Setting Business Targets Was the Easy Part.
You set the number in January, and it was the right number. By March the place is running the way it has always run. The tools all work. Not one of them changed how the work moves through the building. And the plan still needs you in the room to survive contact with a Tuesday.
Setting the target is a decision. Hitting it requires a system. In my experience, most businesses have made the decision several times and never built the system.
I install the system, run it until it runs without me, and hand it over. Or I work with your people to make it happen.
An advisor hands you a plan and leaves. A vendor's job finishes when the thing is delivered. Mine finishes when your own people run it without me. Those are different finish lines, and only one of them is yours.
The work runs in stages. Each one is scoped, priced and bounded before it starts. Every stage has to earn the next one. The stages, what each one produces, and what each one costs are set out below.
Request a Blueprint Conversation →bEffective Verifies What Enables the System We Install.
We verify your business's three vital pillars: strategy, operations, and performance. As the leader, you get what you need to develop a strategy, and we say plainly what we mean by strategy.
We map the revenue motions throughout your operations. We make sure your operational technology choices actually improve how the work gets done. Technology tends to multiply whatever the process already does, even if it is a mess.
And we seek your employees' buy-in, because that is what produces the performance you set the target for. We ensure the work environment boosts productivity by making it easier to achieve outcomes and easier for your customers to buy.
Strategy
Direct strategy facilitation that produces a written document the team can execute against. ICP definition, offer specification, competitive tradeoffs the firm explicitly chooses to make. Where to play. How to win. What capabilities and management systems are required to back the choice.
Anchored on Roger Martin's Playing to Win framework. Strategy that operates daily, not the slide deck reviewed once a quarter.
Read the Strategy pillar →Operations
Process workflow mapping in operator language. Strategy-to-process alignment. Specification of what the technology layer needs to do before any vendor enters the room: requirements, integration architecture, data flow design. Where AI tools create real leverage instead of more individual experimentation.
Four decades as an operator, twenty of them integrating enterprise software. Platform-independent capability, so the operating model travels with you to whatever platform fits.
Read the Operations pillar →Performance
Team engagement diagnostics. Sales effectiveness coaching. Manager development. Engagement is the structural variable Gallup ties to 21% higher profitability in top-quartile teams (Q12 Meta-Analysis, 11th edition), and it is what decides whether AI investment pays off.
Pure human-side work. No platform dependency. The pillar that runs whatever the technology underneath it is doing.
Read the Performance pillar →The Platform Is the Delivery Rail. bEffective Is the Practice.
The Revenue Operating System runs on technology. CRM, automation, lead capture, AI that works with your people rather than around them. That layer matters, but it's modular, not foundational. bEffective is your revenue operator. The platform partner who architects, builds and integrates the technology layer is the delivery rail underneath.
8020 Media
bEffective's current preferred delivery rail is 8020 Media's technology stack, which handles CRM, automation, lead capture, and appropriate AI subsystems including Voice AI. Core Build engagements include 8020 as the platform implementation partner.
For clients with established platform commitments, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, custom stacks, bEffective works with the client's chosen implementation partner. Mike Reardon brings twenty years of enterprise software project experience inside four decades as an operator, including direct roles inside global software firms and as the operator who specified, deployed, and integrated systems across manufacturing, services, software, telecom, construction, healthcare, and education sectors.
The practical implication: the Revenue Operating System we install for you is yours regardless of which platform underneath supports it. The operating model travels. It can run in the cloud or on-site. The platform is replaceable. The compounding gains stay with the firm even if the technology partnership behind the install changes.
Four Stages. Each One Has to Earn the Next.
Each stage has a fixed scope, a stated outcome, and a clear next step. Nothing starts until the stage before it has produced what it said it would.
Thirty minutes to start, and as many conversations as it takes. Usually three. You describe what's stalled. We walk through the typical revenue leaks of your business. They are typically hidden. They do not show up in your financial statements. We then run through the areas our Blueprint covers to address the aggregate of those leaks, and how we establish a Build for your system to enable your strategy goals today and tomorrow. You leave with a working hypothesis you can defend internally.
Outcome: A defensible read on where revenue is leaking and what the engagement would look like if you went further.
