Marketing should drive sales. In many businesses, it does not.
That is not a marketing problem. It is an alignment problem.
You are spending on marketing. Your agency sends a monthly report showing traffic, sessions, and impressions. Your pipeline has not moved. You are not sure which of those two facts to be more frustrated by.
This is not unusual. It is the default position for most businesses at your scale. Marketing and sales operate as separate activities with no shared rhythm, no shared language, and no mechanism that connects what marketing spends to what sales converts.
The problem sits in the join, not the parts
Your marketing may be doing reasonable work. Your sales team may be doing reasonable work. But without an operating system connecting the two, you cannot see it, you cannot steer it, and you cannot hold anyone accountable for the commercial outcome.
Everything keeps coming back to you.
This system exists because it had to
The NorthCo Commercial Alignment Programme was not designed in a workshop or borrowed from a textbook. It was built inside private equity and investor-backed portfolio companies, where boards measure in weeks, not quarters, and where commercial performance is not a conversation topic; it is the only metric that matters.
In those environments, there is no patience for marketing activity that cannot be traced to pipeline. No tolerance for CRM systems that nobody uses. No room for a commercial function that relies on memory, instinct, or the hope that brand awareness will eventually translate into revenue.
The system was built to solve a specific problem: connecting marketing spend to sales pipeline in businesses where the pressure to perform is constant and the margin for waste is zero. It worked. Repeatedly.
That same system is now available to any business between £5M and £50M that wants the same rigour applied to their commercial operation. Not because a portfolio manager is demanding it, but because the logic is the same: every pound spent on commercial activity should be traceable to a pipeline outcome. If it is not, something in the system is broken.
Less audience. More pipeline.
In a typical B2B service business, the marketing effort is directed at building an audience: more followers, more impressions, more website traffic. The logic feels sound. The numbers feel good. But when you trace those numbers back to actual pipeline, the picture changes.
Followers do not buy from you. Profiled, targeted prospects do.
The Commercial Alignment Programme is built on a different principle: identify exactly who your ideal clients are, contact them directly through coordinated channels, and measure everything by whether it moves the pipeline. Fewer contacts, better targeted, consistently followed up.
The result is not just more conversations. It is better conversations, with the right people, about the right problems.
Pipeline and brand. One system, two outcomes.
The primary purpose of the system is to generate qualified leads and build a measurable pipeline. But the process delivers something else: targeted brand awareness.
When you are contacting profiled prospects consistently across multiple channels, you are not just opening sales conversations. You are placing your business in front of the right people repeatedly. Even prospects who do not convert immediately are seeing your name, understanding your proposition, and forming an impression of a business that operates with purpose.
This is not the spray-and-pray approach of generic social media marketing. Every impression lands on someone who actually matters to your commercial future. Every piece of content, every outreach message, every advert speaks the same language to the same people about the same problems.
Pipeline
Coordinated outreach to qualified prospects, tracked from first contact through to closed business.
Brand
Consistent, multi-channel presence across your target market, building recognition with the people who will eventually buy from you, even if not today.
Four parts. Each one stands alone. Each one makes the next inevitable.
The Commercial Alignment Programme is delivered in four distinct parts. Each part produces a complete, standalone outcome. You choose whether to proceed to the next.
There are no retainers, no open-ended engagements, and no commitment beyond the part you are in. The system is designed so that each stage delivers enough value that the next stage feels like an obvious decision, not a sales pitch.
Most consultancies want to lock you into a long-term engagement before they have proven anything. This system was built in environments where you earn the next stage or you do not get it. That discipline is baked into the design.
The hardest part is not the system. It is making it stick.
A commercial alignment programme is only as useful as the team that runs it. And every team has habits, relationships, and ways of working that existed long before we arrived.
We know this. It is where we spend the most time.
Sales teams resist processes they did not help shape. Marketing pushes back when accountability is introduced. People default to what they know when the pressure builds. None of this is unusual. It is human. And ignoring it is the reason most commercial improvement work quietly fails.
