Commercial growth
Product → market
Helping technical products become propositions people understand, trust and buy.
The situation
Different companies, same shape: a strong product, loyal users, and a commercial engine that never caught up with what had been built.
Pricing was historical. Positioning was internal. Sales was carrying weight the proposition should have carried.
The actual problem
It looked like a sales problem.
It almost never was.
Sales was the first place the failure became visible — not the place it started.
What I changed
- Complex.
- Expensive.
- Hard to change.
- Simple.
- Flexible.
- Easy to scale.
- Rebuilt positioning around the buyer, not the build
- Introduced value-based pricing and packaging
- Tested commercial changes before rolling them out
- Added channels and partnerships for reach
- Built enterprise sales motions for international buyers
Result
In most cases growth did not require more customers. It required capturing value that was already being delivered.
“Richard translates complicated technical subjects into something commercially useful.”
What this taught me
“If the proposition is wrong, every extra salesperson just makes the problem more expensive.”
More thinking →Principles at work here
A pitch cannot rescue a proposition.
Sales is where the failure becomes visible, not where it starts.