It is unlike most diagnostics you may have run or heard about. Its objective surfaces the revenue leaks just mentioned. But it also defines how the system will enable your long-term goals.
We can produce it fast, or it can take two to four weeks. The timeline is yours: the delay is how quickly you and your team can supply requested information and be available for questions. The deliverable spans the Blueprint areas: demand generation, sales, onboarding, delivery, retention, through to technology and exit readiness. You receive a documented map of where revenue is leaking, what each leak costs per year, the recovery economics over a 12- to 24-month horizon, and the specific Build pricing for your scenario.
Outcome: A defensible documented diagnostic the founder or operating partner can take to the board, the CFO, or the Build decision. In our experience it always finds enough leak to pay for itself. Take the Blueprint alone and walk away with the internal artifact, or decide to have us install a system Build.
The full Revenue Operating System installation. What is a Revenue Operating System? See the system. One hundred days of execution: install the system, close the leaks the Blueprint priced, prove the pattern. Bundled with 8020 Media's platform implementation by default, or run on the platform you already have.
The plus or minus on $100K is imprecise on purpose, because we have not yet seen your business. What moves it: how mature your strategy and operations already are, and how many people you employ. Above about fifty employees the variables multiply, handoffs between processes, whether functions are aligned, how much buy-in already exists. The largest variable is the technology platform you have in place now, and whether it can carry the final version of the Blueprint. All of it gets settled in the first 30 days of the Build, alongside the work to earn commitment, accountability and effective communication.
Outcome: A running operating system the firm operates after the engagement. Day 30: stabilization. Day 65: systematization. Day 100: a quantified outcome report a private equity (PE) or M&A partner can read.
After the Build. Operating systems drift: strategy assumptions go stale, people turn over, technology settings fall behind, market conditions shift. Once a quarter, we come back, read the system against the plan, catch the drift, and recalibrate Strategy, Operations, and Performance to whatever has changed.
Outcome: Like a captain in the air or at sea, we keep the system on bearing toward the goal set at Build close, zigzagging to the destination through changing conditions. For PE operating partners, the same cadence runs across a portfolio.
Year 1 Installs the System. Year 2 Reveals the Drift.
The Build installs the operating system in 100 days. The system compounds over 12 to 24 months. But it does not compound by itself. Without active recalibration, every installed system drifts. Strategy assumptions go stale as markets shift. Documented processes decay as employees turn over. Technology settings fall behind as platforms evolve. Engagement slips without an ongoing management cadence.
By the time anyone inside the business notices, the profit has drifted enough to show up in three places. In missed targets at quarterly review. In the money you keep from each dollar of sales getting thinner, with no single cause anyone can trace. And, if you are selling, in a buyer's rework of your reported profit, which they call quality-of-earnings adjustments. That rework lands on EBITDA, the profit a business makes before interest, tax, and the accounting charges for wear and age. It is the number a buyer multiplies to arrive at what your business is worth, which is why every point of it counts at exit, and why a private equity (PE) owner watches it every quarter. The Quarterly Update is the operator who sees the drift before the buyer's due diligence does.
Two Things the Quarterly Update Actually Does
One: it catches drift. Quarterly recalibration across Strategy, Operations, and Performance. Strategy assumptions tested against new market conditions. Process documentation refreshed against how the work is actually done now. Technology settings checked against what the platform can do now. Manager engagement scorecards reviewed and reset. The system stays on the bearing the Build set, the way a flight or a boat zigzags through changing conditions to reach the same destination.
Two: it keeps surfacing what was never written down. Much of the information that should drive operating decisions never lived in a system. It lived in the founder's head, in knowledge held by a few senior people, in client relationships nobody documented. The Build extracts as much as 100 days can extract. The Quarterly Update surfaces the rest over time, in conversations, when the founder mentions something casually six months in and the operator realises a critical decision rule was sitting there all along. This is the work the founder can't do alone. Not because he doesn't want to, but because he doesn't realise how vital the unsurfaced information is.
Success Is Consistent Continuous Improvement.
