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AI has made writing software fast and cheap. A national retailer is betting on it, and finding that the bottleneck has moved. A national retailer with more than 80 stores is doing something most retailers wouldn't risk. It is replacing the off-the-shelf software that runs its stores, point-of-sale, and warehouses with bespoke software. AI has rewritten the economics of build vs. buy. I'm advising on the transformation, and writing about it in flight. The odd thing is, it all feels familiar. I've lived this build vs. buy decision before, twenty years ago, at a different retailer. But the case is radically different this time. In the 1980s and 1990s, if you wanted software to run your business, you coded it. You got a tailor-made suit that fitted your business. The major wrinkle was that the business never stood still. In retail (my domain), new countries, new languages, new formats, new categories and changing supply chains meant constant changes to the code. Even a large engineering team couldn't keep pace. Writing code was the bottleneck. That spawned the rise of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) packages: enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, big and small. They did most of what a business needed, but not all of it: an off-the-shelf suit that never quite fitted. Some of the costs were explicit: licence fees every year, and upgrades on the vendor's timetable. Others were implicit: a business shaped around the software, and far too many points of friction: processes that cost too much to change, features that cost too much to build. The price was conformity. Businesses bent themselves to fit the same packages and, in doing so, got a little more average. That cost never shows on an income statement. AI coding agents write code orders of magnitude faster, and better than the best human engineers. As Bill Gates put it on The Ezra Klein Show, they are now "superhuman at writing code",* and "most applications can be developed very inexpensively." Tailor-made software now costs less than off-the-shelf software, fits the business far better today, and keeps fitting as the business changes. All three matter. Starting Decisions Why. The retailer's 30-year-old off-the-shelf package was no longer fit for purpose. For five years it had searched for a replacement, but nothing off the shelf fitted its customer promise, and it wasn't willing to move until something did. That search gave it a serendipitous head start: detailed requirements, already written. So when AI coding agents arrived, a big chunk of the work was already done. How. My advice was that the retailer could now own everything. Every line of code, every tool and every document. All owned from day one: its own code repositories, own cloud hosting and own databases. And, in time, its own team with the know-how to run it all. A third-party AI software factory would help get it going, then hand over to the retailer's team as it grew confident enough to take the lead. In short, the retailer would become a software business (inside a retailer). Who. Not just any AI software factory. I found one built by ex-retailers who had hand-coded the systems that ran their own stores and warehouses, and then pivoted into AI software. They brought a ready-made production line for enterprise-grade software: solution architecture, data architecture and security architecture designed up front, and established tools and processes for the build. When. We fed those requirements into the factory's production line, and it blasted through the initial build-out. We plan to switch the first store onto the new system by month 7, when about 70% is built: enough to run a store, then the rollout begins while the build finishes. This is not a project with an end date. It's a product that keeps evolving with the business. As the retailer's own team proves itself, the factory's share of the work tapers, at the retailer's pace. The transformation is temporary, by design. What's handed over is the lead, not the relationship: the factory stays on as technical lead, because best practice in AI engineering is changing constantly. The graph below shows both clocks: the build, and the handover. The Transformation Writing code doesn't make you a software business. Eliyahu Goldratt's theory of constraints says a system moves only as fast as its bottleneck allows: the one constraint that sets the pace for the whole system. Remove it, and the next one shows itself. AI coding has removed the bottleneck, writing code, and exposed the next one: the people and the process around the code. The software factory is built to produce software, and the retailer has never been a software business. Each side has blind spots the other can't see. Someone has to stand at the join and shape a way of working that fits both. That's my job. That's the transformation. In-Flight Learnings We're four months in. About 60% of the software is built, but only a fraction has been reviewed and accepted by the business. The business is falling behind its software. That's what we're wrestling with now. What we're after is high-cadence, high-volume review: hundreds of small changes a day, screen by screen, menu by menu, smoothing the rough edges: a price applied the wrong way, a button in the wrong place, one step too many. We're not there yet. One thing is already settled. No human writes code any more, and no human reviews it. AI agents write it, and other agents test it. This build is the proof. The agents are burning through it so fast that they've exposed the next constraint, just as Goldratt predicts. It shows up as two interlocking challenges: 1. The bottleneck has inverted. Code used to trickle out, and that pace set the cycle of roadmaps, quarterly plans and sprints. Now it comes like a fire hose, faster than the business can review it, test it and decide what it wants next. Old cycles have compressed out of shape. 