A commercial diagnostic is a short engagement, usually eight weeks, that answers one question. Where should the commercial team concentrate its effort to move the numbers that matter. The deliverable is a prioritised action plan with three to five moves, costed in rough terms, sequenced, and tested against the client's current operating plan. Done well, a diagnostic is the most useful opening engagement a new client can ask for.
Three questions before the engagement is scoped
- Is the commercial team willing to act on the answer. If the answer is already politically off limits, the diagnostic is a waste of everyone's time.
- Can the client share the underlying commercial data. If the data is locked away and cannot be opened, the diagnostic will be built on anecdote and it will be weaker than it should be.
- Is there a real decision window. A diagnostic that lands after the decision has already been made is a post mortem, not a diagnostic.
The shape of the work
The first two weeks are evidence gathering. The team rebuilds the client's commercial picture from the underlying data and from interviews with the commercial leadership, and it writes a short factual note describing what the current commercial engine actually looks like. The next two weeks are used to test hypotheses about where the largest improvements live. The next two weeks are used to stress test the hypotheses against the client's current plan, cost of capital, and operating constraints. The final two weeks are used to write the action plan and to hold the working session in which the plan is argued.
The discipline of three to five moves
The action plan lists three to five moves. Not ten. Three to five is the number of real interventions a leadership team can actually carry in parallel without dropping one of them. A diagnostic that ends with fifteen moves is a diagnostic that has confused scope for value. The firm writes down the three to five moves and labels the rest as watch items for the next review.