In this week's episode, Bill breaks down a critical issue inside private equity–backed companies: the absence of a real go-to-market strategy. Too often, post-acquisition growth plans rely on increased budgets, headcount, and activity without a defined, repeatable system for creating real growth.

This episode explores the difference between spend-driven growth and system-driven go-to-market strategy, why expansion is often mistaken for scale, and how misaligned incentives quietly erode performance over time. You’ll learn what a true GTM system includes—from ICP clarity and defined sales motion to channel discipline and economic accountability—and how PE operators and leadership teams can shift from reactive spending to predictable, efficient growth.

I want to start today with an observation that I have seen repeatedly across private equity–backed companies, regardless of industry, size, or growth stage.

Most of these companies do not actually have a go-to-market strategy. What they have is a budget, and those two things are often treated as if they are interchangeable. But they’re not.

In many post-acquisition environments, there is a strong belief that growth will follow naturally once additional capital is deployed into sales, marketing, and technology. Headcount increases, software is added, campaigns are launched, and revenue targets are raised. From the outside, the organization appears to be scaling.

However, when you step back and examine how revenue is actually created and sustained, there is often very little alignment around the underlying system that is supposed to produce that growth. The company is busy, but it is not coordinated. It’s spending, but it’s not compounding. This is the difference between having activity and having a go-to-market strategy.

Spend-driven growth is built on the assumption that more investment will automatically produce better results. The logic is straightforward: if we increase marketing spend, we should generate more demand; if we hire more salespeople, we should close more deals; if we add more tools, we should operate more efficiently. That logic only holds true if the underlying system already works.

In many PE-backed companies, the go-to-market motion has never been fully defined, documented, or tested for repeatability. When additional spend is layered on top of that ambiguity, the organization does not become more effective. Instead, inefficiencies become more visible and more expensive. Leads increase, but sales teams disagree on which ones matter. Sales teams grow, but each representative sells in a different way. Marketing activity expands, but messaging shifts depending on the audience, the channel, or the quarter. The result is not scale. The result is friction. System-driven go-to-market strategy takes a fundamentally different approach. It assumes that growth must be engineered before it is funded. It focuses first on clarity, alignment, and repeatability, and only then uses capital as a way to accelerate what already works. This is the difference between spending money to chase growth and designing a system that produces growth predictably.

Another common issue I see is a misunderstanding of what scaling actually means in practice. Scaling is not the same thing as expansion.

Expansion is the act of adding resources. Scaling is the ability to increase output without increasing cost at the same rate. True scale depends on leverage, not volume.

In many post-acquisition plans, scaling is defined almost entirely by expansion. More sales representatives are hired. More marketing channels are activated. More initiatives are launched. Each individual decision may make sense in isolation, but together they create complexity that the organization is not prepared to manage.

When performance fails to meet expectations, leadership often concludes that the problem is execution or effort. In reality, the system itself is not designed to support the level of complexity that expansion introduces. A go-to-market strategy that cannot be repeated cannot be scaled. Without repeatability, growth becomes increasingly expensive, unpredictable, and difficult to manage.

One of the most damaging effects of a weak go-to-market strategy is incentive misalignment. After an acquisition, private equity firms are naturally focused on financial performance, margin improvement, and exit timelines. Management teams are often focused on hitting short-term targets that are tied to compensation and retention. Sales teams are incented to close deals. Marketing teams are incented to generate volume. Operations teams are incented to control costs. What is missing is a shared incentive around optimizing the system as a whole.

Sales may push deals that are a poor long-term fit because they close faster. Marketing may prioritize lead volume over lead quality because volume is easier to measure. Customer success inherits accounts that never should have been closed in the first place.

Over time, velocity slows. Churn increases. Customer acquisition costs rise quietly. Leadership responds by increasing pressure and spending more money, rather than addressing the structural misalignment that is causing the problem. Without a clearly defined go-to-market strategy, incentives drift apart, and performance degrades even when the team is talented and well-intentioned.

A real go-to-market strategy is not a revenue target or a marketing plan. It is a system that defines how the company creates value, converts demand, and generates profitable growth. It begins with a clearly defined Ideal Customer Profile. This is not a vague description of an industry or a revenue range. It is a precise definition of the type of customer that buys efficiently, stays longer, expands over time, and produces strong unit economics. Without this clarity, the organization cannot align messaging, sales motion, or investment decisions.

The next component is a clearly defined go-to-market motion. This includes how demand is created, how it is qualified, how it moves through the sales process, and how it converts into revenue. The motion must reflect how buyers actually buy, not how the company prefers to sell.

Channels must then be selected intentionally. The goal is not to be present everywhere, but to be effective where it matters. Each channel should have a clear role in the system and a measurable contribution to pipeline and revenue.

Finally, a real GTM strategy accounts for economics. Customer acquisition cost, payback period, deal velocity, win rates, and lifetime value must all be understood and monitored. Growth that does not improve economics is not scale; it is risk.

Before I close, I want to make this practical, because this conversation only matters if it changes how leaders operate after they walk away from it.

If you are leading, investing in, or operating a PE-backed company, there are a few things you can start doing immediately to move from budget-driven growth to a real go-to-market strategy.

The first is to stop asking how much you should spend and start asking where growth actually comes from. That means taking a hard look at your last twelve to eighteen months of closed business and identifying patterns. Which customers moved fastest through the funnel? Which deals closed with the least friction? Which accounts stayed, expanded, and required the fewest concessions? Those patterns matter far more than broad market assumptions or aspirational ICP statements. If your best customers don’t match the customers you are actively targeting, your GTM strategy is already misaligned.

The second step is to clearly define and document your go-to-market motion. Every leadership team should be able to answer, in plain language, how demand is created, how it is qualified, and how it turns into revenue. If sales leaders, marketing leaders, and executives describe that process differently, then the company does not have a motion. It has opinions. Alignment does not require perfection, but it does require clarity. A documented, agreed-upon motion creates consistency, and consistency is what enables scale.

The third thing leaders should do is audit incentives across the organization. Ask whether sales, marketing, and customer success are being rewarded for behavior that improves long-term economics or simply short-term activity. If teams are incentivized in isolation, the system will never perform as a system. Incentives do not need to be complex, but they do need to reinforce the same definition of success across the organization.

The fourth takeaway is to be disciplined about channels. Not every channel needs to be active, and not every tactic needs to be tested at once. Strong go-to-market strategies are focused. They prioritize the channels that align with buyer behavior, deal size, and sales cycle length, and they say no to the rest. If a channel cannot be clearly tied to pipeline contribution and economics, it should be questioned, not protected.

Finally, leaders need to shift how they think about growth metrics. Revenue alone is not enough. Growth that degrades margins, increases churn, or extends payback periods is not progress. It is deferred risk. A real GTM strategy tracks not just how fast the company is growing, but how efficiently that growth is being produced. When these elements are in place, capital becomes a multiplier instead of a bandage.

When private equity–backed companies struggle to grow, the issue is rarely effort or ambition. More often, it is the absence of a real go-to-market system. Budgets don’t create growth. Systems do. If your organization is investing heavily in sales and marketing but struggling to produce predictable, efficient results, it may be time to step back and examine whether you truly have a go-to-market strategy or simply a plan to spend more money.

At 50 Capital Growth, we work with leadership teams and investors to design system-driven go-to-market strategies that align incentives, improve economics, and support scalable growth. If you want to move beyond budget-driven growth and build a GTM system that truly performs, I encourage you to learn more about our work at 50capitalgrowth.com.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.