Podcast Episode S2E13: How a Catering Company Doubled Growth with Sales Systems
How a catering and events company doubled growth by replacing gut-feel forecasting with a data-driven revenue system. Marie Milsom Galeana on scorecards, close rates, CRM discipline, and building predictable revenue in a seasonal, relationship-driven business.
Marie Milsom Galeana, revenue leader at Sky + Table in Lethbridge, joins Steve Whittington to share how she transformed a catering and events company from hope-casting forecasts to an engineered revenue system. She came into her role running on gut feel, spreadsheets, and a Google calendar. Today, she can tell you to the dollar what will close this quarter, what pipeline needs to be built, and what her team needs to execute this week to hit targets twelve months from now. This episode walks through how that transformation happened and why the same model works in seasonal, relationship-driven businesses.
In this episode:
- Why hope-casting kept the team in reactive mode, and what the shift to a data-driven model required
- How a mathematical model connecting inquiry volume, close rates, and revenue by segment made 12-to-18-month forecasting possible
- What a weekly scorecard meeting looks like in practice, and why missing one is felt immediately
- How cascading metrics from leadership to the sales team changed both accountability and motivation
- Why community leadership and relationship-building drive retention in ways a forecast alone cannot measure
- What bad forecasting costs beyond missed numbers, and why lost relationships are harder to recover than lost revenue
Key takeaways:
- Without a system, the directive is to grab whatever business you can. There is no way to know if the team is performing how they should be, and no basis for a strategic conversation about what to go after. The math model changes that entirely.
- Seasonal and lumpy revenue is forecastable. By segmenting inquiries by customer type, venue, and event value and tracking close rates against weekly inquiry volume, Sky + Table can look out to 2027 and 2028 with confidence.
- The weekly scorecard is what makes the system stick. Senior leadership reviews the past week every Friday. The sales team runs their own version every two weeks. Miss it once, and the whole cadence suffers.
- Transparent data removes blame from the conversation. When everyone can see exactly where things stand, a down stretch becomes a problem to solve together, not a reason to point fingers.
If you found this valuable, make sure to subscribe to Driving Growth wherever you get your podcasts for more strategies on building a scalable revenue engine. New episodes are available on the first and third Wednesday of each month.
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