Start with the problem, not the department.
Most commercial problems don't sit neatly inside one function. These are the 19 we see most often in technology businesses, from SaaS and software to technology services, grouped into five areas. Each one has a recommended first resource and a short sequence to work through.
Revenue and growth
Finding, winning and pricing customers in a repeatable way.
No GTM structure
There's no repeatable way to find, qualify or close a customer, so every deal is worked out from scratch.
Not enough qualified pipeline
Too few of the right opportunities are entering the funnel, so growth depends on a handful of deals or on the founder's network.
Deals stall or convert poorly
Opportunities enter the pipeline but stall, slip or are lost late, often without a clear reason anyone can act on.
Unreliable forecasting
Deals are somewhere in the process, but no one can say with confidence what will close this quarter and why.
Founder-led sales bottleneck
Every meaningful commercial decision or conversation still routes through the founder, and it's now the constraint on growth.
Pricing and packaging issues
Pricing was set early and never revisited, or was copied from a competitor without a clear rationale.
Customer retention and expansion
Keeping customers, delivering value early and growing accounts over time.
Onboarding issues
New customers land, but what happens next depends on who's handling them, with no consistent standard or scope.
Churn or poor retention
Customers are leaving, or staying but not growing, and there's no structured way to see it coming.
People and execution
The structure, cadence and leadership habits that turn plans into results.
Weak commercial operating rhythm
There's no consistent cadence of meetings, reviews or decisions, so the business runs on whoever shouts loudest that week.
Unclear roles or org structure
Roles, reporting lines and decision ownership were never deliberately designed. They simply accumulated as the team grew.
Inconsistent hiring, onboarding or management rhythm
Hiring, onboarding and day-to-day management depend entirely on who's doing it, with no consistent process behind any of it.
Leadership team misaligned on priorities or execution
The leadership team agrees in the room and then executes against different, sometimes conflicting, priorities.
Weak board, investor or management reporting
Board and investor updates take days to pull together and still don't tell a clear story about what's actually happening.
AI and risk
Adopting AI with intent and building the security posture customers expect.
No clear AI strategy or use cases
AI is being talked about constantly but there's no real strategy: no agreed use cases, no prioritisation and no owner.
- 2Is Your Company Actually Ready for AI, or Just Using It?
- 3Why Most AI Rollouts Skip the Workforce and Fail Because of It
- 4Most AI Ideas Are Not Worth Doing Yet: How to Tell Which Ones Are
- 5Embedding AI Into How the Business Runs, Without Creating Chaos
- 6Where AI Actually Belongs in Your Product, and Where It Doesn't
No AI governance, policy or risk controls
People are already using AI tools day to day with no policy, no oversight and no clear view of the actual risk exposure.
Weak security or compliance posture
There's no baseline security or compliance posture in place, and no one is confident what a customer audit would actually find.
Losing deals to security or procurement reviews
Deals are stalling or being lost in procurement and security review because there's nothing ready to hand over.
Partnerships
Choosing, activating and managing partners so they produce real opportunities.
No partner or channel strategy
There's no deliberate partner or channel strategy. Relationships exist opportunistically, not by design.
Partners exist but aren’t performing or well managed
Partners were signed with enthusiasm but nobody reviews performance, so most quietly go dormant.