Most mid-sized product companies have a strategy. They have annual plans, growth targets, portfolio reviews, and decks that get presented to the board. What many of them don't have is a commercial strategy; the connected set of decisions about where they compete, what they offer, and why customers should choose them over anyone else. These are different things and conflating them is one of the most common and costly mistakes we see.

A commercial strategy isn't a sales plan. It isn't a budget with ambition attached. It's the logic that connects your market choices to your customer value to your revenue model. When that logic is clear and deliberate, the organisation moves with direction. When it isn't, you get a business that's busy but not progressing — activity without traction.

More than a plan

The word "strategy" gets applied to almost everything in business, which is part of the problem. Pricing strategy. Content strategy. People strategy. Each has its place, but commercial strategy sits above them. It answers three foundational questions: where are we choosing to compete, what do customers in those spaces genuinely value, and what gives us a credible right to win there?

Notice what's not in those questions. There's no mention of products, capabilities, or internal processes, at least not yet. That's deliberate. Commercial strategy starts outside the business and works inward, not the other way around. The moment you begin with what you already have and build outward from there, you've slipped into a pattern that looks strategic but is fundamentally reactive.

"Commercial strategy starts outside the business and works inward. The moment you begin with what you already have, you've slipped into a pattern that looks strategic but is fundamentally reactive."

Where most companies go wrong

The most common failure isn't a lack of strategic thinking. It's strategic thinking that starts in the wrong place. Companies assess their capabilities, map their product portfolio, set revenue targets, and then go looking for markets that fit what they've already built. This is inside-out thinking, and it produces a particular set of symptoms that are easy to recognise once you know what to look for.

The portfolio has grown by accretion rather than design. Offers overlap in ways that confuse customers and complicate sales conversations. The sales team pitches features and specifications rather than outcomes, because no one has done the work of understanding what customers are trying to solve. Margin pressure builds, not because the market is hostile, but because the value proposition has never been sharpened enough to justify the price.

We worked with one manufacturer whose product range had expanded steadily for a decade — each addition seemed logical at the time, each had a business case. But when we mapped the portfolio against what their key customer segments genuinely valued, a different picture emerged. Roughly a third of the range was generating negligible commercial return while consuming significant sales and operational resource. The issue wasn't execution. The strategy had never asked the right question at the start.

What commercial strategy requires

Getting commercial strategy right means making three things work together: clarity on where you compete, genuine understanding of what customers value in those spaces, and an honest assessment of your right to win. A sharp market insight means nothing if you lack the capability to act on it. A capability without a real customer need is just overhead.

The discipline that most organisations find hardest is focus. Real commercial focus means making genuine trade-offs explicit, not spreading resources thinly across everything that seems reasonable. We've seen leadership teams produce strategies with eight or ten priority areas. That's not a strategy, it's a wish list with formatting. Real strategic focus requires making trade-offs explicit and living with the discomfort of saying no to things that seem reasonable in isolation.

The useful test is resource allocation. If your commercial strategy hasn't changed where the money, the talent, and the leadership attention go, it hasn't landed. Strategy that leaves existing structures untouched is decoration. What you choose not to do is as defining as what you commit to — and it's the harder conversation to have.

From strategy to commercial results

The final failure mode is when the thinking is sound, but nothing changes downstream. The strategy gets signed off, the workshops conclude, and the organisation drifts back to its existing priorities. This happens because commercial strategy was treated as a planning exercise rather than a set of decisions that need to reshape how the business operates.

When it's working, the signs are visible and worth being specific about. Sales conversations change — not because of new training, but because the team finally understands the customer problem they're solving rather than the product they're selling. Portfolio decisions get easier, because there's a clear filter for what fits and what doesn't. Pricing holds, because the value proposition is specific enough to defend. And resource allocation stops being a negotiation between functions and starts reflecting genuine strategic priority. We've seen this shift happen in months, not years, once the underlying commercial logic is made explicit.

It requires clarity, commitment, and the willingness to revisit decisions that felt settled. The companies that get this right don't do it perfectly the first time — but they do it deliberately, and they keep asking the question: are we building around what customers truly value, or around what we find easiest to sell?

Key takeaways

Commercial strategy is the connected logic between your market choices, your customer value, and your revenue model — not a sales plan or a growth target.

Inside-out thinking — starting from existing products and capabilities rather than from customer value — is the most common reason commercial strategies underdeliver.

A portfolio that grew by accretion rather than design is a reliable signal that commercial strategy has never been made explicit.

Strategic focus means committing resources to fewer areas with more intensity, not funding a long list of priorities at a diluted level.

If your commercial strategy hasn't changed where money, talent, and leadership attention go, it hasn't landed — it's still a planning exercise.