Commercial strategy

Commercial strategy consulting for pricing that works on paper and fails in the field

A price is only as good as the system that carries it to the customer. We align compensation, quoting, messaging, and channel terms with your pricing, so the decision you made in the boardroom is the one your customers actually see.

Schedule a discovery callSee the commercial system map
A man in glasses and a navy blazer reviews printed charts with a colleague at a table by an office window
Pricing plus the systemCompensation, CRM, messaging, channel
The Five P’sTwo or three gaps, each with an owner
Six to 10 weeksScoped to a decision
Through your leadersNot around them
A client story

A value-based pricing model that looked perfect and still failed

Five colleagues review printed charts around a round table

One of our clients had done the hard part. Its new value-based pricing was researched, segmented, and signed off by leadership. Six months later, very little of it had reached the invoice.

The reasons had nothing to do with the prices themselves.

Compensation

Sales compensation still rewarded volume over margin, so reps gave the new premium back as discount to close faster.

CRM

The CRM could not record discounts at deal level, so nobody could see it happening.

Marketing

Marketing kept selling features while the pricing assumed buyers were paying for outcomes.

Sales confidence

And the sales team, trained on the old list, lacked the confidence to defend a higher number in front of a customer who pushed back.

None of these was a pricing problem, and every one of them was undoing the pricing. When the work widened to fix the surrounding system, the client reported a 12% margin improvement within six months.

That pattern is what commercial strategy consulting exists for. Most companies do not have a pricing problem or a sales problem or a marketing problem in isolation. They have functions that each make sense on their own and contradict each other at the moment a deal is priced.

The working tool

The commercial system map: what has to move when pricing moves

Every pricing decision has consequences outside pricing. The map below is the working tool we use to find them. For each decision a company is about to make, it lists what else must change, where that change lives, and the symptom that appears when it is left undone. Read down the last column: if you recognize two or three of these, the gap is in the system, not the price list.

Pricing decisionWhat else must changeWhere it livesSymptom when it does not
New tiers or packagesTalk tracks, proposal templates, and the website rewritten per tierMarketing, sales enablementThe middle tier becomes the default, sold at a discount to the top tier’s price
Discount guardrailsApproval routing, reason codes, and a deal desk with authorityCRM and CPQConcessions reappear as free freight, credits, or unbilled services outside the system
Value-based increase on premium linesValue selling tools and rep training on the customer’s economicsSales enablementReps apologize for the increase and trade it back in the first negotiation
Margin targets by segmentCommission on gross profit or price realization, not revenue aloneSales compensation planRevenue quota is hit while the margin plan is missed
Channel price architectureDistributor net prices, and rebates tied to how partners resellPartner agreementsDistributors undercut the direct channel on the same end customer
Charging for a new feature or AI capabilityThe monetization decision taken before development startsProduct roadmapThe feature ships free in the base plan and becomes table stakes
Any of the aboveMonthly KPIs for realization, compliance, and deal profitabilityFinance and BINobody can say, a year later, whether the pricing worked

The map is deliberately short. In our experience the leak rarely sits in a single function; it sits in the handoff between two of them, where each assumes the other has adjusted.

Tell us which pricing decision is not reaching the invoice

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The arithmetic

Why sales compensation decides whether pricing sticks

Of all the rows in the map, compensation is the one that most often explains why a sound pricing strategy stops working. The arithmetic shows why a rep paid on revenue rationally discounts.

Illustrative example. A $100,000 deal carries a 35% gross margin, so $35,000 of gross profit. The rep offers 10% off to close it this quarter.

10%discount offered
$500commission the rep gives up
$10,000profit the company gives up
28.6%drop in gross profit
At list priceWith 10% discountChange
Revenue$100,000$90,000Down 10%
Gross profit to the company$35,000$25,000Down 28.6%
Rep commission at 5% of revenue$5,000$4,500Down 10%
Rep commission at 14% of gross profit$4,900$3,500Down 28.6%

Under a revenue plan, the rep gives up $500 of commission to secure a deal sooner, while the company gives up $10,000 of profit. The discount costs the company nearly three times as much, in percentage terms, as it costs the person granting it. Pay on gross profit and the two sets of interests line up exactly: the rep feels the same 28.6% the company does.