A business rarely travels from Point A to Point B in a straight line. Like a flight or a ship, it zigs and zags through changing conditions: wind shifts, currents, mechanical adjustments, weather, crew changes. The captain holds the bearing toward the destination through every deviation. One degree off the bearing for long enough, and you arrive nowhere.
The Quarterly Update is the navigation. Each quarter is a course correction. The goal set at Build close is the destination. Consistent continuous improvement, not perfection and not a straight line, is what the operating system actually produces over time.
The Enterprise Playbook Doesn't Replicate at This Scale. Here's Why.
PE operating partners reading this know the enterprise version of this work. ProGuide-style engagements charge $10K USD per week, offer the first two weeks free, and complete the diagnostic in fourteen days, because at enterprise scale the data is centralised. Cost accountants run the numbers. The dashboards exist. The information is in the system.
At the size of business we serve, none of that infrastructure exists. The data is in the founder's head. The processes are in knowledge held by up to three senior people, and usually just one, the founder. The rules he runs the business by are not written down. You cannot extract that picture in fourteen days at any price. It comes out over months, in patient conversations, when the founder gradually realises which of those unwritten rules an outside operator actually needs to see.
The Quarterly Update is the version of operating-partner continuity that fits a business this size. Pattern recognition across four decades and every macro cycle since 1983, applied to the specific business through the hold period. Quarterly recalibration. Drift caught early. The operating system stays on bearing toward the exit multiple.
Alternative Entry Points for Contracting an Operator.
Not every engagement starts at Blueprint. For clients who want to work with bEffective on a specific capability without committing to the full ladder yet, we put together modular packages as accessible standalone entry points, or as add-ons to a Blueprint. You are in every session. We provide the framework and the method. You and your team execute it, because the point is that it runs after we leave.
Business Pillar Packages
Each package below takes one thing the Blueprint would define to put together the Build. The Business Pillar Packages break down the three parts of the framework so you can do it yourself, in about four working sessions over a month, or on a timeline you set. The three pillar packages count toward the ladder. Buy one, and half its value credits toward the Blueprint if you go on to it. Half, because a pillar package does part of what the Blueprint does, and you should not pay for that ground twice. Nothing toward the Build, because the Build is not defined until the Blueprint defines it.
Add the three together and they cost more than a Blueprint, and that is the right way round. A Blueprint diagnoses your business and hands you the map. A pillar package teaches your people to do one part of the work themselves, and that capability stays in the building after we leave. Buying all three is not a cheaper Blueprint. It is a different decision: you are training the firm rather than hiring the diagnosis. Most owners take one, apply it, and decide from there.
Most businesses have a goal and call it a strategy. A goal is a destination. A strategy is the set of choices that get you there, and the choices about what you will stop doing are the ones nobody makes. This package gives you Roger Martin's Playing to Win as a framework, and you work it on your business, not on a case study.
Session one: the five choices every business has to make, and why the goal you already have is not one of them. Session two: where to play, worked on your actual customers and the ones you should stop chasing. Session three: how to win, worked on your offer and the tradeoffs you will commit to. Session four: what capabilities and management habits the choice needs, written on one page.
You leave with: a strategy on one page that your team can run against, and the practice of revisiting it, so it does not become the slide deck reviewed once a year.
Most of what your business knows how to do lives in people's heads. That works until someone leaves, or until you try to grow past the number of people who know. This package gives you the method to map up to three processes, the ones that matter most to revenue, as they actually run today. Your team does the mapping.
Session one: how a process is mapped so that anyone can read it, and which of yours matter most. Sessions two and three: your team maps them, with the people who run them in the room, because they know things the org chart does not. Session four: where each map disagrees with the strategy, and which reports have to change to reflect it.
You leave with: up to three processes mapped and owned by the people who run them, and homework to bring your operational reports, the daily view, and your strategy reports, the long view, into line with how the work actually moves. When those two disagree, the daily work and the long-term goal drift apart without anyone deciding they should.
People perform when the goal is clear, the score is visible, and the rules do not change mid-game. Most businesses supply none of the three and then wonder about engagement. This package gives your team the framework, and the team does the work, because a measure the team set is one the team keeps.
