Most leadership teams in product companies have something they call a commercial agenda. A plan, a set of priorities, a slide from the last strategy offsite. The problem is rarely that it doesn't exist. The problem is the order in which it was built.

We've sat in planning sessions where the channel model was being designed before anyone had decided which customer segments to prioritise. Where the value proposition work had started but the question of which markets to compete in was still being debated in parallel. Where a performance dashboard was already live, tracking metrics across initiatives that hadn't been validated against a clear strategic direction. The thinking was serious. The people were capable. But the sequence was wrong, and the wrong sequence produces a commercial agenda that is coherent in its parts and incoherent as a whole.

A commercial agenda is not a strategy document. It is a framework for making the right commercial decisions in the right order. That distinction matters because most organisations already have answers to all the relevant questions — they just arrived at those answers in the wrong sequence.

The wrong order is the most common order

There are three structural tensions that drive most of the sequencing failures we see in commercial organisations.

The first is growth versus focus. The business wants more revenue, and the commercial organisation responds by covering more ground: more segments, more geographies, more channels. The commercial leaders often know this is happening. They're sometimes the ones being asked to justify why a particular market isn't growing despite the investment. But without strategic clarity on where to play and where not to, the case for saying no rarely holds. So the agenda grows, the energy spreads, and the returns diminish.

The second is portfolio versus prioritisation. Most product and service portfolios have grown faster than the strategy behind them. Some offerings carry the margin. Others drain it. Others create operational complexity that erodes the P&L without ever showing up clearly in revenue numbers. The commercial leader needs a defensible position on what to push, what to pull, and what to exit, one that survives challenge from product, finance, and the sales team. Without it, portfolio decisions get made by whoever argues loudest in the quarterly review.

The third is short-term pipeline versus long-term positioning. Quarterly pressure is real, and it consistently wins. Commercial leaders who spend all their time on near-term conversion rarely build the structural demand generation, through channel investment, specifier relationships, or positioning work, that makes the next quarter easier. The organisations that escape this trap have usually built something structural that holds the long-term agenda in place even when the quarter is difficult. That something is a properly sequenced commercial agenda.

Six building blocks — and why sequence matters

The six building blocks of a commercial agenda sit in a deliberate order. Understanding that order matters more than memorising the labels.

The first two blocks are market focus and portfolio prioritisation. Market focus settles the question of which customer segments, geographies, and channels to resource seriously versus treat as opportunistic. Portfolio prioritisation gives a P&L-backed rationale for where commercial energy goes: which products to push, which to sustain, and which to exit. These two blocks together give commercial leadership credibility with the board and with product. They're also the blocks most organisations skip or rush. It's uncomfortable to make the no decisions explicit. It requires the kind of strategic clarity that quarterly targets don't naturally produce. But without them, the blocks that follow are built on shifting ground.

"Most commercial agendas start at the value proposition. That's why they struggle to hold margin."

The value proposition and go-to-market model only mean something once those first choices are settled. A value proposition defined before the target segments are prioritised will default to the segment the organisation is most comfortable with, usually the one with the most internal advocates, not the most commercial potential. A go-to-market model designed before the coverage question is resolved will default to whatever the organisation is already doing. The value proposition work that produces durable margin is built at segment level, not at product level. It starts from how a specific set of customers experiences value, not from what the internal product team has decided is differentiated. The outside-in logic that makes this possible is something What Customer Focus Looks Like Inside a Product Organisation addresses directly — specifically, why insight that arrives after the options are formed tends to confirm rather than shape. The go-to-market model that follows from genuine segment clarity, which routes to market, which channels, which coverage motion, looks materially different from one designed around existing capability.

The final two blocks, the commercial performance system and the operating model, are the instruments of the agenda rather than the agenda itself. A performance system built before the strategic choices are settled will measure the wrong things beautifully. Pipeline health metrics not connected to segment-level strategic bets tell you how busy the commercial function is. They don't tell you whether it's moving in the right direction. The same applies to the operating model. Team design, incentive structures, and cross-functional accountabilities between commercial and product need to be configured around the choices made earlier, not designed in parallel with them. When the operating model comes first, as it often does because it feels tractable and familiar, it shapes the strategy rather than serving it.

