A real opening — and a hard question about whether to take it.
A massive multi-year build-out cycle in an adjacent infrastructure vertical was creating an opening for specialty services platforms to expand from their core verticals into a much larger one. The leadership team of a PE-backed multi-site services platform had a hypothesis that they could compete — that the operational muscle they had built in the core business was relevant in the new one, and that the sales motion was learnable. But the question wasn't whether the opportunity existed; it was whether this platform could win in it without breaking the business that was already working.
They needed three things they didn't have. A sharp, defensible thesis — where do we actually win, against whom, with what scope, in what geographies. A real go-to-market motion built for the new vertical, not retrofitted from the legacy business. And a capability ramp that could absorb the early wins without forcing leadership to choose between the new vertical and the existing one.
That was the work we were asked to lead.
Three workstreams, one operating partnership.
We embedded inside the leadership team and worked across all three workstreams as business and thought partner. The work was deliberately sequenced so the thesis informed the GTM, the GTM informed the capability ramp, and the early pursuits fed back into all three.
The thesis was first. We pressure-tested where the platform could actually win — which customer segment, which scope of work, which geographies, which deal sizes — and built the unit-economics story that had to hold up under both a CFO's scrutiny and a customer's negotiation. Then the go-to-market motion: the account model, the sales architecture, the partnership strategy, the pricing approach, the contracting motion, and the BD priorities. All of it built from first principles for the new vertical — not a copy-paste of how the legacy business sold. Finally the capability ramp: what the platform needed in delivery, talent, systems, and partnerships to actually fulfill against the early wins, sequenced by what the first three months, the next six, and the next twelve required.
Where we win, against whom, with what scope — built from first principles
Account model, sales architecture, pricing, contracting, BD priorities
Delivery, talent, systems, partnerships — sequenced for sustainable scale
Pursuits run alongside leadership through close, refining all three above
We then partnered with leadership through the first wave of real pursuits. Each one was a stress test: what does the thesis hold up against in front of an actual buyer, where does the sales motion break, what does the capability roadmap need to absorb that we didn't see on day one. The early pursuits weren't just about closing deals — they were about building the institutional muscle that lets the platform run the next ten without us.
A new vertical the platform actually owns.
The platform entered the new vertical with a defensible thesis and an early book of business that materially expands its TAM. The capability ramp is sequenced so the next layer of growth doesn't need a second outside team to deliver. And the leadership team came out of the work equipped to own the vertical going forward — with a sales architecture they helped design, a thesis they helped pressure-test, and the early customer relationships they led from the front.
What started as a hypothesis about whether the platform could compete in a new vertical ended as a real, growing line of business — with the operating partner asking the next set of questions about how to accelerate, not whether to commit.