What Better Commercial Clarity Can Look Like in Practice
Commercial problems have an inconvenient habit of appearing simpler than they are.
A pipeline slows, so the business looks for more leads. Follow-up varies, so people are pushed harder. Information is difficult to manage, so another tool is considered. Sales results disappoint, so attention naturally turns to sales.
Any of those responses may be right. But after looking at each of them more closely, a different question becomes useful:
What would we see if the commercial picture were clearer?
Probably not perfection. Customers would still change their minds. Good opportunities would still be lost. People would occasionally forget something, and systems would still have their limitations. The difference is that the business would be better able to understand what is happening, why it matters and where to act.
Fortunately, there’s a practical way to start.
Take one real opportunity and follow it
Choose a recent opportunity. It can be one you won, lost, or one that simply went quiet.
Go back to the beginning.
Why did you pursue it?
Was there a genuine customer problem and a reasonable fit with what the business does well?
Or did interest become an opportunity largely because somebody responded?
Then follow what happened next.
Was the value clear to the customer?
Did both sides know what each next step was?
Could somebody other than the salesperson understand where things stood?
Did the process help move the opportunity forward, or was progress mainly held together by individual memory and persistence?
Look at the technology too.
Where was information duplicated?
Did the CRM make the situation clearer?
Did automation remove useful work or simply create more activity?
Was somebody maintaining a workaround because the official process or system did not quite fit reality?
Then keep following the opportunity as it moves beyond sales.
Where did another person or function become involved?
Did the necessary context travel with it?
Was ownership still clear?
Better still, did the next owner already know what was coming?
Handovers can work better when communication and preparation starts before formal ownership changes. A short recurring alignment between the people around an important boundary can make upcoming milestones, deadlines, complications and ownership changes visible early. Formal responsibility may not have moved yet, but practical ownership can already begin.
And a handover does not always mean stepping away. Sales may need to remain involved, responsibility may later move back, or an account manager may join as the relationship develops. The important thing is that everyone knows who owns what now, who needs to stay informed, and where ownership is likely to move next.
That also gives people a chance to raise concerns before they become problems.
Can the business comfortably deliver what is being discussed with the customer?
Is there a deadline or dependency somebody needs to prepare for?
Does an operational constraint need to influence the commercial conversation while there is still time to do something about it?
And finally, look in the other direction.
What did the customer teach you?
Did an objection, request or concern remain inside that conversation, or did useful information find its way back to somebody who could act on it?
By following one opportunity, you have already looked at fit, process, technology, ownership, delivery, and feedback through something that actually happened. That gives you a practical starting point. Now the question is whether the same things happen elsewhere.
One opportunity tells a story. Several reveal a pattern
Follow a few more opportunities the same way, and isolated issues may start looking less isolated. You may discover that opportunities from one type of customer move remarkably well while another group consumes disproportionate effort.
Perhaps technical input repeatedly slows momentum. Maybe the same pricing exception keeps requiring approval, suggesting it may no longer really be an exception. Sales may keep hearing an objection that marketing or operations rarely hears. A tool might save time at one stage while creating extra administration at another.
Or perhaps nothing dramatic is wrong anywhere. Instead, several small pieces of friction are making every opportunity slightly harder than it needs to be. That’s useful information too.
Commercial clarity improves when individual frustrations become visible as patterns.
At that point, it’s good to resist the temptation to create a project for every problem you find.
Ask instead:
How often does this happen?
What does it cost in time, momentum, confidence, or margin?
Are people repeatedly working around it?
Where does the problem actually begin?
If we improve it, what else becomes easier?
That last question is particularly valuable.
Improving one handover may remove several delays. Clearer qualification may reduce wasted follow-up, improve the pipeline, and protect delivery capacity. Fixing an information flow may make another piece of software unnecessary.
The best first improvement isn’t always the most visible problem.
Change altitude
Once a recurring pattern becomes visible, it helps to look at it from three different heights.
The idea of changing altitude here draws on Ian C. Woodward’s Three Altitudes of Leadership, itself developed from Ram Charan’s earlier concept of leadership altitudes.¹
Close to the work, ask what actually happened.
Where did the opportunity slow down?
What did the people involved need that they did not have?
Which behavior, decision or missing information made the difference?
From the operational level, look for the system around it.
Is ownership clear?
Does the process support the work?
Are handovers reliable?
Does technology make the intended behavior easier?
Are incentives or measures encouraging something different?
Then pull the camera further back. Does the pattern say something about commercial direction?
Perhaps the business is pursuing customers it can win but struggles to serve profitably. Maybe the offer has gradually moved beyond what operations can comfortably support. The market may repeatedly be asking for something the business has not recognized as valuable. Or considerable effort may be going into improving sales execution when the more important decision is where the business wants to compete.
The three views answer different questions.
Stay too close and every problem can look like somebody needs to perform better. Stay in the middle and it’s easy to improve a process without questioning its purpose. Stay too high and strategy can look wonderfully coherent, while daily reality tells a different story.
Better decisions come from being able to move between all three.
Improve something
This is where clarity earns its keep. You don’t need to redesign the commercial system. Choose something that repeatedly interferes with good work and make it easier.
Clarify an ownership boundary. Remove an unnecessary stage. Agree what a qualified opportunity actually means. Give recurring customer feedback somewhere to go. Change a tool or stop using one. Bring operational input into the conversation earlier. Decide that a certain type of opportunity is simply not worth pursuing.
Then watch what happens. Did the friction move? Did it disappear? Did something else become the constraint?
What happens next is equally important, because commercial clarity is not a finished state. Businesses change, markets move, customers teach you things. What worked at one stage of growth may become the thing that slows the next. The aim is therefore not to build a business in which everyone knows everything.
It is to create enough shared direction, structure, and understanding for people to make good decisions without constantly fighting avoidable uncertainty inside their own organization.
When that happens, good opportunities become easier to recognize. Progress becomes easier to see. Technology has a clearer purpose. Handovers carry momentum rather than interrupting it. What the market teaches the business has somewhere to go. And leadership has a better view of where attention will actually make a difference.
That’s a healthier commercial picture. Problems will still appear. The difference is that the business has become better at seeing the signal, tracing it’s source, and knowing where to act.
1. Woodward, I. C. (2017). “The Three Altitudes of Leadership.” INSEAD Knowledge. INSEAD — The Three Altitudes of Leadership