Few companies switch every rep to pure gross-profit commission overnight, and they should not. Plans changed mid-year are disruptive, and some roles, such as new-logo hunters, need a revenue component. The usual design is a blend: revenue credit with a margin or realization multiplier, accelerators only above a price floor, and new-logo targets kept separate. We model each rep’s earnings under the new plan against the last 12 months of their actual deals before anything is announced, so nobody learns about a pay cut from a spreadsheet.

In a rigging hardware distribution business with more than 100 salespeople, recalibrating incentives on revenue, margin, and new logos was part of the work that took the share of transactions at approved pricing from under 40% to 77% in the first year, as the client reported.

Our diagnostic

Diagnosing the system with the Five P’s

Acustrategy’s diagnostic lens is the Five P’s: Principles for Sustainable Business Growth™. The argument behind it is simple: most transformations fail because a company fixes one P and ignores the other four. Pricing is where we start, because it is the fastest lever and the clearest signal of value, but it is never where we stop.

Pricing

The question we ask: Does the price capture the value customers actually receive?

The evidence we look at: Net price by segment, discount depth by rep, win and loss reasons

Product and packaging

The question we ask: Do the offers make it easy to buy the right thing and grow into more?

The evidence we look at: Tier mix, attach rates, which features drive upgrades and which are ignored

Prioritization

The question we ask: Is the company working on the right initiatives in the right order?

The evidence we look at: The current initiative list against margin impact and time to payback

Process

The question we ask: Can the business execute pricing consistently at scale?

The evidence we look at: Quote cycle time, approval paths, exception logs, contract renewal handling

People

The question we ask: Are the right roles in place, with the conditions to do their best work?

The evidence we look at: Who owns pricing decisions, sales skills in value conversations, incentive fit

The output is not a score. It is a short list of the two or three gaps that are blocking the pricing from paying off, each with an owner and a date.

Function by function

What an engagement changes, function by function

A commercial strategy consultant who hands over a report has changed nothing. The work is judged on what is different in each function when it ends.

Sales

Price floors and target prices on every quote, an escalation route above the floor, and talk tracks built on customer economics. For one industrial cleaning manufacturer, reps were trained to show buyers what reliability, cleanroom compliance, and sustainability were worth.

Compensation

A plan that pays for the outcome the pricing is designed to produce, modeled rep by rep before launch and calculated from the realized-price data finance already reports, so nobody disputes the payout.

CRM and quoting

The fields and rules that make pricing behavior visible: discount at deal level, reason codes, approver, and expiry dates on special pricing. If the system cannot record a concession, it cannot be governed.

Marketing

Positioning, website copy, and proposal materials that sell the same definition of value the price is built on. When marketing sells features and pricing assumes outcomes, customers negotiate on features.

Channel

Partner net prices, rebate structures, and a recommended price architecture that stops distributors competing against your own direct sales. The same manufacturer found distributors undercutting the direct channel through comparison shopping; aligning distributor pricing and incentives closed that gap.

Product

A rule that new features and AI capabilities are monetized, or deliberately bundled, before development resources are committed, not after launch. Each business case carries its price and target segment, not only its build cost.

Finance

Monthly reporting on price realization, pricing compliance, and deal profitability, reviewed by the leadership team rather than filed. Where this needs to run continuously inside the quoting workflow, PricePro© holds the rules and the reporting in one place.

Talk to a pricing expert

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Go-to-market

When the go-to-market motion and the pricing model disagree

One of the least visible commercial conflicts sits between how a company sells and how it charges.

Product-led motion

A product-led motion, where buyers start on their own and expand with use, needs prices a buyer can understand without talking to anyone: a published entry point, a metric that grows with usage, and upgrades the product itself can prompt.

