Consulting, Diaz Industries

The premise

The problem is almost never the one you were told about.

Owners call us with a symptom. Revenue is flat. A good person left. Margins are thinner than last year. Somebody suggested a new website, a new salesperson, a price increase.

In our experience the symptom is real and the diagnosis is wrong. Flat revenue is usually a customer-mix problem, not a demand problem. Thin margins are usually a terms problem, not a pricing problem. A good person leaving is usually a structure problem, not a compensation problem.

So we do not accept the brief as given. We go and find out.

The diagnostic

Thirty days inside the business before we propose anything.

We run a customer Pareto and segmentation to find out where the money actually comes from, and which accounts are quietly costing you. We review every payment and credit arrangement, because in most owner-operated businesses the working-capital leak is larger than the profit.

We audit operations: equipment, workflow, inventory, throughput. We interview your people confidentially, because they already know what is wrong and nobody has asked them in a structured way.

You receive the findings in writing whether or not you engage us further. If the diagnostic tells you to do nothing, we will tell you that.

The alignment

Our fee sits above a number you set.

We agree a revenue or profit threshold that reflects where the business is today. Everything below it is yours. We take an agreed percentage of what clears it.

This is deliberately uncomfortable for us. It means a slow quarter costs us as much as it costs you, and it means we cannot bill our way through a project that is not working. It also means we will decline engagements where we do not believe the number is reachable.

In future we will also charge separately for the diagnostic, because the findings have standalone value. Today it is folded into the engagement.

Where we are usually brought in.

What we do

Commercial diagnostic

A structured thirty-day examination of customers, terms, operations and people, delivered as a written report with recommendations.

Repositioning

Finding the ocean nobody else is in. One client’s fabrication capability, unchanged, turned out to be worth far more to the marine industry than to the consumer market it had served for fifty years.

Management & operations

Taking on the running of the business where required: installing leadership, reorganising and motivating the team, replacing advisors who are not serving the owner, and putting reporting in place so everyone reads the same numbers.

High-stakes negotiation

Enterprise contracts, supplier terms, key accounts. Seventeen years across the table from Fortune 500 and S&P 500 procurement teams.

Acquisition & divestiture

Commercial due diligence, valuation context, deal structure and negotiation support when you are buying or selling a business.

Interim commercial leadership

Stepping into the commercial seat directly during a transition, a departure, or a period the business cannot afford to drift through.

If your business is working, we are the wrong call.

We are useful when something is stuck, when a decision carries consequence you cannot reverse, or when you suspect the answer is not the one everybody in the room keeps repeating.

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We are paid on what we move.