2. Roles are merging. Business owners can now write specifications and build working prototypes themselves, using AI, so the business owner, business analyst, product owner, reviewer and tester are folding into new, multi-skilled roles: people who know the business, shape the product, judge whether what the agents build actually works for the business, and write the next round of requirements. (One name we're toying with is product engineer. What do you think?) Writing code is fast and cheap now. Becoming a software business isn't. What I Think (For Now) I think owning its core software is where every retailer should be heading: the systems that run how it trades and set it apart. Software as a service isn't dead, but it only makes sense for non-differentiating systems: the general ledger, HR, payroll. Or for specialist capability you couldn't build yourself. What's dying is the idea that one giant ERP platform should run the whole business. Back then, bespoke software couldn't keep pace with the business. Soon it will be the ERP that can't: every change waits on the vendor's roadmap, while software the business owns can change in days. That's the full circle. Almost. This time the code isn't the constraint. Building the muscles to use it is. The core is where a business competes, and it has to become the business's own. The businesses that keep renting their core will struggle to survive against the ones that write it. They'll still be average, and soon they'll be slow as well. But the real win isn't the lower cost, or freedom from the vendor's roadmap. It's the tailor-made suit, re-cut every time the business changes shape: an engine that keeps tailoring the software around the business. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and we're still at the first fitting. More on that in a later post. For now, the job in hand is the next constraint: how we work. The old delivery model, and its cycle of roadmaps, quarterly plans and sprints, is compressing, and the business is moving closer to the code. We need to shape new ways of working, and skill a team to run them. There's no framework or playbook for this. It's dynamic by definition, and we're figuring it out on the fly. It's a jagged frontier, moving faster than anyone can predict, and we're on it. Whether that makes us the early bird that catches the worm or the pioneer who takes the arrows, we'll find out. I'm betting on the worm. If you're on the same journey, wrestling with the same questions, I'd love to compare notes. *Bill Gates, The Ezra Klein Show, 29 September 2026. Colin Fleming is a Retail Technology & Transformation Advisor and Fractional Executive, based in Cape Town.

The role changed. The organisation didn’t. When a senior appointment goes wrong, the conclusion tends to come quickly. Wrong person. Wrong fit. Not commercial enough. Not strategic enough. Didn’t take enough ownership. Sometimes that is exactly what happened. But I think there is another explanation that gets missed. Sometimes the organisation was never really ready for the role. I’ve seen this from both sides. As a founder, I knew how much of the business still sat with me. Customer history, the context behind decisions, which relationships really mattered, which processes were important and which ones everyone quietly worked around. A lot of that never appeared on an org chart. Later, as a senior executive brought into larger businesses to build and grow things, I saw the other side. A title can say you own something. A job description can say you are accountable. But that does not necessarily mean the organisation has actually moved with you. That is where I think a lot of growing businesses get caught out. They reach the point where the founder or CEO cannot keep carrying everything, so they hire someone senior. A COO. A CRO. An MD. A senior functional leader. The brief is usually clear enough: take ownership, build the team, make decisions, free the CEO up. The assumption is that the person arriving creates the capability. It does not always work like that. The CEO may still hold the key customer relationships. Important decisions may still come back upstairs. People may bypass the new executive when they want a different answer. The leadership team may still know who really has the final say. And when something important goes wrong, the founder steps back in. Usually for understandable reasons. They have more history. More context. More instinct around the business. They can often solve something in ten minutes that would take someone else an hour to work through. The problem is what that teaches everyone else. The new executive may own the role on paper, but the founder still owns the real decisions. That is a hard position to succeed in. Then both sides start getting frustrated. The founder thinks: “They need to step up.” The executive thinks: “I was never really allowed to.” And before long, people start talking about whether the hire was wrong. Maybe it was. But I would want to ask a different question first. Was the business actually ready to support the role? Could authority genuinely move? Could important relationships move? Could the existing leadership team accept someone new having real ownership? Could the founder resist stepping back