Sales-led motion

A sales-led motion, where a rep builds a case for a buying committee, needs room for configuration, a value story tied to the buyer’s economics, and approval rules for the deals that fall outside the standard offer.

Trouble starts when the two are mixed without a design. A company adds self-serve plans to a sales-led business and discovers that its enterprise customers can see a lower published price than the one in their contract. Or a product-led company hires enterprise reps who discount the published tiers because they have nothing else to negotiate with. In both cases each function is doing its job; the pricing model simply was not built for the motion it now serves.

The fix is a price architecture with a clear boundary: what is sold self-serve and at what ceiling, what requires a conversation and why, and how a customer moves from one to the other without renegotiating everything they already pay. The same logic applies to distributors and direct sales in industrial businesses, where the question is which customers each channel serves and at what net price.

See where in the system your pricing is getting lost

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Two kinds of work

Commercial strategy or commercial excellence consulting?

The two terms are often used interchangeably. They describe different work, and knowing which one you need saves months.

Where and how you compete

Commercial strategy answers where and how you compete: which segments to serve, what to charge them and on what metric, which channels to use, and whether the go-to-market motion should be product-led or sales-led. It is the right starting point after an acquisition, a new value creation plan, a shift into new segments, or a product line that no longer fits its market.

How well it is executed

Commercial excellence consulting improves how well an existing strategy is executed: pricing discipline, deal governance, sales effectiveness, and the data that shows whether any of it is working. It is the right starting point when the strategy is broadly sound but results lag the plan, discounts keep deepening, or margin varies widely between reps selling the same thing.

Most mid-market companies need a little of the first and a lot of the second. Our work covers both, and the diagnostic decides the balance. If the strategy is right and the execution is wrong, we will not sell you a new strategy.

How we work

How the work fits a mid-market company

A team works around a table covered in charts and notes

Engagements are scoped to a decision and typically run six to 10 weeks, with implementation support continuing after that where it is needed. The work runs through your existing leaders rather than around them. Where a private equity sponsor is driving the agenda, the engagement is tied to the private equity value creation plan so the commercial changes show up where the board is measuring them.

Pricing questions that sit underneath this work, such as which model to use or how to set levels, are covered on our pricing strategy page, and the rules for negotiated B2B pricing on B2B pricing consultant.

Put the whole commercial system behind your pricing

Tell us which pricing decision is not reaching the invoice, and we will show you where in the system it is getting lost.

Schedule a discovery call

FAQs

How do we know whether our problem is pricing or the commercial system around it?

Look at the gap between intended and realized price. If target prices are sensible but net price drifts well below them, concentrated in certain reps, channels, or quarter-ends, the system is leaking. If realized price matches the target and margins are still poor, the pricing itself needs work.

Will changing the compensation plan make our best reps leave?

That risk is why we model individual earnings first. Reps who already hold price usually earn the same or more under a margin-linked plan. The reps who lose are typically the ones buying volume with discount, which is the behavior the change is meant to stop.

Our CRM is not set up to track discounts. Do we need a new system?

Rarely. Most CRM and CPQ tools can capture deal-level discount, approver, and reason code with configuration rather than replacement. The harder part is making the fields mandatory and reviewing them, which is a process and leadership decision.

How do you align marketing with pricing without rewriting everything?

We start with the materials closest to the deal: proposal templates, pricing pages, and the two or three talk tracks reps use most. Brand-level positioning changes only where it contradicts the value the price is built on.

What does a commercial strategy consultant need from our leadership team?

Time at the decision points, not in standing meetings, and a willingness to back the new rules the first time a large customer objects. The most common reason commercial changes fail is a leadership exception granted in the first month.

Can this work alongside an operational improvement program?

Yes, and it usually should. Cost and process programs work on the expense line; commercial work acts on the revenue line with the customers you already serve. We coordinate on shared data and on anything that changes cost to serve, such as delivery terms or service levels.