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Commercial 
Performance Improvement

Revenue architecture for companies that have outgrown founder-led everything.

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Many hit a wall between $20M and $50M in revenue.

The commercial engine that got them there—founder-led sales, intuition-based pricing, good-enough margins—doesn't scale.

We know because we hit the same wall. Then we broke through it.

Commercial Performance isn't a single initiative. It's the integrated system of revenue architecture, go-to-market execution, and financial discipline that separates companies that scale from companies that stall. This guide covers the full landscape—and links to deep dives on each component.

What "Commercial Performance" Actually Means

Commercial Performance is the connective tissue between product-market fit and profitable scale. It encompasses every lever that determines whether your revenue is predictable, profitable, and growing:

Revenue Architecture
- How do you structure pricing, packaging, and expansion motions?
- What's the optimal balance between new logo acquisition and account expansion?
- How do you build pricing power instead of discounting to win?
Go-to-Market Execution
- How do you move from founder-led sales to a repeatable GTM motion?
- What's the right sales methodology, coverage model, and capacity plan?
- How do you align marketing, sales, and customer success into one commercial engine?
Unit Economics
- Do your CAC and LTV actually support your growth ambitions?
- Are you building EBITDA margin or buying growth at any cost?
- Can you survive without the next fundraise?
Financial Infrastructure
- Does your board see the numbers that matter—or vanity metrics?
- Can you forecast accurately enough to make confident hiring decisions?
- Is your commercial data clean enough to survive due diligence?

Most companies optimize one of these while ignoring the others. Revenue grows but margins collapse. Or efficiency improves but growth stalls. The companies that scale and exit well get all four right simultaneously.

Service Offerings

We've worked inside dozens of tech companies in the $5M-$50M range. The patterns are consistent. Every commercial breakdown we've seen falls into one of five failure modes:

The Five Commercial Failure Modes

Founder Dependency

The founder is still the best salesperson. Win rates drop 40%+ when they're not on the call. Pricing decisions escalate to their desk. The company can't grow faster than the founder's calendar.
Related Intelligence Reports:
Why Technical Founders Make Terrible CEOs (And How to Change)
How to Transition from Founder-Led Sales Without Losing Revenue
Founder Extraction Checklist: 30 Processes to Document Before Exit
Learn more
$500M+ in value delivered
$18M+ relationships rescued
Dashboard-style card showing “Quarter goal” progress at 84% with a link labeled “Success Story.”
Forecast Fiction
Pipeline looks healthy. Coverage ratios are strong. But the forecast has been wrong for six consecutive quarters. The board has stopped believing the numbers, and hiring plans are made on hope instead of data.
Related Intelligence Reports:
Unit Economics Health Check: The 5-Point Diagnostic Before You Scale
The SaaS Magic Number Calculator: Why < 0.75 Means You Stop Hiring
The Gross Margin Lie: Why Your "High-Touch" Model Is Bleeding EBITDA
Learn more
4x revenue growth achieved
30-day project unblocking
Margin Erosion
Revenue is growing, but the P&L tells a different story. Discounting creeps up. Scope creep inflates delivery costs. Customer success becomes a cost center instead of an expansion engine. Growth is buying you less every quarter.
Related Intelligence Reports:
Unit Economics Health Check: The 5-Point Diagnostic Before You Scale
The SaaS Magic Number Calculator: Why < 0.75 Means You Stop Hiring
The Gross Margin Lie: Why Your "High-Touch" Model Is Bleeding EBITDA
Professional Services Utilization Rate Benchmarks 2025: Why 68.9% Is the New Danger Zone
Learn more
4x revenue growth achieved
30-day project unblocking
Unit Economics Breakdown
CAC is climbing. Payback is stretching. LTV/CAC ratios that looked fine at $5M ARR are underwater at $20M. The math that worked with founder-led sales doesn't work with a sales team.
Learn more
4x revenue growth achieved
30-day project unblocking
GTM Fragmentation
Marketing generates leads that sales won't work. Sales closes deals that customer success can't retain. Each function optimizes locally while the system fails globally. Attribution arguments replace actual improvement.
Related Intelligence Reports:
Why Your CRM Data Is Lying to You About Pipeline Health
Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Sales Motions: Choosing the Right GTM for B2B
The Series B GTM Readiness Assessment: Why Scale-Ups Stall at $15M ARR
Learn more
Dashboard card titled “Real Results” showing three progress bars for Clarity boost 78%, Faster conversions 66%, and Content reuse 45%.Portrait of a woman with curly hair looking thoughtfully at the camera.
4x revenue growth achieved
30-day project unblocking

The diagnostic question: Which failure mode is costing you the most? Most companies we work with have two or three active simultaneously.

Operator-led execution

The Commercial Assessment (Week 1-2) Before fixing anything, we diagnose with data. Not interviews and opinions—actual performance metrics:

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Engagement phases
Diagnostic Assessment
Cursor icon showing a hand pointer
Turnaround Plan
Implementation
Value Capture
Pipeline Reality Check
- What's your true conversion rate at each stage?
- How does forecast accuracy compare to commitment?
- Where do deals die, and why?
Unit Economics Audit
- What's CAC by channel, segment, and rep?
- What's true customer lifetime value (not theoretical)?
- Where is margin leaking?
GTM Alignment Analysis
- Where are marketing, sales, and CS misaligned?
- What's the handoff quality score?
- Where does attribution break down?

