Nothing works until everyone's telling the same story.

I work with founder-led software companies, from early start-ups up to around 200 people. Usually the founder is still the only one who can really tell the story, and growth has started to feel harder than it should.

What I've noticed

The founder's vision tends to stay in the founder's head. Everyone else builds their own version of the story to fit their own pitch, and each version sits a little further from the original. That is where messaging, targeting, deals and quotas start to miss. Adding more go-to-market machinery on top only makes it worse.

The quickest test is to check four things without the founder in the room: how the reps describe the company, what the outbound emails say, how the team explains the problem you solve, and the pitch deck. If they don't match each other, or don't match the founder, the ground isn't ready yet.

I also think growth comes down to one number: are we selling more than we're losing. Below a couple of hundred people, sales, marketing and customer success should be one team chasing it, with one person accountable.

What I help with

• Getting the story straight. What the company sells and why it matters, written down once, in words a buyer recognises and the whole team can repeat.
• A go-to-market that fits the size of the business. Who to sell to, how to reach them, what to charge, and who owns what on Monday morning.
• One team pulling on one number. Sales, marketing and customer success working to the same measure of growth, and qualifying for customers who will stay rather than ones who fill a pipeline report.

How it works

Most of my work is fractional. I join the business for a day or two a week, report to the founder, and own the go-to-market until it can run without me.

The first few weeks go on the story: time with the founder, the team and a handful of customers, ending with one version everyone can tell. The plan gets built on top of that, and I stay to put it to work, hands-on where there isn't yet a team to do it.

It runs month to month on a short notice period. You should end up with a story the team owns, a plan that is working and, if you need one, a clear brief for whoever takes it on full time.

Background

Twenty-five years in B2B software, most recently as Chief Growth Officer at Mobile Commons, running product, marketing, customer success, services and sales. Before that I have worked across customer success, sales, partnerships, product management and product marketing, from account management up to C-level.

Along the way I have been through an acquisition and the integration that followed, helped target and buy other companies, and managed a divestiture. Commercial plans usually come apart in the gaps between functions, and that is the part I tend to get called in for.