Let’s save us both some time.
Before you book a call, read this. If any of the following describes you, I’m genuinely not the right person — and I’d rather tell you now than discover it three weeks into an engagement when we’re both frustrated and you’re out of pocket.
1. You want a strategy document, not a result.
Some consultants will spend three months interviewing your team, synthesising themes into a colour-coded framework, and delivering a presentation so beautifully formatted it almost distracts from the fact that nothing has changed.
I’m not that consultant. I work backwards from a measurable outcome. If the deliverable isn’t something your team acts on immediately, we’re wasting each other’s time — and I have a pathological aversion to wasting time.
2. You think the problem is motivation.
If revenue is underperforming, the tempting diagnosis is attitude. Run a team day. Bring in a speaker. Increase the incentives. Watch nothing change.
The real problem is almost always structural. Your team is working hard inside a broken commercial system. Motivated people in a broken process produce broken results — just more enthusiastically. I fix the process. The motivation usually follows.
3. You want to implement AI. You’re not sure why.
AI is not a strategy. It’s a capability. If you can’t articulate the specific output you want to increase, the specific workflow you want to change, or the specific cost you want to reduce, you don’t have an AI initiative. You have a procurement decision in search of a justification.
I start with the problem. The technology follows. If that sounds obvious, you’d be surprised how rarely it happens.
4. You need six months to make a decision.
Your procurement process, your approval chain, your stakeholder alignment requirements — I respect all of it. And if it takes four months to sign a contract, we’re not a good fit. Not because I’m impatient, but because your competitors aren’t waiting for your steering committee.
I work in sprints. Decisions get made. Things get built. Results get measured. If you need a lengthy process to feel safe, hire a larger firm. They’re very good at performing safety.
5. You want someone to fix it so your team doesn’t have to change.
The most common unspoken brief I receive: make us more productive without asking us to do anything differently. I understand the appeal. I can’t deliver it.
AI-era revenue productivity requires your team to change how they work. I’ll make that change as painless as possible. I’ll design workflows that are faster and less miserable than what you’re doing now. But the change is happening. If that’s a dealbreaker, we should probably shake hands here.
6. You’ll measure success by activity, not outcome.
Workshops attended. Frameworks delivered. Satisfaction surveys completed. If that’s your definition of a successful engagement, we’ll disappoint each other spectacularly.
I measure success by what moved: revenue per rep, proposal turnaround time, pipeline velocity, percentage of time your team spends actually selling. If you can’t agree a measurable baseline before we start, we don’t start.
7. You want a consultant who agrees with you.
I’ll tell you what I think. That’s the job. If you’ve already decided on the answer and you’re looking for someone to validate it professionally, there are consultants who do exactly that. They’re polished, reassuring, and expensive.
I’m most useful to CEOs who want their assumptions challenged and their blind spots named. If honest challenge sounds like a threat rather than a service, I’m not your person.
8. You think this is primarily a technology project.
It isn’t. The technology is the easy part. The hard part is changing how your team works, what your managers measure, and what your commercial motion is actually designed to produce.
If you want someone to run an AI tools workshop and hand your team a list of prompts, there are cheaper options. If you want your revenue motion to actually change, that’s a different and more interesting conversation.
9. You’re not in a hurry.
Every quarter you run an under-leveraged revenue team is a quarter of margin left on the table. If that doesn’t create urgency for you, nothing I say will.
I work with CEOs who feel the gap between where they are and where they could be — and want to close it fast. If you’re comfortable with gradual, let’s-revisit-this-next-year progress, we are fundamentally misaligned.
Still here? Good. You might be exactly my kind of client.