The output: A single-page commercial health scorecard. Red, yellow, green on every metric that matters. No ambiguity about what's broken.

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The Four Pillars of Commercial Performance

Fix these in order. Each builds on the one before.

Pillar 1: Revenue Architecture
Get the foundation right before optimizing execution:

- ICP Precision: Define your Ideal Customer Profile with hard criteria, not "companies in our target market." Include firmographics, situational triggers, and—critically—disqualification criteria.

- Pricing Power: Build pricing around value delivered, not cost-plus or market matching. Package for expansion, not just initial sale.

- Revenue Mix: Determine the optimal balance of new logos, expansion, and renewals. Design compensation and capacity around that mix.
Pillar 2: GTM Engine
Build the machine that converts ICP to revenue:

- Sales Methodology: Install a repeatable process with objective stage-gate criteria. "They seemed interested" is not a stage advancement.

- Coverage Model: Match capacity to market. Inside vs. field. SDR model vs. AE-led prospecting. Partner channel vs. direct.

- Operating Rhythm: Weekly pipeline reviews. Monthly metrics review. Quarterly strategy alignment. Consistent cadence builds predictability.
Pillar 3: Unit Economics
Make the math work at scale:

- CAC Management: Know your all-in CAC by channel and segment. Cut the channels that don't pay back.

- LTV Optimization: Retention is cheaper than acquisition. Expansion is the highest-margin revenue. Invest accordingly.

- Payback Discipline: If payback exceeds 18 months and you're not yet profitable, you're funding growth with investor dollars. That only works until it doesn't.
Pillar 4: Financial Infrastructure
Make commercial performance visible and manageable:

- Forecast System: Move from rep opinions to data-driven projections. Weight pipeline by actual conversion rates, not wishful thinking.

- Board Reporting: Lead with the metrics that matter. ARR growth is meaningless without context on efficiency and sustainability.

- Data Hygiene: Your Salesforce data should survive due diligence. If a PE associate can't trust it, neither can you.

"Justin works with you, versus trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. There's a vendor that took his place at Dell—they have that attitude of 'We know better, we're going to tell you how to do things.' I'll be honest, my friends have reverted to their old ways. The changes didn't stick. With Justin, they do."

Center for Excellence Director
Enterprise Hardware Manufacturer

The Commercial Health Dashboard

Metric
Healthy Range
Warning Sign
Win Rate
30%+
Below 25%
Forecast Accuracy
85% (30-day)
Below 70%
Sales Cycle
Stable or decreasing
Strentching 20%+
Average Discount
Below 10%
Above 20%
CAC Payback
12-18 months
18-24 months
Gross Margin
70%+ (SaaS)
Below 65%
Net Revenue Retention
110%+
Below 100%

The Metrics that Matter

Track these metrics weekly. Not monthly—weekly. By the time a monthly metric shows a problem, you've lost 30 days of correction time.

Leading vs. Lagging

The mistake most companies make: obsessing over lagging indicators (revenue closed, logos acquired) while ignoring leading indicators (pipeline created, stage conversion rates, activity volume).

By the time revenue misses, it's too late. The deal was lost 90 days ago when you didn't have enough pipeline, or when Stage 2 conversion dropped, or when activity slipped. Fix the leading indicators and the lagging indicators follow.

Benchmarks by Stage

$5-20M ARR (Series A-B):

  • CAC Payback: 12-18 months
  • LTV/CAC: 3:1 minimum
  • Net Revenue Retention: 100%+
  • Magic Number: 0.75-1.0

$20-50M ARR (Series B-C):

  • CAC Payback: 15-24 months (can extend with proven retention)
  • LTV/CAC: 3:1 minimum
  • Net Revenue Retention: 110%+
  • Magic Number: 0.5-1.0 (efficiency matters more)

$50M+ ARR (Growth Stage):

  • CAC Payback: 18-30 months (justified by scale)
  • LTV/CAC: 3:1 minimum
  • Net Revenue Retention: 115%+
  • Rule of 40: Combined growth rate + EBITDA margin ≥ 40%
measure what matters

When clarity compounds, everything improves

110%+
Net Revenue Retention Target
3:1
LTV/CAC Minimum
85%+
Forecast Accuracy Standard
12
CAC Payback Target (months)

The 90-Day Commercial Turnaround

If commercial performance is broken now, here's the realistic timeline:

Days 1-30: Diagnose and Stabilize
• Audit 8 quarters of pipeline data
• Map actual sales process vs. documented
• Identify primary failure mode(s)
• Stop the bleeding (tighten ICP, fix broken forecasting)
Days 31-60: Install the System
• Implement stage-gate criteria
• Launch operating rhythm (weekly pipeline, monthly metrics)
• Document playbooks from top performers • Clean up data hygiene
Days 61-90: Optimize and Measure
• Track conversion by stage
• Compare forecast accuracy before/after
• Adjust methodology based on data
• Begin capacity planning for scale

Ready to Fix Your Revenue Engine?

Most founders wait until they've missed three quarters to address revenue problems. By then, you've lost board credibility, team morale, and 12-18 months of growth. Get ahead of it.

Request a Commercial Assessment
Operator-led turnaround & performance improvement for the lower-middle market.

$500M+ in value delivered.
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