Building a Revenue System Where One Didn't Exist
How I designed and built a unified revenue system for a moving & logistics company, connecting affiliate company leads, inbound demand, sales execution, and data infrastructure into one engine.
Industry: Moving & Logistics (National Franchise Network) | Scope: Marketing, Sales Development, IT, Data Infrastructure | Timeline: 2015 – Present
The Situation
When I stepped into marketing at this Bailey's Moving & Storage, there was revenue — but no system underneath it. Roughly 80% of leads came from a single external source: our national affiliation. Those leads would arrive, get worked inconsistently, and the company would move on. There was no visibility into what happened between lead arrival and a signed job, no attribution, no conversion data, and no way to know which leads were being lost, who was losing them, or why.
Reporting meant someone pulling a CSV export at the end of the month and trying to make sense of it in a spreadsheet. The website attracted roughly 800–1,000 visitors a month. Marketing's contribution to revenue was minimal and unmeasurable.
Most people in that situation focus on the part they can control — launching campaigns, running ads, writing content — and accept the broken infrastructure as a given. I didn't accept it.
The Real Problem
The surface problem was that marketing wasn't generating enough demand. The deeper problem was that the company had no system to capture, convert, or measure the demand it already had.
The affiliate company was sending leads. Sales was handling them inconsistently. Nothing was tracked. Nothing was attributed. There was no feedback loop between what marketing spent and what revenue resulted. You can't optimize a system you can't see — and you can't build a system on top of a platform that doesn't give you the tools to do it.
The affiliate company's platform at the time offered limited API capability, no usable workflow tooling, and no reporting that connected to revenue. I couldn't just plug in a CRM and call it done. I had to build a parallel infrastructure that could capture what the upstream platform wouldn't.
The Build
This wasn't a marketing project. It was a systems architecture project that happened to sit inside the marketing function.
1. Event-Based Data Pipeline
The first constraint was data. The affiliate company's platform didn't expose lead events in a usable format, and without events, there's no automation, no tracking, and no attribution.
I pushed for API improvements from the platform provider and, once available, built an event parser and opportunity parser that captured lead activity in real time. For the first time, we had a live view of what was happening in the pipeline — not a monthly CSV.
2. Marketing Automation Layer
With event data flowing, I introduced a lightweight CRM and automation layer. This standardized how every lead was handled across the team: automated email and SMS follow-ups, internal task assignment, and consistent cadences regardless of who was on the phone that day.
The system removed human inconsistency from the follow-up process. Every lead got worked. Every time.
3. Shadow Reporting Infrastructure
To get full visibility into revenue, I built a SQL-based reporting database that mirrored and normalized data from the affiliate company's platform into a structure we could actually query. This gave us opportunity-level records we could analyze — lead source, conversion rate, sales rep performance, revenue outcome — all in one place, in real time.
This is the system that made attribution possible for the first time in the company's history.
4. Analytics & Decision Layer
On top of that database, I built Power BI dashboards that replaced manual reporting with live visibility. Weekly optimization meetings shifted from gut-feel discussions to decisions grounded in actual performance data.
We could now see which sources converted, which reps closed, which lead types were worth pursuing, and where the drop-offs were. That visibility changed how decisions got made at every level of the business.
5. Conversion System
Infrastructure alone doesn't close deals. I also rebuilt how leads were handled on the human side.
I retrained the call-handling approach from transactional intake to consultative selling, and built an internal SDR function focused on conversion — not just lead acknowledgment. The combined effect of automation, standardized process, and a retrained team doubled the lead-to-book conversion rate.
6. Demand Generation Engine
While the conversion infrastructure was being built, I was simultaneously building the inbound demand engine from the outside in.
I rebuilt the company's website three times — from a custom-built platform to Angular to Webflow — implementing custom JavaScript and CSS at each stage. I introduced a content-first marketing strategy, launched and iterated paid channels across Google and Meta, and built an SEO foundation that compounded over time.
Traffic grew from ~1,000 monthly visitors to 7,500–10,000. Organic search became a reliable, measurable revenue source — one that could be attributed, tracked, and optimized inside the same system.
The Outcome
The system was capturing and measuring eight figures in annual revenue across all demand sources.
| Revenue Source | Contribution |
|---|---|
| affiliate company-sourced leads — captured & converted | ~65% |
| Marketing-generated demand (primarily organic) | ~20% |
| Repeat / lifecycle-influenced revenue | ~5% |
| Sales-generated pipeline | ~10% |
Performance Improvements
- Lead-to-book conversion: 20% → 40%
- Monthly web traffic: ~1,000 → 7,500–10,000 users
- Marketing attribution: Unmeasurable → millions in annual tracked revenue
- Reporting: Manual CSV exports → real-time SQL dashboards
- Budget ROMI: 11x return on marketing investment
Operational Impact
- Eliminated manual reporting entirely
- Standardized lead handling across all sources and all reps
- Created a single unified system connecting marketing activity, sales execution, and revenue outcomes
- Built full attribution for both owned and third-party demand sources
What This Actually Was
Most companies think about marketing as demand generation — getting more leads in the top of the funnel. This wasn't that.
This was the recognition that demand generation is only half the problem. The other half is demand capture — building the infrastructure to ensure that the demand you already have (or can generate) actually converts, gets tracked, and compounds over time.
The affiliate company was sending leads. The market was sending organic traffic. The opportunity was there. The gap was the system between opportunity and revenue. I built that system.
Why This Pattern Is Transferable
This problem isn't unique to moving and logistics. It exists in any business where:
- Revenue depends partly on external lead sources (franchises, referral networks, partner channels)
- Growth has happened, but the infrastructure underneath it hasn't kept pace
- Marketing is expected to produce results, but lacks the data visibility to measure or optimize them
- Sales and marketing operate in separate silos with no shared definition of a lead, a conversion, or a win
The solution isn't more tools or more campaigns. It's building a unified revenue system that connects data, automation, sales execution, and marketing activity into a single engine — one where growth is measurable, repeatable, and improvable.
That's what I build.
Jacob Beckstead is a CMO and revenue systems architect with 15+ years building marketing infrastructure in operations-heavy industries. He is based in Centennial, Colorado.