Every element of this programme is built with your team, not handed to them. We do not turn up with a finished playbook. We work alongside your people to shape the targeting, agree the metrics, define the rhythm, and build the buy-in that makes it sustainable.
This is not a transformation programme. There is no project team required. It is your commercial team, doing what they already do, with a structure that makes it work properly and someone alongside them making sure it lands.
That approach was developed in PE-backed environments where there is no time for resistance, rework, or political fallout. Implementation has to land first time, constructively, with the team behind it. We bring that same discipline to every engagement: structure without bureaucracy, challenge without ego, clarity without spin.
Anyone can draw a framework on a whiteboard. Few can make it stick with real people, in a real business, without breaking what already works.
Part One
Know exactly who you are targeting, what to say, and why they should listen.
Before a single message is sent or a single channel is configured, the strategic foundation must be right. Most commercial systems fail not because the tools are wrong, but because the targeting is vague, the messaging is generic, and nobody has done the thinking that makes outreach land.
Market Mapping
A structured analysis of your addressable market: where the opportunities cluster, where competitors are active, and where the gaps are. This defines the territory before we start working it.
Ideal Client Profiling
A two-part framework that defines exactly who you can get results for (company type, decision maker, market conditions) and what they must have in place for your proposition to work (the qualification filter that stops you wasting time on the wrong prospects).
Buyer Persona Development
A detailed profile of how your ideal client thinks, what frustrates them, what they have tried before, and the language they use when they talk about their problems. This is not a demographic exercise. It is the foundation for every piece of messaging the system produces.
Offer Structure and Proposition Mapping
A clear, structured path from first contact to client. What the prospect sees at each stage, what you offer that opens the conversation, and what the full engagement looks like.
Outreach Angles and Content Strategy
Specific trigger moments paired with opening messages that make the prospect think “that just happened to me.” These angles drive everything: direct outreach, social media content, and paid advertising, all speaking the same language to the same people.
Believability and Proof Stack
Mapping the credibility assets you already have, identifying what is missing, and building the evidence layers that make your outreach credible from the first touchpoint.
What you walk away with: A complete commercial strategy. Total clarity on your market, your ideal client, your messaging, and your competitive position. If you stop here, you still have something genuinely valuable. Everything that follows is built on this foundation.
Part Two
Build the engine and switch it on.
With the strategy defined, Part 2 installs the operational system that turns it into daily commercial activity.
Three-Channel Outreach Architecture
An integrated programme across LinkedIn (via Sales Navigator), email outreach (via Apollo, with full DNS authentication), and Facebook (targeted advertising to the same prospect list). Three channels, one coordinated message, surrounding your ideal clients from multiple angles.
CRM as Pipeline Engine
Your CRM reconfigured to function as the operational backbone: defined sales stages with named owners, clear progression criteria, and pipeline visibility that the whole team can see and act on. Every channel feeds into a single source of truth.
Commercial Rhythm
A daily and weekly operating cadence that maintains commercial visibility across the business. What gets reviewed, when, by whom, and what action is expected. This is the discipline that prevents pipeline management from becoming an afterthought.
Campaign Strategy and Numbers
Specific, measurable targets: prospect list size, contact rates by channel, conversion targets, and pipeline value per month. Every number tracked through your CRM so you can see exactly where the funnel is performing and where it is not.
What you walk away with: A functioning commercial system. Channels live, team trained, outreach running, pipeline visible. Your business has a commercial engine that did not exist before.
Part Three
Measure everything. Automate the repeatable. Hand it over.
A system is only as good as the team’s ability to run it independently. Part 3 installs the measurement, automation, and accountability layers that make the system self-sustaining.
Unified Commercial Metrics
A single reporting view connecting marketing spend to pipeline to revenue. Attribution by channel, cost per opportunity, conversion rates by stage, and the number your MD takes into board meetings. If a channel is not producing pipeline, it is visible immediately.
