The VP Sales resigns on a Friday afternoon. By Monday morning, the CEO discovers that the forecast methodology does not exist independently of the VP’s personal judgment. By the end of week two, pricing authority has defaulted entirely to the CEO because no approval framework exists. By month two, three key customer accounts have requested meetings that only the CEO can take because the VP’s relationships had no structural backup.
None of these problems were created by the departure. Every one existed before — masked by the VP’s personal competence, institutional knowledge, and sheer effort. The VP’s departure did not introduce failures into the revenue system. It revealed the absence of the architecture that should have been underneath the person all along.
Process integrity is the dimension of the Lead-to-Order architecture that most $5M–$50M CEOs discover only when it is tested by stress — a key departure, a scaling event, or a board challenge. When process integrity is sound, the system performs predictably regardless of who occupies the revenue leadership role. When it is absent, the system is the person — and the person leaving means the system leaves with them.
These seven failures are the most common process integrity gaps in the $5M–$50M band. Each one is invisible while the VP Sales is in the chair. Each one surfaces within 90 days of their departure.
1. The Forecast Was the VP’s Judgment, Not a System Output
Day 1 without the VP: nobody in the company can produce a credible revenue forecast.
The CRM shows pipeline data. It shows deal values, stage labels, expected close dates. It does not show a probability-weighted, stage-adjusted, historically-calibrated forecast output — because that output was never automated or systematised. It was produced by the VP reviewing each deal individually, applying personal judgment about close probability based on relationship context and deal dynamics, and manually assembling the number they committed to the board.
The forecast was an opinion. A well-informed, usually approximately accurate opinion built on years of pattern recognition and deep deal-level knowledge — but an opinion nonetheless. Without the VP, the company has raw pipeline data and no forecast methodology. The CEO either builds the forecast themselves, consuming 4–6 hours per week on deal-by-deal review, or presents raw pipeline numbers to the board and watches confidence erode in real time.
2. Pipeline Reviews Stop
The VP ran pipeline reviews weekly. Same time. Same format. Same level of scrutiny. The team prepared because they knew the review was happening and the VP’s questions were sharp, specific, and consequential. A deal that could not withstand the VP’s questioning was a deal that needed attention.
Without the VP, reviews become informal. Then inconsistent. Then functionally optional. Within 30 days, pipeline hygiene degrades measurably. Stage updates slow because nobody is asking about them. Aged deals remain in the pipeline because nobody is challenging them. Data quality in the CRM deteriorates because the inspection mechanism — the weekly review — was not a system built into the process. It was a personal discipline that departed with the person who maintained it.
Coverage ratio inflates on paper as unexamined deals accumulate. The dashboard appears stable. The underlying reality is degrading daily.
3. Pricing Authority Defaults to the CEO
The VP held pricing discretion within a band that was either formally defined or, more commonly, informally understood based on experience and judgment. They knew which deals genuinely needed discounting to close and which would close at list price with proper value positioning. They approved pricing decisions without escalation because they had the pattern recognition to make them well.
Without the VP, every pricing decision above the baseline escalates to the CEO. There is no pricing framework: no documented approval matrix with delegated authority by deal size. No margin floor below which deals require senior escalation. No competitive discount policy for named competitors. No structured approach to multi-year pricing. The CEO is now spending 5–10 hours per week on transactional pricing decisions that a governance framework should handle automatically.
This is not a temporary inconvenience while the company recruits a replacement. It is a structural diagnosis: the pricing process did not exist independently of the VP’s judgment. Their departure did not create a gap in the process. It revealed that the process was never built.
4. Key Customer Relationships Have No Structural Backup
The VP personally managed 3–5 accounts representing 15–25% of total ARR. They attended the QBRs. They handled escalations. They maintained the executive relationships that kept these accounts stable and expanding. These were the company’s most important customers, and the VP treated them accordingly.
The handover is incomplete — because there was nothing structural to hand over. No documented account plan. No relationship map showing all stakeholders, their roles, their priorities, and their engagement history. No formalised escalation path. No backup executive relationship at the C-suite level. The VP’s knowledge of these accounts was comprehensive, nuanced, and entirely personal.
Two customers request CEO meetings within 45 days of the departure. One expansion conversation that the VP had been cultivating for 4 months stalls because the context, the stakeholder relationships, and the commercial positioning all lived in the VP’s head. The CEO picks up the accounts but lacks the history. The customer feels the discontinuity.
