How to move beyond founder-led sales for growth
When a private equity firm invests in a company, a key goal is often to make a good company a great one.
But what happens when a promising portfolio company lacks the fundamental sales processes, structures and team to scale independently? This was the challenge faced by our customer, a cybersecurity firm backed by a UK PE business.
Despite a confident leader, good customer base and some successful repeat business, the growth just wasn’t fast enough.
They needed to professionalise sales operations by building an entity of quality, above-market growth, with predictable high quality earnings.
Insight
Our customer, a portfolio company backed by a UK PE firm, was approximately 12 months from a funding review and was not in the desired position of showing growth or even a robust pipeline.
The core issue was a lack of foundational sales frameworks and repeatable processes. The business was often heavily reliant on their CEO for sales and account relationships, meaning if he wasn’t directly involved, sales slowed or stalled.
This created a significant pain point around a lack of repeatability, structure, and the inability to demonstrate a robust, scalable sales model to the leadership team, invested stakeholders, as well as potential future investors or buyers.
They also struggled with low and inconsistent skill sets across their sales team, and a persistent lack of pipeline and lead flow. While strategy was present, lead generation remained an area in need of development within their marketing function.
What they needed was an independent, ‘critical friend’ who could bridge the gap across all stakeholder needs and ambitions.
Action
We were introduced by the PE firm, with whom we have worked before, who helped us uncover a clear mamdate: build out templates, structures, and make their sales process repeatable and scalable to improve conversion rates, plus deal support on specific opportunities.
Our actions included:
- Developing a standardised sales operating model (STOM): Creating and implementing essential sales documents such as Territory Plans, Account Plans, and Win Plans.
- Providing sales training and coaching: We worked with their sales team, focusing on fundamental sales skills like conducting meetings, asking effective questions, and preparing for client interactions.
- Overhauling proposal templates:
We transformed their ineffective, technically dense proposals into clear, customer-centric documents that highlighted business value and pain points, making them more impactful for key decision-makers like CFOs. - Strategic support for key deals:
We provided “deal coaching” on significant opportunities, including their largest deal to date, to help push them in the right direction and refine their approach. - Acting as an independent, unbiased voice: We provided an external perspective, challenging the founder on blind spots and supporting internal sales leadership in driving change. We served as a “fresh voice” and a “vehicle for good in change,” which helped to garner buy-in for new initiatives.
Transformation
Our work provided the business with a professionalised sales ‘engine’ and demonstrable structure that was critical for the next stage of growth. It also supported the steps and diligence needed for further investment transitions.
The transformation wasn’t just about improved sales figures, but about establishing the credibility and confidence needed for the next phase of the business.
- Increased investor confidence:
The implementation of a structured sales environment became a key “tick in the box” during due diligence, providing comfort to all stakeholders and potential investors. - Established a repeatable sales process: The business moved from an ad-hoc, founder-dependent sales approach to having defined frameworks.
- Improved sales collateral:
The revamped proposal process directly contributed to winning significant deals, demonstrating a more professional approach to the market.
Results
Our work on building out frameworks and a repeatable sales process was a proof point during the due diligence process,
providing comfort to both the exiting and new investors.
Over £1,000,000 of closed-won individual deals were directly impacted by our coaching and support.
This translates to a 6:1 direct ROI on the fees
spent with us from these specific deals.
Ahead
While there were challenges with internal embedding of processes, the foundational work we delivered was instrumental in enabling this technology company to present a credible and scalable sales operation, one that had become more independent from its original Founder centric model.
We were able to offer key support by acting as an independent ‘critical friend’ and bridging the gap across stakeholder groups. This had a direct impact on the way they were able to present the business to existing and future investors.
We have continued to work with the business in developing their SDR team which you can read about here.