Sales Growth Consulting That Diagnoses the Funnel from the Buyer’s Side
Sales operations dashboards measure activity: calls made, proposals sent, pipeline value. They do not measure why qualified prospects go dark after the demo, why the competitor wins on deals your team should close, or where pricing concessions are leaking margin. SIS International interviews the buyers who evaluated your product, the prospects who chose a competitor, and the accounts that churned to produce the evidence sales leadership needs to fix the revenue engine, not just monitor it.
Six Research Lanes for Sales and Revenue Leaders
Win/Loss Buyer Interviews
SIS interviews 15-20 prospects per quarter who evaluated your product: deals you won and deals you lost. Each interview reconstructs the full evaluation process from the buyer’s perspective: how they built the shortlist, which criteria mattered most, when the deal tilted, and what the winning vendor did that yours did not. HubSpot and Gong both run structured win/loss programs because CRM disposition data shows “lost to competitor” without explaining whether the loss was driven by price, product, the SE relationship, or the buyer’s inability to build internal consensus. SIS isolates the actual cause.
Sales Funnel Diagnostic and Conversion Analysis
SIS audits your sales funnel stage by stage, combining internal pipeline data analysis with external buyer interviews at each conversion point. We identify where qualified leads stall and why: demo-to-proposal drop-off, proposal-to-negotiation gaps, and negotiation-to-close failures each have different root causes. A B2B services company discovered through SIS funnel research that their demo-to-proposal conversion was 40% below benchmark not because of the demo quality but because the sales rep waited an average of 8 days to send the proposal. The competitor who won those deals sent proposals within 48 hours.
Competitive Pricing and Positioning Intelligence
SIS interviews buyers who evaluated both your product and a named competitor to document how pricing was compared, where discounting occurred, and what value framing justified the winning price. We also interview channel partners and resellers to map competitor discount structures, bundling strategies, and promotional timing. A manufacturing equipment company used SIS pricing research to discover that their competitor was not winning on list price but on a financing structure that reduced the buyer’s upfront capital commitment. The pricing was comparable. The payment terms were not.
Target Account Profiling and ICP Research
SIS interviews your best customers and highest-value closed-won accounts to reverse-engineer your ideal customer profile from actual buying behavior, not CRM firmographic filters. We document the organizational triggers that created the buying event, the decision-maker hierarchy, the evaluation timeline, and the budget source. A cybersecurity vendor used SIS ICP research to discover that their highest-LTV accounts shared a specific trigger: a failed SOC 2 audit that created urgency the sales team could not replicate through outbound prospecting alone. The outbound motion was restructured around the audit trigger.
Channel and Partner Effectiveness Research
SIS interviews channel partners, distributors, resellers, and their end customers to assess channel performance: which partners generate revenue versus which consume sales engineering resources without closing. We document partner-level close rates, average deal size, customer satisfaction with the partner experience, and competitive portfolio conflicts. Cisco and Microsoft both invest in channel effectiveness research because partner-sourced pipeline volume does not equal partner-sourced revenue quality. SIS separates the productive partners from the ones generating pipeline that never converts.
Sales Enablement Content and Messaging Testing
SIS tests sales decks, battle cards, case studies, and ROI calculators with actual buyers and evaluators to determine which content influences the decision and which gets ignored. We run A/B concept tests on value propositions and competitive positioning statements with recruited decision-makers who match your target buyer profile. A SaaS company discovered through SIS messaging research that the ROI calculator their sales team presented in every enterprise demo was not influencing the buying decision. The buyer’s procurement team used their own internal model. The sales time spent on ROI presentation was reallocated to technical proof-of-concept, which was the actual decision driver.
What SIS Delivers to Sales and Revenue Operations Leaders
15-20 structured buyer interviews per quarter covering won and lost deals. Each interview documents the evaluation process, shortlist criteria, competitive comparison, and decision trigger. Delivered with pattern analysis across deal segments to identify systemic win and loss drivers that CRM data cannot surface.
Internal pipeline data analysis combined with buyer interviews at each conversion point: lead-to-meeting, meeting-to-demo, demo-to-proposal, proposal-to-close. Each stage-gate is evaluated for qualification rigor, timing, and competitive exposure. The deliverable is a stage-by-stage fix list with quantified revenue impact estimates.
Interviews with buyers who evaluated your product alongside named competitors to document pricing comparison methodology, discount triggers, bundling impact, and financing structure influence. The output is a competitive pricing intelligence package sales teams use to position price against specific rivals in live deals.
Interviews with channel partners and their end customers to verify revenue contribution, deal influence, and customer experience quality. The deliverable is a partner tiering framework based on closed revenue, deal velocity, and customer-verified value-add that replaces registration volume as the performance metric.
THE SIS DIFFERENCE
Our service offerings include:
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