Building a commercial strategy: a step-by-step plan for B2B companies.

What is a commercial strategy?

A commercial strategy is the set of choices that determines how a company generates revenue: with which customers, with which offer and which story, through which channels, and with which division of roles between marketing, sales and customer success. So it is broader than a marketing plan (which is about visibility and leads) and broader than a sales plan (which is about pipeline and deals). A commercial strategy makes sure those two plans come from the same choices.

You recognise a good commercial strategy by three things: it chooses (so it also rules customers and activities out), it can be explained in five minutes, and the people who have to execute it know it. A strategy only leadership knows is an intention.

The step-by-step plan: seven choices

The order below is not accidental. The steps build on each other. New insights may be a reason to sharpen an earlier choice. Anyone who starts at step five (the channels, the campaigns) is building on assumptions nobody has checked.

Before you start: decide what the strategy should deliver

Record where you stand now and what needs to change commercially over the next twelve months. Think of revenue, margin, customer retention or growth within a chosen customer group. Make clear which part should come from existing customers and which from new ones. Also state the available capacity and budget. This starting position helps you judge the choices in the next steps.

Step 1. Look at what is already there

Don't start with a blank sheet. Pull from the CRM and the accounts who your best customers of the past two years were: the customers with the highest margin, the shortest sales cycle and the fewest problems afterwards. Talk to a few of them. Ask why they chose you, in their words. That almost always produces a different answer than the website gives.

Look ahead too. Which customers have repeat or expansion potential? Which customers you would like to win are you not reaching enough yet? Use lost proposals and customers who left to understand where the offer or approach fits less well. Also weigh what you can deliver well and profitably: a customer who is easy to win but earns you little is not an ideal customer.

• What you need: a list of customers, revenue and margin per customer; five to ten customer conversations; the reasons behind lost proposals and customers who left.
• What goes wrong: leadership fills in what customers think, without asking them.
• What it looks like when it's right: three to five sentences on who the best customer is and why they buy.

Step 2. Choose the ideal customer profile

The ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the type of organisation where you deliver the most value and win most easily: sector, size, situation, and the moment the problem becomes urgent. It is a choice, not a description of everyone who has ever bought. The sharper the profile, the less time sales loses on opportunities that never go anywhere.

• What you need: the outcome of step 1, including what lost proposals and customers who left show, and an honest conversation about which customers you would rather not have anymore and which you would like more of.
• What goes wrong: the profile becomes so broad it excludes no one.
• What it looks like when it's right: a profile that comes from existing results and a reasoned choice for future opportunities, which a new sales colleague can use within a week to judge whether a lead fits.

Step 3. Decide what you win with

This is positioning: why does the ideal customer profile choose you, and not the alternative? That alternative is by no means always a competitor. Often it is doing nothing, doing it themselves or a cheaper party. The answer must be true, provable and relevant to that customer. Quality and personal attention only set you apart once you make concrete what customers notice of them and how you prove it. More on this in the guide B2B positioning: how to determine why customers choose you. In this step you capture the most important positioning choices. If customer research, differentiation or story need more depth, a separate positioning programme fits: see Positioning and story.

• What you need: the customer conversations from step 1 and an overview of the alternatives customers compare you with.
• What goes wrong: the positioning describes what you do, not why that is better for the customer.
• What it looks like when it's right: one sentence that the managing director, the marketer and the account manager all say the same way.

Step 4. Choose the priorities (and what you leave alone)

Now comes the real choice. Which three to five things need to change in the coming year to win with the ideal customer profile? New customers in one sector, growth with existing customers, a new segment, a better handover between marketing and sales? Everything at once is not a strategy. Also write down what you deliberately won't do; that is half the choice. More on this on Setting commercial priorities.

• What you need: the leadership team at the table for half a day, with the outcomes of steps 1 to 3.
• What goes wrong: the list becomes a sum of everyone's wishes, without order.
• What it looks like when it's right: three to five priorities, each with an owner, and an equally long list of what won't happen.

Step 5. Decide the channels and the division of roles

Only now comes the question of how. Choose channels based on the customer's buying process. First map out who is involved in the purchase and what information they need. Then decide through which channels and moments of contact you can best help them move forward. Ask four questions:

• Who experiences the problem?
• Who influences the choice and who decides?
• Where does the customer look for information and possible suppliers?
• What proof or contact is needed for the next step?

Then look at the channels: your own network, partners, content, events, outbound. And at the division of roles: where does marketing stop and sales begin, and when do delivery, service or customer success step in? Above all, make the handovers concrete. Agree what a good lead is, who follows it up within how much time, and what happens if that fails. Arrange the same handover after the sale: what do delivery or customer success know about the customer and about what was promised, and who makes sure that promise is kept? Also decide who spots opportunities for retention and expansion, and how customer feedback gets back to marketing and sales. With an unclear handover, good opportunities can be left on the table. See also Marketing and sales alignment.

• What you need: an honest picture of which channels have produced the best customers so far, and of how those customers came to their choice.
• What goes wrong: each team chooses its own channels, and nobody owns the handover.
• What it looks like when it's right: one definition of a good lead, and handovers (from marketing to sales and from sales to delivery) that are written down.

Step 6. Turn it into one story

The choices from steps 2 to 5 must come back in everything the customer sees and hears: website, presentations, proposals, sales conversations. That calls for one story, in the customer's language, that everyone can tell. Not a slogan, but a structure: for whom, which problem, why us, and what it delivers. If the website still describes the company of three years ago, this is the moment. See Our story no longer fits.

Test the story internally too: can marketing, sales and delivery explain the same promise, and keep it? Use experiences from customer contact and delivery to adjust the story and the commercial choices.

Step 7. Capture it in a 90-day plan

A commercial strategy only becomes real in execution. Translate the priorities from step 4 into a plan for the next ninety days. For each priority, record:

• Result: what should demonstrably have changed after ninety days?
• Owner: who is responsible for progress?
• Actions: which two or three actions contribute to it?
• Resources: which time, capacity and budget are available?
• Checkpoint and date: what do we assess progress against, and when?
• Adjustment: when do we decide to continue, change or stop?

Distinguish between a completed contact moment and a commercial result: holding ten conversations is an activity, recording which opportunities come out of them is a result. Allow for longer sales cycles: within ninety days you can also test an assumption or qualify an opportunity. Schedule a fixed moment each month to look at what has happened and what needs to change. Ninety days is long enough to prove something and short enough to adjust. More on why plans stay on the shelf on Strategy is not executed.

Where it usually goes wrong

• Starting with the channels. A new campaign or a new CRM before anyone has chosen for whom and with what.
• Not excluding. A strategy that serves everyone serves nobody better than the competitor does.
• Leaving execution to the teams. Without owners, a yardstick and a fixed rhythm, the strategy ends up in a drawer.
• Only leadership knows it. A strategy an account manager can't explain in two minutes isn't used in practice.
• Once a year. A commercial strategy is not an annual plan, but a set of choices you hold up to the light every quarter.