Building Commercial Excellence Across PE Portfolios
SBI Wayforge™ in the First 100 Days
SBI Wayforge™ provides the quantitative insight and benchmarking that strengthens 100-day execution. The platform helps sponsors and management validate assumptions, establish operational baselines, and track the KPIs that matter most. With a unified data foundation, leadership teams gain clarity on where value will be created and how to focus early efforts to achieve the annual plan.
Explore SBI Wayforge™The Portfolio Paradox
A mid-market PE firm had eight B2B software portfolio companies. All had strong products. All struggled with similar commercial challenges-weak sales processes, inconsistent marketing, reactive customer success, no revenue operations. Each company tried to solve problems independently, reinventing wheels and making the same mistakes. Meanwhile, a competitor systematically built commercial excellence across their portfolio, sharing best practices and pooling resources. Their companies grew 34% annually vs. 12% for the first firm. Same markets, different approaches, vastly different outcomes.
Most PE portfolio companies have capability gaps, not strategy gaps. They know what good looks like but lack resources, expertise, or bandwidth to build it. Traditional approach is company-by-company intervention-expensive, slow, and inefficient. The firms generating superior returns take a portfolio approach, systematically building commercial capabilities that compound across companies and hold periods.
Portfolio transformation isn't about imposing templates. It's about identifying common capability gaps, building reusable solutions, creating forums for best practice sharing, and providing expert support that no individual portfolio company could afford alone. Companies that participate in portfolio-wide commercial excellence programs achieve 2-3x better growth than those going it alone while requiring less company-specific resources.
The Commercial Excellence Portfolio Framework
1. Systematic Capability Assessment
Assess each portfolio company against commercial excellence framework covering sales effectiveness, marketing ROI, customer success maturity, revenue operations sophistication, and pricing discipline. Identify common gaps and company-specific needs. Create capability heat map across portfolio.
Common Portfolio Gaps:
Nearly Universal (80%+ of companies):
- •Weak revenue operations
- •Reactive customer success
- •No formal sales methodology
- •Poor CRM data quality
Very Common (60%+ of companies):
- •Undisciplined pricing
- •Weak marketing attribution
- •Informal onboarding
- •No territory design
2. Build Reusable Playbooks & Assets
Create standardized playbooks, templates, and processes that can be adapted across companies. Don't start from scratch for each company-build once, deploy many times. Playbooks cover sales process design, customer success programs, RevOps implementation, pricing frameworks, and enablement content.
Example Playbook Library:
- •Sales process implementation guide
- •Pipeline review templates & cadence
- •Customer success playbooks by segment
- •Pricing change management framework
- •RevOps maturity assessment
- •Dashboard & metrics templates
- •Comp plan design principles
- •Sales onboarding program
3. Create Best Practice Forums
Facilitate knowledge sharing across portfolio through CRO councils, VP Sales roundtables, RevOps forums, and customer success peer groups. Companies learn faster from peers facing similar challenges than from consultants. Create safe spaces for honest discussion of what's working and what's not.
Typical Forum Structure:
- →Quarterly in-person meetings: Deep dives on specific topics with expert speakers and breakout sessions
- →Monthly virtual sessions: Quick wins sharing, problem-solving, and tactical topics
- →Slack/Teams channels: Ongoing async knowledge sharing and questions
- →Portfolio dashboards: Anonymized metrics benchmarking across companies
4. Provide Hands-On Expert Support
Portfolio companies need expert practitioners, not just advisors. Build bench of commercial operators who can parachute into companies for 100-day programs, capability buildouts, and transformation initiatives. One expert supporting 6-8 companies is more efficient than each company hiring separately.
Support Model:
- Assessment & Planning: 2-3 weeks to assess capabilities and build transformation roadmap
- 100-Day Programs: Hands-on support for rapid post-acquisition value creation
- Capability Building: 3-6 month engagements to implement specific capabilities (RevOps, CS, etc.)
- Ongoing Advisory: Monthly office hours for portfolio company leaders
The Portfolio Transformation ROI
Portfolio Companies With Systematic Support vs. Going It Alone
Portfolio Program Participants
- 34% average annual revenue growth
- 6.2 points EBITDA margin improvement
- 3-4 months faster capability deployment
- 40% lower cost per capability built
- 2.8x higher exit multiples vs. peers
Independent Approach
- ○12% average annual revenue growth
- ○2.1 points EBITDA margin improvement
- ○12+ months to deploy new capabilities
- ○Baseline cost (DIY or point consultants)
- ○Baseline market multiples
Data from analysis of 150+ portfolio companies across 20 PE firms, 2020-2024
Why Portfolio Approach Wins
Economics of Scale: One expert supporting 6-8 companies costs 60% less per company than independent hiring while delivering better outcomes through specialization.
Faster Learning: Companies adopt best practices 3-4 months faster through peer sharing than discovering independently.
Better Retention: Portfolio company leaders stay longer when connected to peer network-reduces turnover and preserves institutional knowledge.
Exit Positioning: Demonstrable commercial excellence capabilities that are documented and portable command premium valuations from acquirers.
Case Study: $2.5B Multi-Sector Fund
The Challenge
Fund had 12 B2B portfolio companies across software, services, and manufacturing. Each had similar commercial capability gaps but was trying to solve them independently. No knowledge sharing, duplicated efforts, inconsistent results. Portfolio companies were growing 8-15% annually despite strong markets, limiting exit options.
The Approach
Built portfolio-wide commercial excellence program including:
- •Comprehensive capability assessment across all companies
- •Playbook library covering sales, marketing, CS, RevOps, pricing
- •Quarterly CRO summits and monthly peer forums by function
- •Dedicated commercial excellence team supporting portfolio
- •Portfolio-wide metrics dashboards enabling peer benchmarking
The Results (18 Months)
- Revenue Growth: Accelerated from 11% average to 31% average across portfolio
- EBITDA Margins: Improved 5.8 points on average through pricing and efficiency
- Sales Productivity: Revenue per rep up 42% through process and enablement
- Customer Retention: NRR improved from 102% to 119% through CS programs
- Exit Valuations: 3 exits achieved 2.1x higher multiples than comparable transactions
- Program ROI: $4.8M investment drove $78M in incremental enterprise value
GP Perspective: "Portfolio-wide commercial excellence was the highest ROI investment we made. Companies learned faster, executed better, and exited at premiums. We've replicated this model across all our funds." - Managing Partner
The Portfolio Transformation Imperative
In an environment where financial engineering no longer drives returns, commercial excellence is the primary source of value creation. Firms that systematically build GTM capabilities across portfolios generate 3-4x better fund returns than those leaving it to individual companies.
Keys to Portfolio Success:
- • Assess capabilities systematically across all companies
- • Build reusable playbooks and assets that scale
- • Create forums for peer learning and best practice sharing
- • Provide expert support no individual company could afford alone
- • Measure portfolio-wide metrics to drive continuous improvement
Portfolio transformation isn't overhead-it's the operating system for superior value creation across the entire fund.