5. Onboarding Documentation Does Not Exist
The replacement VP arrives and requests the materials any incoming revenue leader would expect: the sales playbook. The territory plan. The compensation philosophy and commission structure rationale. The pipeline creation targets by rep. The win/loss analysis for the last four quarters. The competitive positioning matrix. The ICP definition with qualification criteria.
None of it exists in written, usable form. The playbook is ‘how the team has always done it,’ transmitted orally through shadowing and informal coaching. The territory plan was in the VP’s head. The compensation philosophy is ‘we matched what the reps were earning at their previous company.’ Pipeline targets are ‘we need more pipeline.’ Competitive positioning is what the AEs remember from the last time they encountered a specific competitor.
The replacement VP must reverse-engineer the entire revenue motion from scratch. They learn by asking questions, observing calls, and interviewing reps individually. Ramp time to full effectiveness: 6–9 months instead of 2–3. The company pays for the gap — not in the VP’s salary, but in the 3–6 months of suboptimal revenue execution while the new leader builds the understanding their predecessor carried implicitly.
6. The CRM Is a Contact Database, Not a Revenue Operating System
The replacement VP audits the CRM within the first two weeks and discovers the structural truth: no standardised opportunity fields capturing the data needed for diagnostic pipeline management. No stage exit criteria defining what must be true before a deal advances to the next stage. No mandatory data capture at key pipeline gates. No automated aging rules that flag or remove deals past their expected cycle. No reporting layer that produces pipeline health metrics beyond raw volume.
The system tracks that activities happened — meetings occurred, emails were sent, deals exist. It does not govern the process that should produce and manage those activities. The CRM is functioning as a notebook, not as a revenue operating system.
This is not a technology failure. Salesforce, HubSpot, and every modern CRM can be configured to govern process at a sophisticated level. The failure is architectural — nobody invested the time, effort, and decision-making required to configure the CRM as an operating system because the VP’s judgment served as a functional substitute for system governance. The VP reviewed every deal personally. They knew which deals were real and which were not. They did not need the system to tell them — so the system was never built to tell anyone.
7. Revenue Performance Does Not Change After the Replacement Starts
The new VP Sales arrives. Different person. Different background. Different management style. Different strengths. They bring fresh perspective, energy, and their own pattern recognition developed over a career in revenue leadership.
They inherit the same architecture: the same uncodified sales process, the same unstructured pipeline stages, the same ungoverned pricing approach, the same CRM that tracks but does not govern, the same absence of documentation. They apply different judgment to the same structural system.
Six to twelve months later: the same structural revenue performance with a different name on the organisational chart. The number may be slightly higher or slightly lower — within the variance range of personal judgment applied to the same system. But the structural performance of the revenue architecture has not changed, because the architecture has not changed. Only the person interpreting it has.
The board is confused. The CEO is frustrated. The new VP, privately, has the answer: ‘I inherited a system with no architecture. I am managing it with judgment the same way my predecessor did. The system is the constraint, not the people.’
This is the defining diagnostic for process integrity. If replacing the VP Sales does not change structural revenue performance within 12 months, the person was never the constraint. The architecture was. And the next replacement — and the one after that — will produce the same outcome until the architecture beneath the role is rebuilt.
Lead-to-Order Structural Assessment
Every failure described above was invisible while the VP Sales was in the chair. They surfaced because the departure tested the system — and the system had nothing underneath the person. The VP’s competence was the architecture. Their judgment was the process. Their relationships were the account plans. Their discipline was the pipeline governance.
The Lead-to-Order Structural Assessment scores Process Integrity as one of six dimensions. The sample company scored 1 out of 5 — the lowest score in the entire assessment. That is not unusual. Process integrity is the dimension most $5M–$50M companies have never invested in, because they have never needed to test it. Until they do. See what 1/5 looks like — and what the structural cost is.
Before You Commit Capital, Credibility, or Momentum
Technology CEOs are increasingly using decision-grade GTM due diligence before high-stakes commercial bets — not to outsource judgement, but to ensure the decision stands up before it's made.
When a GTM decision is hard to unwind — a senior hire, a pricing change, a market entry — the cost of being wrong compounds quietly. Two quarters slip away before you know it failed.
Commercial Bet Due Diligence (CBDD) is a short, independent review used before commitment. It evaluates a single GTM bet across product, pricing, positioning, sales, and customer growth — and concludes with a clear verdict:
- Review a sample CBDD board memo — the artefact CEOs and boards use to govern these decisions
- Learn how the CBDD process works — and when it's applied
