For Private Equity
An Operating Partner thesis built from inside hyper-growth businesses.
For sponsors backing £30–200M B2B SaaS or commerce-tech in founder-transition or value-creation phase. A four-move playbook to lift sales productivity 20–30% inside 18 months — installed, not advised.
The thesis
The fastest unlock in most growth-stage B2B businesses is sales productivity, not pipeline.
Inside AWS I saw the same pattern repeatedly: capable sellers, well-funded plans, and operating systems that quietly destroyed 20–30% of their potential. Forecast meetings consumed the senior team. Pipeline reports lagged by a quarter. Compensation and motion pulled in different directions.
The fix is rarely more headcount. It is a tighter motion, an honest forecast, and a small set of controllable inputs every leader can act on. Done well, the same team delivers materially more — and the value compounds because the operating model holds.
The four-move playbook
01
Reweight the motion
Recalibrate the sales motion to the value pool that actually compounds — usually expansion and consumption, not new logos. Make compensation, forecast and cadence reinforce the same priority.
02
Industrialise expansion
Build the customer-success and account-planning machine so the installed base becomes a predictable growth engine, not a renewal exercise.
03
Telemetry over reporting
Replace lagging output reports with a small set of controllable input metrics every leader and seller can move on Monday morning. Forecast time down 30–50%.
04
Cadence that holds
Install the operating cadence — weekly business review, monthly forecast, quarterly plan — so the gains stay locked in after the engagement ends.
Where this fits
Stage
£30–200M revenue B2B SaaS, data, cloud or commerce-tech.
Situation
Founder-to-CEO transition, post-acquisition integration, or pre-exit value creation.
Engagement
18–24 months as Operating Partner alongside the management team. Drop in, install, hand over.
Discuss a portfolio company.
30 minutes is enough to know whether the thesis applies. NDAs welcome.