Most companies at the growth stage don't actually have a sales problem. They have an operating model problem.
You’ve seen the symptoms. Your pipeline is a spreadsheet that someone frantically updates ten minutes before the board meeting. Your revenue forecasting is less of a science and more of a gut feeling dressed up in a suit. Marketing and sales are running completely different plays, and the founder: if it's a founder-led business: is still in every single deal because the process only works when they’re in the room.
When things feel broken like this, leadership usually reaches for one of two levers: they hire a high-priced consultant or they sign a long-term retainer with a fractional executive.
Both of these are often a trap.
The Retainer Trap vs. The Operating System
Traditional consultants are great at making slides. They’ll spend six weeks auditing your business, interview your team, and hand you a 60-page deck titled "2026 GTM Strategy." Then they invoice you and leave. Three months later, that deck is gathering digital dust in a Google Drive folder because no one had the time or the infrastructure to actually build what was on those slides.
Then there’s the fractional executive on a rolling retainer. They join the Slack, they attend the meetings, and they become a valuable part of the team. But therein lies the rub: they become part of the team. They stay for 12, 18, 24 months. You become dependent on them. If they leave, the knowledge and the "rhythm" leave with them.
My model is different. I’m a fractional GTM operator. I don’t sell slides, and I don’t stay forever. I embed into PE-backed and founder-led B2B companies for a fixed window of 60 to 120 days. My job isn't to be your "consultant": it’s to install the GTM Operating System (GTM OS) and then get out of the way.
I build the machine, I teach your team how to drive it, and then I exit. No retainer. No dependency. No "we need Michael in the room for this to work."
Your Pipeline is a Guess. I Fix That in 90 Days.
When I walk into a company, the board is usually asking questions leadership can’t answer with confidence.
- "What’s our true forecast confidence for Q3?"
- "Where do deals actually go to die in our funnel?"
- "What is the actual ROI of that marketing spend on closed-won revenue?"
If your answer involves a lot of "I think" or "let me check with the sales leads," you don't have an operating system. You have a collection of talented people working in a vacuum.
The GTM OS I install is built on three interconnected pillars:
- Forecast & Pipeline Integrity: We move away from "gut feelings." I install hard stage criteria, qualification guardrails (like MEDDPICC or custom frameworks), and a rigorous forecast cadence. Within 30 to 60 days, you have board-ready reporting that you actually trust.
- Demand-to-Revenue Visibility: We stop looking at "leads" and start looking at the revenue lifecycle. I build connected reporting across sales, marketing, and RevOps so you can see exactly where the friction is.
- The Operating Cadence: This is the "rhythm" of the business. Roles, handoffs, SLAs, and weekly meetings that actually have an agenda. It’s the structure that makes growth repeatable instead of a series of lucky breaks.
Breaking the Founder-Led Ceiling
For many of my clients, the trigger is the "Founder Ceiling." You’ve grown the business to $5M or $10M ARR on the back of the founder’s relationships and sheer force of will. But now, growth has stalled. The founder is the bottleneck because every deal requires their "magic touch" to close.
You can't scale magic. You can only scale systems.
My goal in a 90-day engagement is to take that magic, turn it into a repeatable process, and build the infrastructure so that a VP of Sales or a new CRO can walk in and have a "dashboard" to manage from day one.
I’ve done this at enterprise SaaS companies, procurement platforms, and high-touch service businesses. The pattern is always the same: the company grew fast enough to generate revenue, but never slow enough to build the infrastructure that makes it predictable.
The 90-Day Sprint: How We Get There
I operate at a high-intensity, fixed-scope pace. We don't have time for a "discovery phase" that lasts two months.
- Weeks 1-2 (Diagnose): I audit the pipeline, the tech stack (HubSpot, Salesforce, Gong), and the handoffs. I find where the leaks are.
- Weeks 3-6 (Install): This is the heavy lifting. We build the stage criteria, the SLAs, and the board-ready metrics. The system goes live.
- Weeks 7-10 (Operate): I run the system with your team. I lead the pipeline reviews. I coach the reps. We find what breaks under real-world pressure and we fix it.
- Weeks 10-12 (Exit Clean): I hand over the keys. I document the entire operating model. My job is to be irrelevant by day 120.
Is This a Fit for You?
This model isn't for everyone. If you’re looking for someone to just "write some content" or "help with a new deck," call a consultant. If you want to hire a full-time CRO but can't find the right one yet, you might need a traditional fractional exec.
But you should reach out if:
- You’re PE-backed: And your operating partner is asking for pipeline reliability that you simply don't have.
- You’re a Founder: And you’re tired of being in every sales demo. You need a system that works when you're on vacation.
- You’re a New Revenue Leader: You just joined a Series B company and inherited a mess. You need to install structure in 90 days, not 12 months.
- Growth has Stalled: You were growing, but now it’s flat and no one can point to the specific reason why.
Stop paying for retainers that never end and strategy decks that never get built.
Let's build the machine.
Book a 30-minute call with me here. No pitch. Just a real conversation about your current GTM state and whether a 90-day operating system install is what you actually need.
