Commercial intelligence for CEOs, MDs, and Sales Directors in B2B manufacturing. Perspectives on growth, strategy, leadership, and the commercial challenges that matter most.
Real perspectives on the challenges facing B2B manufacturers — from sales structure to pricing discipline, leadership gaps to growth strategy.
When a senior commercial departure leaves a leadership gap, the instinct is to recruit. But a permanent hire takes three to six months at minimum. In that window, your sales team is operating without direction, your pipeline is stalling, and your competitors are moving. The cost of the gap is enormous — and usually invisible until it's too late.
Interim commercial leadership fills the gap immediately. No onboarding lag. Veteran experience deployed on day one — stabilising the function, evaluating what's working, and creating the conditions for the next permanent hire to succeed. The businesses that move fastest protect the most revenue.
Discuss This →Most B2B manufacturers have a capable sales team. What they don't have is the strategic framework to make that team consistently high-performing. The result is a function that relies on individual heroics — a handful of experienced performers carrying the number while the broader team underdelivers.
Strategy. Structure. Process. People. These are the four levers that separate manufacturers who grow predictably from those who ride the rollercoaster. Get all four right and you stop managing a sales team. You start running a commercial engine.
Discuss This →Commercial transformation in B2B manufacturing is not a consulting project. It's a leadership programme that requires someone who has lived the commercial reality — who has held board-level P&L responsibility, managed global sales functions, and made the hard decisions that only come with real experience.
The businesses that get transformation right are the ones that approach it with discipline — a structured diagnostic, a prioritised plan with clear commercial outcomes, and hands-on implementation alongside the existing team. Not a slide deck. Not a report. Real change that sticks.
Discuss This →A full pipeline and flat revenue is one of the most common and costly commercial problems in B2B manufacturing. Generating pipeline is only half the battle. The other half is having a sales function with the strategy, structure, processes, and people to convert every qualified enquiry into profitable revenue.
Win rate analysis often reveals the answer quickly: qualification is weak, commercial proposals lack differentiation, and follow-up processes are inconsistent. The solution is never more pipeline. It's a conversion architecture that makes the most of what you already have — then scales when the fundamentals are right.
Discuss This →Many manufacturing boards are strong on operations and finance but light on senior commercial and sales leadership. This creates a structural blind spot — a board that can read the P&L but can't diagnose why the commercial function isn't performing, and can't challenge the Sales Director with the authority that comes from having done the job.
A commercial NED with board-level P&L experience and a proven track record of sales transformation changes the dynamic. Strategy gets challenged. KPIs get set properly. Leadership gets held accountable. And the board develops the commercial literacy to make better decisions at every level.
Discuss This →When sales and marketing functions are genuinely unified — same ICP, same metrics, same pipeline ownership — marketing-influenced revenue increases by 208%. That's not a rounding error. That's a structural commercial transformation. Yet most B2B manufacturers still run their sales and marketing teams as entirely separate functions with entirely separate definitions of success.
The solution isn't a monthly joint meeting and a shared dashboard. It's a fundamental reorientation of both functions around one number — revenue — and one shared customer. What does the ideal customer look like? What does the buying journey actually involve? What content, what channels, and what conversations move them through that journey? When sales and marketing can answer those questions together, they stop competing for budget and start multiplying results.
Sales strategy. Sales structure. Sales process. Sales people. All four, aligned with a marketing function that generates qualified, high-intent pipeline. That is the commercial engine that delivers 38% higher win rates, 208% more marketing-influenced revenue, and 24% faster growth.
Start the Conversation →Practical thought leadership for B2B leaders — perspectives on growth, strategy, and commercial performance from Steve Corfield.
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