Insights
Questions worth asking before you change the business.
Notes on commercial strategy, customer behaviour and the way businesses work. Practical thinking from the problems I spend my time on.
Discovery story
How AI helped Uber find a specific commercial skill set
How a clearly described capability was found against a clearly described problem. Not a results case study.
Articles
Beyond the Hunch: How to Fix a Stalled Sales Architecture
How a 23-interview commercial audit replaced internal opinion with evidence in a B2B SaaS business.
The Category Creator Playbook: Why Education Precedes the Pipeline
Launching a product with no market precedent, and why you have to educate before you can sell.
The First Sales Hire Mistake: Why Your B2B Startup Doesn’t Need a Sales Director Yet
Why a repeatable sales process has to come before a senior sales hire.
Silos are Stealing Your Margin: Why a CMO or VP of Sales Won’t Fix Your Funnel
What misaligned sales and marketing teams cost, and what unified commercial ownership changes.
The ‘Gut-Plan-Gut’ Sandwich: How Scale-Ups Can Avoid Expensive GTM Distractions
A way to filter knee-jerk go-to-market shifts: slow down to go faster.
How to Price Your SaaS to Protect Your Future Renewal Leverage
Avoiding the early flat-fee trap when commercial models need to change.
Short note: price growth and brand experience for AI startups
For AI-first startups, the bigger risk is often that another AI startup will come along later and do the same thing for less, and do it faster and better.
It is hard to balance predictable pricing for customers with fees that track the value created. Many SaaS models were not designed for the pace of change we’re seeing in AI-first businesses.
Brand loyalty and user experience need attention from day one. Even a near-perfect AI product will lose customers if something better or cheaper comes along. Sales and Customer Success teams, backed by a continuous improvement programme, are what keep clients engaged.
Key trends to watch:
- Pricing models need to reflect the whole brand experience as well as product performance
- Sales and Customer Success will be judged on the value they create for clients
- Brand experience will overtake brand identity in importance
- Targeted, relationship-led selling will outperform traditional mass marketing
Free resources
Is Your Startup Commercially Ready? A 10-point checklist
Score your commercial foundations in your browser. Sending the results to me is optional.
The Five-Stage GTM Framework
From purpose to outcomes and key results: the framework I use for go-to-market decisions.
Why Your Startup Doesn’t Need a Sales Director Yet
What to put in place before the first senior sales hire.
Have a question your business keeps coming back to?
A first conversation about the challenge and whether I can help.