A PE-backed company hits a growth target. The pipeline looks right. The team is executing. And somewhere in the middle of it, deals that should close don't — and nobody can agree on why.
The business grows.
The team expands.
Revenue shows up.
But the message being scaled is often only approximately true.
I’m heading into a sales kickoff this week with a PE-backed portfolio company that’s been in its hold period for several years.
Strong product.
Capable leadership.
Real commercial wins.
And yet, like many businesses at this stage, their go-to-market message had drifted into something defensible rather than provable.
It sounded sensible.
It travelled well internally.
But it wasn’t anchored tightly enough to the moment buyers actually decided to move.
So instead of refining decks or “aligning GTM,” we went back to first principles.
We focused on a small number of their best customers and asked one simple thing:
What changed that made the old way no longer viable?
The answer wasn’t what the company had been leading with.