New Business Audit
Your sellers don’t need more training. They need better meetings.
The New Business Audit is the entry point to our prospecting work. It’s built for B2B sales organizations whose pipeline is bottom-heavy, whose sellers are working hard but missing the mix, or whose new-business numbers depend on a few rainmakers and a lot of luck. We diagnose the problem across the three drivers of appointment generation: your Ideal Client Profile, your Unique Selling Point, and your Outreach Mix. You leave with a written diagnosis of what’s working, what’s broken, and a clear path to a pipeline you can actually forecast.
When should you commission a New Business Audit?
A few of the symptoms we see most often in B2B sales organizations:
Sellers are working hard, but the right prospects aren’t on the calendar
Pipeline depends on two or three rainmakers
You’re spending more on sales training, but new appointments aren’t increasing
Renewal revenue masks weak new-business numbers
Sellers can’t articulate who the ideal client actually is
Every pitch sounds different — there’s no consistent value story
Outreach is reactive: sellers chase whoever called last
Why trust Nichols & Associates to diagnose our new business problem?
B2B Focus
We focus exclusively on B2B sales organizations.
We work with companies where a sale requires multiple meetings, multiple stakeholders, and a real relationship — professional services, technology, telecom, media, sponsorship, financial services, and similar. We don’t work in transactional retail, e-commerce, or consumer. The fundamentals of appointmentgeneration don’t change category to category, but the bar for credibility does. We’ve built ours by selling in this lane ourselves.
The Book
We wrote the book — literally.
White Collar Prospecting is the foundation of how we think about new business development for B2B sales organizations. The premise: most salespeople are good enough at selling — the real problem is getting in front of the right prospects in the first place. The book lays out the exact frameworks we apply in the audit. You’ll see the principles in action throughout the engagement, and you’ll have the book to reference long after.
Both Sides
We’ve sat on both sides of the table.
We’ve managed major TV advertising campaigns and pitched some of the largest brands in the country, including Coca-Cola. We know what makes a buyer take a meeting, what gets a proposal binned, and why the incumbent usually wins the room. That perspective is what your sellers are missing — and what we’ll surface in the audit.
Deliverables
Deliverables
A written diagnostic report.
You’ll receive a concise, written diagnosis of your sales organization across the three drivers of appointment generation: Ideal Client Profile, Unique Selling Point, and Outreach Mix. Each section identifies what’s working, what’s broken, and what to do about it. No 60-slide deck. No filler. Findings you can act on inside a singledocument.
A hard copy you can put in front of leadership.
The report is delivered as a printed, branded document — not just a PDF in your inbox. Bring it to your next leadership meeting. Walk a partner through it. Hand it to a sales leader. It’s built to be referenced, not lost in a Drive folder.
A live findings session.
We present the report to you and your leadership team in a working session, walk through every recommendation, take questions, and leave you with the call recording and transcript. The goal is alignment — so the report doesn’t sit on a shelf.
What to expect
You’re ready to start. Here’s how the engagement runs.
1. Paperwork
Once you’re in, you’ll receive a consulting agreement, NDA (if needed), materials request list, and invoice. We get those squared away in the first few days.
2. Numbers review
You’ll send us your pipeline data, win rates, average deal size, churn, and seller-by-seller production for the past 12-24 months. We read the numbers before we talk to anyone — so the interviews go deeper, faster.
3. Leadership interviews
We conduct one-on-one interviews with the owner/president and the sales leader. These are about an hour each and uncover the strategic context the numbers don’t show.
4. Seller interviews
We interview a selection of your sellers — top, middle, and bottom of the roster — for 30-45 minutes each. The gap between what leadership thinks is happening and what sellers are actually doing is almost always where the real diagnosis lives.
5. Sales meeting observation
We sit in on one or two of your regular sales meetings. You can’t fix a meeting culture you’ve never seen from the outside.
6. Diagnostic report and findings session
We deliver the written report (digital + printed hard copy) and walk your leadership team through it in a live working session. From there, you decide what to implement, and whether to bring us back to execute.
IDEAL CLIENT PROFILE
UNIQUE SELLING POINT
THE OUTREACH MIX
IDEAL CLIENT PROFILE
UNIQUE SELLING POINT
THE OUTREACH MIX
The three drivers of appointment generation.
Get all three right, and good prospects come to you.
Logistical matters,
for your perusal
Duration
3-4 weeks from kickoff to findings session.
Scheduling
A New Business Audit can typically begin within 1-2 weeks of signed paperwork.
Participation requirements
Owner/President: roughly 2 hours total (one interview plus the findings session).
Sales Leader: roughly 4-5 hours total (one interview, materials gathering, and the findings session).
Sellers: 30-45 minutes each, for a selected group of 4-8 reps.
Access to one or two regularly scheduled sales meetings.
Cost
$5,000
Payment terms
Prepaid and non-refundable. Via wire, ACH, check, or credit card (+3%).
What happens after the audit?
The New Business Audit is a diagnosis. For most organizations, the next step is execution — and we offer two systems to help you get there:
Cold-2-Warm™ Outbound Prospecting
A structured outbound system that warms prospects before a seller ever picks up the phone — using direct mail, sequenced sales letters, targeted advertising, and lumpy mail campaigns. Built for organizations whose sellers are burning hours on cold calls that go nowhere.
The Bridge™ Inbound Lead Generation System
A passive lead generation system that captures prospects who are already curious — using lead magnets, educational content, and your own media — so sellers spend their time on people who’ve already raised their hand. The audit tells us which of these your organization needs first. Some need both. Either way, you decide whether to engage us for implementation. There’s no obligation to continue.
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