01Discovery
Can your buyers find you?
Common failures
Single-channel dependence · Invisible to AI assistants · Wrong-intent traffic · No brand search
The premise
Growth isn’t a funnel. It’s jointed.
Funnels imply smooth narrowing. Real revenue infrastructure is jointed — separate systems, built by different vendors at different times, connected at seams.
That’s why single-channel vendors never find the problem. An SEO agency examines Discovery. A CRO consultant examines Decision. Nobody examines the gap between them, because nobody is paid to.
In most diagnostics we run, the fracture is at a joint — not inside a layer.
Five layers · 20 points each
What each layer asks.
Equal weighting is deliberate. A chain fails at its weakest link regardless of which link that is.
Joint 1
02Decision
Does what they find make them act?
Common failures
Capability listing · Proof vacuum · Price opacity · Unaddressed objections
Joint 2
03Capture
Does every signal reach a system?
Common failures
Orphan routes · Source amnesia · Manual re-entry · Silent failures · Response lag
Joint 3
04Conversion
Does the system move them to revenue?
Common failures
Pipeline as decoration · Follow-up by memory · No nurture path · Adoption failure
Joint 4
05Proof
Can you see what happened, and why?
Common failures
Metric mismatch · Activity reporting · PDF dependency · No CAC by channel
Reading the score
What the number means.
85–100
Healthy
Focus on optimisation within layers.
70–84
Functional
One weak layer. Targeted remediation.
55–69
Fractured
Two or more breaks. Systematic work required.
35–54
Fragmented
Most common band. Architecture work before any channel investment.
0–34
Broken
No functioning system. Rebuild rather than optimise.
Three patterns we see repeatedly
A
Front-loaded
17 · 15 · 07 · 08 · 04
Heavy acquisition, nothing behind it. More spend makes this worse.
B
Hollow middle
14 · 13 · 06 · 07 · 12
Marketing and reporting work; the operational middle is broken.
C
Blind
15 · 14 · 13 · 14 · 03
Everything works and nobody can prove it. Highest-ROI fix.
The rule of the weakest layer
Never invest in a layer scoring higher than the weakest one.
A company scoring 18 on Discovery and 6 on Capture should not spend another pound on SEO or ads. Every additional visitor arrives at a system that loses them. Fix the joint, then scale the channel.
This routinely means telling a prospect not to buy the service they came asking for.