Private Equity 100-Day Commercial Turnaround: Pricing Discipline, CRM Activation & EBITDA Uplift

Sprint 1: Margin Protection & "Quick-Win" Pricing (Days 1–30)

Objective: Stop the bleed and institutionalize pricing discipline across the PortCo.

• The "Pricing Floor" Intervention:
• Operational Execution: We implement hard "Price Floors" directly within the CPQ/CRM. We eliminate the "spreadsheet shadow-pricing" used by sales reps.
• Approval Workflows: Any quote falling below the floor triggers an automated escalation to the Commercial Director or CFO. We aim to reduce the "approval lag" from days to under 60 minutes via mobile-app notifications.
• Impact: This typically identifies and stops 2–4% of "Rogue Discounting" within the first month.
• Dynamic Surcharge Pass-Through:
• Logic: We build a data bridge between the ERP’s raw material costs (e.g., steel, polymers, energy) and the sales quoting tool.
• Automation: When input costs shift by >3%, the system automatically updates the "List Price" or applies a mandatory surcharge to all new quotes, ensuring the PortCo isn't subsidizing market volatility.
• Service & "Tail" Monetization:
• Audit: We identify "Value-Added Services" currently given away for free (technical design, expedited shipping, custom packaging).
• Fee Schedules: We introduce a standardized price list for these services, turning a cost center into a high-margin revenue stream.

Sprint 2: Digital Transparency & Pipeline Hygiene (Days 31–60)

Objective: Eliminate "Forecast Hallucination" and create a single source of truth for the Board.

• Minimum Viable CRM (MVC) Deployment:
• Objective Stage-Gates: We replace subjective rep feelings ("It's a 50% chance") with hard evidence. A deal cannot move to Stage 3 without a validated technical specification, and cannot move to Stage 4 without a CFO-approved quote.
• Data Hygiene: We perform a "Pipeline Scrub," purging deals with stale close dates or zero activity for 60+ days.
• Sales Velocity & Bottleneck Analysis:
• Metric: We measure the "Time-in-Stage." We identify where deals get stuck—often in Legal (contract redlines), Credit (onboarding), or Engineering (technical specs).
• Resolution: We streamline these cross-functional bottlenecks to shorten the Lead-to-Cash cycle by 15–20%.
• Lead Scoring Alignment:
• Prioritization: We implement a simple AI-driven scoring model that prioritizes leads based on historical margin potential and "Propensity to Close," ensuring the most expensive sales resources focus on the highest-value opportunities.

Sprint 3: Capability, Incentives & The L5 Playbook (Days 61–100)

Objective: Align human behavior with the Investment Thesis and prepare for scale.

• EBITDA-Linked Commissions:
• Incentive Shift: We move the sales team away from "Volume/Revenue" targets (which encourage low-margin deals) and toward "Gross Margin Dollars."
• Accelerator Logic: We introduce accelerators for recurring revenue (SaaS/Service) to align with the PE firm’s exit-multiple goals.
• The Visconti Performance Bridge:
• Management Coaching: We deploy executive coaching for regional managers. We train them to lead "Data-Driven Performance Reviews" rather than "Anecdotal Pipeline Updates."
• Accountability: Managers are coached to use the CRM dashboards to identify underperformers early and provide targeted coaching to "B-Players" to move them into the "A-Player" bracket.
• The L5 Playbook (The Commercial OS):
• Institutionalization: We document every task in the Lead-to-Cash cycle (L5 level). This "Commercial Operating System" ensures the business is no longer dependent on the "Secret Sauce" of individual reps, making the asset significantly more valuable to the next buyer.

Expected Impact by Day 100:

• 3–5% ROS (Return on Sales) uplift.
• 80%+ CRM Adoption across the field force.
• Automated, Board-ready reporting suite with 100% data integrity.