Session one: what the research on teams says about the conditions under which people do their best work, and which of those conditions this team already has. Session two: the goals, the feedback, and the rules that are missing, named by the team in their own words. Session three: the changes to how work is set and reviewed, agreed in the room. Session four: the first month's measure, and who keeps it.
You leave with: a team that set its own measure and knows what changes next month, and a first result to read against it by the end of the following month.
Business Mechanism Packages
These stand on their own and are priced as such. They provide a framework for how to use different business operating and performance tools, how to influence productivity achievement, or how to ensure performance expectations are met, and more.
Most AI in most businesses is one person, one tool, one afternoon, and nothing that carries over. The tool forgets. The next person starts from zero. This package gives you the framework to make AI part of how the work is done, so it holds when the founder is not in the room. You build the standard, the memory and the procedures on your own work.
Session one: what AI does well in your work and what it does badly, tried on your own tasks, not on a demo. Session two: a standard the whole team uses, so the output is consistent whoever asks. Session three: project memory and project files, so the tool stops starting from zero every morning. Session four: the standard operating procedures that make it repeatable and reviewable.
You leave with: one standard setting, a project memory, a set of project files, and the written procedures that go with them.
The numbers most businesses watch are financial, and financial numbers tell you what already happened. By the time revenue is down, the causes are three months old. The Balanced Scorecard saw this first: it went beyond financial KPIs, which lag, to three views that lead, your customers, your processes, and your people. Charles Coonradt's The Game of Work explains why anyone keeps that score at all: a visible score, kept by the player, changes behaviour the way a golf handicap does. Kaplan and Norton say what to measure. Coonradt says why it works. This package gives you both as a framework, and your team builds the scoreboard.
Session one: why people keep score at play and not at work, and where your business currently keeps no score at all. Session two: the rules of the game, defined by the team in their own words, so nobody is playing to a rulebook they have not seen. Session three: the scoreboard, one measure per role, kept by the person doing the work and checked by peers, never by a manager alone. Session four: the leading indicators across customers, operations and employee engagement, and how they get reviewed each week.
You leave with: a set of leading indicators for the business, the rules and the score in place, and a team that sees the game while it is still being played.
Industry Sector Packages
The sector packages stand on their own and are priced as such. Each one is built for a specific sector and a specific problem inside it.
Most businesses responding to either RFPs or tenders have not mapped their process for responding. Working the federal contract data myself, I found the government spends roughly $37 billion a year on contracts, and that about 74% of the 500,000 or more contracts awarded between 2017 and 2020 went to small and medium-sized businesses (my analysis of Government of Canada, Proactive Disclosure of Contracts, Open Government Portal, accessed 18 August 2026). Most were valued at $20,000 or under. That is a great deal of work to prepare a response and win a $20,000 deal.
My own research into competitive RFPs and tenders points to a target win rate of about 30%. That figure is for competitive bids, as against non-competitive awards, advance contract award notices, standing offers, cancellations, contracts not awarded, and other exceptions. Part of the reason for the 30% is this: 63% of complex competitive procurements received at least two qualified bids. Where was your bid, as the third vendor? Is winning three out of a hundred, each worth $20,000 on average, worth it to you?
Defence contracts are usually tenders, and they are stricter. Tight security and bonding requirements, for a start. And did you know about the $3.74 billion advance procurement notice issued by Defence Construction Canada? Do you want to be on it?
This package defines an effective process to improve your chances of winning your share of RFPs and tenders. We are not promising a contract award, a win rate, or an award inside this calendar year. First qualified bid submitted this year is the target. It does not replace your estimator. Four weeks installs a rhythm and trains one person to run it.
You leave with: registered to see and bid federal tenders; bondable, or clear in writing on why not yet and what closes the gap; a dated target list of live tenders, forecast work and the primes already winning it; two bids worked, one written together and one reviewed; the debrief habit installed after every result; and a named person inside your shop running a weekly rhythm after we step back.
The cheapest revenue you will ever win is from a customer who already buys from you. Most businesses leave it on the table because nobody owns the conversation past the first sale. This package gives your team the method to research an existing customer's business, find the right people inside it, personalise the approach, and expand the relationship into work you are not doing for them yet. Your team runs it on real accounts.
