The Chef and the Waiter Framework for Growth

Growth can stall even when the product is loved, pricing is right, and teams deliver on time. The blocker is mixing pre-sale and post-sale decisions in the same conversation. 

Our Sherpas use a simple pattern to untangle it: The Chef and the Waiter Framework.

Dining room = pre-sale
Positioning, messaging, pricing, sales assets.

Kitchen = post-sale
Manufacturing, logistics, inventory, fulfillment.

In one factory case, a small design upgrade unlocked a larger market at a higher price. Fear around costs and delays froze progress. By running pre-sale testing and post-sale capacity planning in parallel, momentum returned.

The target was $10M in new revenue over three years. The result: $14M delivered, compounding into $100M+. Not luck—clear roles, fast feedback, and simultaneous execution.

If your revenue needle won’t move, audit your process. Split pre-sale and post-sale work. Stop mixing meetings. 

Clarity accelerates the climb.

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN

reALIGNforResults.com

benno@realignforresults.com

Chapters

• 0:00 The Revenue Flatline Problem
• 0:20 Mixing Pre-Sale And Post-Sale
• 0:42 Factory Case Study
• 1:37 The Restaurant Analogy
• 3:07 Split Planning, Simultaneous Execution
• 4:14 Results And The Framework
• 5:08 Clear Rules And Call To Action

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

You have a great product, customers are loving it, it ships on time, price drives, reliable. But your revenue needle is not moving, you're frustrated, your team is frustrated, you try to figure out how do I get off this flatlined revenue, right? Here's what I see all the time. Our customers are mixing the pre-sale tasks and the post-sale tasks in the same conversation, right? And uh you're trying to think about marketing and sales and order fulfillment and the manufacturing capacity all together and it paralyzes everything, right? Uh and whenever things tangled together, nothing nothing's moving forward. Quick story about uh factory we worked with. They were making a commodity consumer product, um, all those qualities of you know, the price right, each cost uh the buyers loved it, but revenues were flatlining. So we looked at their product and the production process and said, Man, this is great. All you have to do is tweak the product a little bit to open a whole new market. Uh, add a little design element, uh, it'll cost a little more, you can raise your price a little bit, uh, and you'll access a market much, much bigger. Um factory owners resist it. Why? Because they didn't really understand this slight difference and and and how adding cost would you know uh not kill sales. Uh and they would um uh you know not know, you know, they were could they were nervous about you know different sales tools and a different approach to sales and marketing, uh, how the costs would pay for themselves. Um but where it got really tricky is that um they kept mixing pre-sale and post-sale in the same in the same sentence, right? We uh we'd be talking about marketing and product presentation, and they'd be like, uh, but what if we uh get a really big order and then wouldn't lead times you know shoot up through the roof and and and and what's gonna happen to the margins? They couldn't focus on one without getting confused by the other, right? So I separated the two and I said, let's just simply think about your your business like a restaurant. You have in a restaurant, you have the dining room, you have the kitchen. Dining room is pre-sale, you have the waiter greeting the guests, explaining the menu, taking the order, that's marketing, sales, product um presentations, and then you have the kitchen. That's post-sale. Uh post-sale, um, you know, the chef prepares the food after the order, uh, waiter takes the order. But um, of course, the chef has to plan the menu way ahead, buy the vegetables long before the waiter takes the order. Um, but anyway, all of that in the kitchen, that's manufacturing, logistics, capacity planning. You need both, but you can't plan both at the same time with the same people in the same sentence, right? Umce they understood that, everything changed. Uh, we worked on pre-sale and post-sale simultaneously, but as separate projects, right? I focused one group on the pre-sale, marketing, branding, sales presentations, etc. I focused another group on post-sale, how to fulfill orders to new customers, more customers, much higher revenue base, uh, which was their strength, right? Order fulfillment in manufacturing. Once they saw how we planned, helped them plan their post-sale process, um, respecting their uh ability, they trusted us to plan and execute the pre-sale uh because that's our strength, right? Um the result, we had committed to$10 million additional revenues, get them from$12.2 million in three years. We delivered$14 million in three years. Um today they still keep doing it. We're still in touch, obviously. Um, and we're still separating religiously the pre-sale and the post-sale. Today they're over$100 million of revenue with this simple framework. Uh I call it the chef and the waiter framework, right? Pre-sale, dining room, marketing, uh, sales, branding. Kitchen is post-sale manufacturing logistics order fulfillment. Uh the rule here is um plan both separately with different groups, execute them simultaneously. Uh uh, don't let the chef be the waiter. Each task is critical. Each task is half of a circle, one no good without the other. Um if your product is great, but the revenue is not moving, you're stuck, the revenue needle is stuck, um, you're probably mixing pre-sale and post-sale activity. Stop doing that, right? Uh separate the dining room from the kitchen, plan both, plan separately, execute simultaneously. If you need help um thinking through this uh pre-sale-post-sale framework, comment below or DM me. Um let's figure out where you're stuck and let's get the revenue needle moving again.