Where most commercial agendas break down

The failure mode is consistent enough that it's worth naming directly. Most organisations have thoughtful people working on all six building blocks. The breakdown is not in the quality of the thinking within each block. It's in the assumption that the blocks can be worked in parallel, or in whatever order the organisation finds most comfortable.

We've watched commercial transformations stall because a new performance system was launched before the segment prioritisation work was complete. The system was technically well-designed. It measured the wrong strategic bets because those bets hadn't been made yet. Eighteen months later, the performance data was detailed, accurate, and disconnected from the direction the business had eventually decided to go.

The more common version is subtler. An organisation works through all six blocks over twelve months of planning. Each block gets serious attention. The output looks comprehensive. But when you trace the logic, the value proposition was defined before the market focus work concluded, so it reflects last year's segment mix rather than the prioritised one. The go-to-market model was designed alongside the value proposition work rather than after it, so the coverage gaps it was meant to address are gaps in the old model. The performance system is measuring activity against a roadmap that predates both.

"The commercial agenda isn't broken. The sequence is."

The practical starting point is straightforward: before the next planning cycle begins, ask which of the six blocks are genuinely settled and which are assumed to be settled because revisiting them is inconvenient. The gap between those two lists is where the sequencing work begins.

A commercial agenda built in the right order is not a more ambitious document than the one most organisations already have. It is a more honest one — because it forces the decisions that the wrong sequence allows you to defer.

Key takeaways

Building a commercial agenda in the wrong sequence is more common than not having one. Most organisations have thoughtful work across all six building blocks. The failure is in assuming those blocks can run in parallel.

The first two blocks — market focus and portfolio prioritisation — must be settled before the value proposition and go-to-market work begins. A value proposition built before segments are prioritised will default to the most internally comfortable choice, not the most commercially defensible one.

A commercial performance system built before the strategic direction is clear will measure the wrong bets, however well it is technically designed. The metrics will be accurate. The direction they're measuring will be wrong.

The most commonly deferred decision in commercial planning is market focus: which segments, geographies, and channels to resource seriously. Treating this as settled when it isn't is where most sequencing failures begin.

The diagnostic question before any planning cycle: which of the six building blocks are genuinely settled, and which are assumed to be settled because revisiting them is inconvenient? The gap between those two lists is where to start.

FAQ

What is a commercial agenda? A commercial agenda is a framework for making the right commercial decisions in the right order. It covers six building blocks across three layers — where to play, how to win, and how to manage — and its value comes as much from the sequence in which those decisions are made as from the quality of each decision individually.

Why does sequence matter so much? Because each layer depends on the one above it. A value proposition built before target segments are prioritised reflects the wrong customers. A go-to-market model designed before the value proposition is clear optimises for the wrong motion. A performance system built before the strategic direction is settled measures activity rather than strategic progress. The blocks are interdependent, and working them out of order produces an agenda that looks coherent in its parts but drifts in practice.

Where do most commercial agendas break down? Typically at the first layer. Market focus — the explicit decision about which segments, geographies, and channels to resource seriously — is the decision most organisations treat as settled when it isn't. Portfolio prioritisation suffers from the same pattern: most portfolios have a defended rationale for every product, but no defensible logic for the mix as a whole. When these two blocks aren't genuinely resolved, everything built on top of them rests on assumed rather than actual strategic clarity.

How is a commercial agenda different from a commercial strategy? A commercial strategy describes where you're going and how you intend to win. A commercial agenda is the working framework that produces those choices — the sequenced set of decisions that, made in the right order, adds up to a coherent strategy. Many organisations have a commercial strategy that was produced too quickly because the agenda behind it was either skipped or rushed.

What's the first thing to fix if your commercial agenda isn't working? Go back to market focus. In most cases, the performance system, the value proposition, and the go-to-market model are all functioning as designed — they're just designed around a segment and coverage picture that was never explicitly agreed. Resetting market focus, which segments to resource seriously, which to treat as secondary, which to exit, changes what everything downstream is optimising for. It's the decision most teams defer because it requires saying no to things the organisation is already doing. It's also the one that, when made clearly, tends to resolve a surprising number of the other problems on the list.