If you already do that and need more, then you need to learn how to acquire a new customer. It is a far more expensive process, and it is doable by a novice. We define who your ideal customer profile is, who the ideal buyer is inside it, what they are looking for in a new vendor, and what you must personalise in your message to earn their trust. Working up a list is not enough. How will you get their contact information? What is the cadence of your outreach? What systems back you up?
You leave with: an action plan, with the rules, standards and process for how to win customers and keep them for life.
Business Elements Packages
One person, or one small group, working on one thing with an operator. Priced per set of sessions. Expanded scope is quoted.
For a founder or a team member working through business analysis, business judgment questions, or long-term strategic thinking, and for younger workers building their career. Sessions are 60 or 90 minutes. The work is patient, conversational, and shaped to the mentee's specific situation.
Expanded rate applies when scope extends beyond the available time. For example, a multi-year mentoring relationship, or decision rules applied to specific business situations.
For a founder or a team member who wants to learn specific skills: sales conversation discipline, negotiation, leadership presence, structured problem-solving, operational analysis, and more. Sessions are 90 minutes or 2-hour blocks. Role-play and simulation are included as appropriate.
Expanded rate applies for executive-level skill development, or when scope extends to professional development beyond a specific skill (management trajectory, leadership formation, multi-quarter coaching relationships).
Group training sessions for sales teams, leadership teams, operational teams, or cross-functional groups. The default offering is ICP targeting and selling discipline: how to recognize the right buyer, how to qualify, how to close inside the conditions the firm actually operates in.
Custom-quoted for larger groups, multi-session series, or specialized topics (sales effectiveness, manager development, change navigation, post-acquisition integration).
Questions About How bEffective Engagements Work.
How is bEffective different from a fractional CRO or a business consultancy?
Fractional CROs and consultancies deliver advice and time. bEffective installs the running system: documented strategy, mapped operations, engaged teams, integrated technology, scorecards, management cadence. The deliverable is a machine the firm operates after the engagement ends, not a relationship the firm keeps paying for.
What does a Build cost?
From plus or minus $100,000. It is a target, not a fixed price, and the plus or minus is imprecise on purpose, because we have not yet seen your business. Four things move it: how mature your strategy and operations already are, how many people you employ, whether your functions are aligned and your handoffs clean, and above all what technology platform you have in place now and whether it can carry the final version of the Blueprint. Above about fifty employees, all four get harder. All of it is settled and quoted in the Blueprint, and the remaining unknowns close in the first 30 days of the Build.
Why is there a Quarterly Update after the Build?
Operating systems drift. Year 1 installs the system. Year 2 reveals the drift: strategy assumptions go stale, people turn over, technology settings fall behind, market conditions shift. Once a quarter we come back, read the system against the plan, catch the drift, and recalibrate. It also keeps surfacing what was never written down, because much of what should drive operating decisions lived in the founder's head and comes out over months rather than in 100 days.
Do I have to use 8020 Media as the technology partner?
No. 8020 Media is bEffective's current preferred delivery rail for the technology layer, but the installation works with any platform you choose: HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, or custom stacks. Mike Reardon brings twenty years of enterprise software project experience inside four decades as an operator. The operating model travels with you to whichever platform fits.
Can I work with bEffective without committing to the full ladder?
Yes. The modular packages are standalone entry points, or add-ons to a Blueprint. Business Pillar Packages take one of the three pillars and give your people the framework to do that work themselves. Business Mechanism Packages do the same for a specific tool or method. Industry Sector Packages are built for one sector and one problem inside it. Business Elements Packages are one person or one small group working with an operator. Pillar packages count toward the ladder: half the value credits toward a Blueprint if you go on to one. The others stand on their own and are priced as such.
What if I'm a private equity operating partner with several businesses?
The PE Operating Partner tier of the Quarterly Update is designed for several businesses in a portfolio, or board-level engagement: pattern recognition across the portfolio, system installation in more than one business, and operator continuity through the hold period. It is quoted in the Blueprint, scoped to what the Build installs and what has to hold afterward. Introduce yourself through the Contact page, selecting PE or M&A contact from the inquiry dropdown, or read the dedicated Private Equity page first.