders disagree on the cause of the results, or cannot say what to fix first
Past initiatives did not change the outcome
Forecasts and pipeline figures are not trusted
Multiple theories or ideas co-exist about the nature of the problem or the solution - and facilitating a constructive conversation on how to resolve it is proving challenging

What needs to be in place

A sponsor who will hear the findings, including the uncomfortable ones, and has not decided the answer in advance
Access to people across the organisation, not only leadership, for interviews
Access to the data: CRM and pipeline samples, access to processes and workflow documents, and occasionally a sample of recorded meetings where consent allows
One internal coordinator for efficacy

It is not the right choice when

The problem is agreed and the need is a specific set of new skills: that is Learning & Development
Direction is the question and the diagnosis is done: that is Advisory
A specific relationship has already broken: that is Crisis Management
More people and executives are preoccupied about maintaining the status quo than addressing the situation, or the aim is to confirm an answer already chosen. An audit or assessment would waste everyone’s time

How it works

01
Frame. Agree the questions, the scope, the sponsor and what the findings will feed.
1-2 weeks
02
Collect. Interviews across levels and functions, review of CRM and pipeline, deal reviews, and conversation analysis where consent allows.
Typically 20-30 interviews, about 2-3 weeks
03
Analyse. Compare what is stated with what happens. Benchmark against how strong B2B organisations operate. Look for several causes, not one.
04
Share and discuss. A presentation built to be discussed, tested with you and the leadership team before it is final.

Format and people

Audits are typically led by Julien Lepetit. These audits can be supported by selected partners with more specific domains of expertise (Product Marketing, Strategic Marketing, Customer Success) depending upon the scope.

Our report findings are typically tabled as both deep aggregated reports for credibility and transparency and executive papers both succinct, strategic and outcome focused.

Overall duration: 10-12 weeks usually

In practice

CRM and MEDDICC process review
AI meeting assistants, conversation analysis, and data hygiene
Pipeline and deal reviews
Friction and gap analysis benchmarked against elite B2B standards
Meeting-prep and administrative bandwidth audit
Strategic Marketing & Branding
Product Marketing
Trade Marketing & Comms
Key Account Management
Pursuits & Bids
Customer Success
Voice of the Customer

What you get

From the process itself: real engagement — interviews across the organization, not just leadership. People contribute, and they’re heard. That matters beyond information-gathering: nobody commits to change they didn’t feel part of diagnosing. Skip this step to save time, and it’s usually what produces the resistance later.

From the output: a clear, robust picture of where commercial excellence actually stands today, across five dimensions — customer experience, marketing, client development, customer success, and change management. Not raw data dropped in a deck: a presentation built to be discussed and socialized, the shared reference a leadership team uses to define and select the initiatives that follow.

Signs it worked

The leadership team agrees on the problem, and on what to do first
Staff say they were heard
The findings show up in later decisions and in the choice of initiatives
You hold a baseline that can be measured again in twelve months

A test. Three months on, can you name the decisions the audit changed? If not, it did not do its job.

What's different in how we deliver

Nobody loves being audited. There’s a version of this that feels like being graded, or set up to take the blame for something structural. That’s not what I’m here to do — and if it starts feeling that way, I’ve already got it wrong.

What I watch for: leadership walking in with the answer already decided, using the audit to confirm what they wanted to hear instead of finding out what’s actually true. That version wastes everyone’s time, including mine. And the answer they’ve usually already decided on is a single cause — pricing, a person, a tool. Performance issues in sales are almost never that simple. They’re systemic. If an audit hands you one villain, distrust it — mine included.

Client Insights

Client situations, the work we did, and the outcomes — insights from our case studies.

View all use cases

Next step

Book a call. A short first conversation to test whether an audit fits: what you see today, who would need to be involved, and what a first scope could look like.

The booking calendar can’t show here because scheduling cookies are off. Click the button to pick a time on the Calendly booking page in a new tab, or allow cookies through “Cookie preferences” in the footer to book without leaving this page. You can also email julien@trustfoundry.eu.

Often followed by: Advisory, to agree direction on the findings, and SalesOps or Learning & Development, to act on them.

Questions

How long does it take, and what does it cost?

It depends on the extent of the scope. Cost depends on the size of the commercial team, the number of interviews and the depth of analysis. For most clients, we interview between 20 and 40 individuals, deliver our findings in about 10-12 weeks for an investment of 35-50k€

Will it become a search for someone to blame?

No. It examines the system, and findings are shown as patterns, not as verdicts on people. In rare instances of specifically problematic individuals, this is discussed with Management and HR according to pre-agreed scope.

What if we disagree with the findings?

They are discussed with you before they are final. The aim is shared agreement on the problem. The merit of the external audit is to confront your internal perception with a more objective and independent view. At the end of day, what will matter is your response to these perspectives.

How are recordings and data handled?

Recordings are used only with prior consent, and data stays confidential. Reports only show aggregated data and trends, no individual is ever singled out. We offer high degrees of confidentiality and data security for any data you share. We are used to working under Non-Disclosure Agreements.

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