Booking Calls and Assessment Conversion
A defined process for converting interested prospects into booked conversations. The handoff from outreach to booking, pre-call preparation, conversation structure, and follow-up cadence. Simple enough to run daily, consistent enough that no prospect falls through the cracks.
Automations and Standard Operating Procedures
CRM workflow automations, Apollo sequence management, LinkedIn cadence templates, and written SOPs for every recurring commercial activity. The purpose is to remove reliance on memory and ensure the system runs consistently regardless of who is operating it on any given day.
What you walk away with: A self-sustaining commercial system. Dashboards your team can read, processes they can repeat, and no dependency on anyone outside the business. The system is theirs.
Review. Approve. Proceed
Part Four
We run it for you.
Parts 1 through 3 give your business a commercial system it can operate independently. But independent capability and available bandwidth are not the same thing.
Most businesses between £5M and £50M do not have a dedicated commercial operations function. They have a marketing manager who is already stretched, a sales team focused on closing, and an MD who does not have the hours to maintain pipeline discipline on top of everything else. The system works, but without someone keeping their hands on it, the cadence slips, the data drifts, and the pipeline visibility that took three months to build starts to erode.
Part 4 solves that. We operate the system we built.
Weekly Commercial Cadence Management
We run the weekly rhythm: reviewing pipeline movement, flagging stalled opportunities, ensuring outreach volumes are maintained, and keeping the team focused on the activities that drive conversion.
Pipeline Hygiene and Data Quality
Your CRM stays clean. Stages are accurate. Dead opportunities are cleared. The data your MD takes into board meetings reflects reality, not three-week-old optimism.
Outreach Continuity
Apollo sequences keep running. LinkedIn cadences stay active. Angles are rotated based on what is converting. The system does not pause because someone went on holiday or got pulled into a project.
Monthly Performance Reporting
A board-ready commercial report: pipeline value, conversion rates by stage, channel attribution, cost per opportunity, and trend analysis. Not a marketing activity report. A commercial performance report.
Ongoing Angle and Message Refinement
Markets shift. Messaging that worked in month one may need adjusting by month four. We monitor response rates, test new angles, and keep the system sharp.
We are not a marketing agency. We do not write your blogs or manage your social media calendar. What we do is operate the commercial system at the level it was designed to run at, because we built it and we know what good looks like.
What you walk away with: A fully managed commercial operation. Your team stays focused on their core roles while the system continues to generate pipeline, maintain visibility, and deliver the metrics your board expects. When you are ready to bring it fully in-house, the SOPs, automations, and processes are already documented. The transition is clean.
No commitment beyond the part you are in.
Each part is a standalone engagement. You see the results, you assess the value, and you decide whether to proceed. There is no pressure, no bundled package, and no long-term contract.
This is deliberate. The system was built in environments where every engagement had to justify itself to a board. That discipline carries through: a system that genuinely works does not need to lock people in. The results from each part make the case for the next one. That confidence is built into the design.
What the Commercial Alignment Programme will not do.
It is worth being direct about the boundaries.
This programme will not fix fundamental issues with your product or service proposition. It will not correct pricing that is misaligned with the market. It will not substitute for having the right people in commercial roles.
What it will do is give you complete clarity over where your commercial strengths and weaknesses actually sit, so that decisions about these fundamentals are made with proper information rather than instinct.
If the assessment shows that the alignment programme is not the right tool for your situation, you will be told directly. Not every business needs this, and saying so is part of the service.
“I have worked with Trevor on several occasions for over 17 years. His flair for developing sound and commercially viable strategies, sometimes visionary, will make a significant difference to any business.”Simon TennysonCEO, Motorway Direct plc / AA Warranty
Start with a conversation, not a commitment.
The Commercial Assessment is a 45-minute structured conversation. Before the call, we review what is publicly visible about your commercial activity. On the call, we work through how your marketing connects (or does not connect) to your pipeline.
By the end of it, you will know exactly where your commercial system is working, where it is leaking, and whether the alignment programme is the right tool to fix it.
There is no cost, no obligation, and no follow-up pressure. If it is not the right fit, you will be told.