in every time something felt uncomfortable? Those are not really recruitment questions. They are questions about the organisation. And this is the part I think matters most. When you hire someone senior, the CEO’s role has to change too. We spend a lot of time defining what the new person is going to own. We spend much less time defining what the CEO is going to stop owning. But if the new executive is genuinely going to lead more of the business, something has to change on the CEO’s side as well. They may need to hand over authority. Relationships. Decisions. Space. That is often where the real difficulty sits. Especially in founder-led businesses. People have spent years learning how the company actually works. They know who has the history, who can overturn a decision and who to go to if they do not like the answer they have been given. Unless those habits change, the new executive may have the title without ever having the full role. That is why I think a senior appointment should be treated as an organisational change, not just a hiring decision. Before making the hire, I would want to be clear on a few things. What does this person genuinely own? Which decisions move with the role? Which relationships need to transfer? What will people stop coming to the CEO for? Where does the new executive have the authority to disagree? And what happens when they make a decision the founder would not have made? Those questions tell you much more about whether the role will work than the job description does. They also help answer another useful question: Is the problem really the person, or is the organisation making the role harder than it needs to be? This is also where a fractional executive can sometimes be useful. Not as a cheaper substitute for a permanent hire, but as a way of helping the business work out what it actually needs, clarify who owns what, tighten up the operating rhythm and see whether the organisation is ready for the role before making a bigger commitment. Sometimes the right first move is not another search. It is getting the business ready for the person you want to bring in. A poor hire is a people problem. A capable person who cannot get traction may be an organisational one. So before making your next senior hire, I would ask one question: Are we hiring someone into a role the organisation is actually ready to support?

Growing a business brings new opportunities, but it also brings new challenges. As an organisation expands, the decisions become more complex, the risks increase, and the expertise required to manage the next stage of growth often goes beyond the capabilities of the existing team. At some point, a business may need the strategic insight of an experienced Chief Financial Officer, the commercial direction of a Chief Commercial Officer, the marketing expertise of a CMO, the operational leadership of a COO or the technology knowledge of a CTO. But what happens when you need that level of expertise without being ready, or able, to recruit a full-time executive? For many businesses, the answer is fractional leadership. Access to experience without the full-time commitment A fractional executive provides access to that senior-level expertise on a part-time, interim or project basis. Businesses can bring in the right person for the time and commitment they need, gaining the benefit of experienced leadership without necessarily taking on the cost of a permanent appointment. In the accompanying video, Troy Norcross shares his experience of stepping into interim CTO roles with three different businesses, helping them address their technology challenges and move forward. His experience highlights an important advantage of fractional leadership: businesses can access experienced executives when they need specialist knowledge and strategic direction, without necessarily having to commit to a full-time appointment. Watch Troy explain how fractional leadership can work in practice, and why the right expertise at the right time can make a real difference to a growing business. Although the roles were focused on technology, the wider lesson applies across the C-suite. Businesses do not always need another permanent appointment. Sometimes they need the right person, with the right experience, to help them move forward. Troy Norcross discusses his experience as an interim CTO and the value of fractional executive leadership. Leadership that fits your business One of the key advantages of fractional leadership is flexibility. An organisation may need an executive for a few days each month, a defined period of transformation or a particular stage in its development. The arrangement can reflect the actual requirement rather than forcing the business to create a full-time role before it is ready. This can be especially valuable when a company is growing quickly. The business may have outgrown its existing management structure, but its future requirements are not yet clear enough to justify a permanent C-suite team. A fractional executive can help bridge that gap, providing immediate leadership while helping the organisation establish the processes, capabilities and structures it will need in the longer term. Making experience work harder The value of an experienced executive is not measured simply by the number of hours they spend in the business. It is also reflected in the quality of their judgement, the questions they ask, the decisions they help shape and the progress they enable. An experienced fractional executive has often encountered similar challenges before. They can draw on that experience to identify priorities, challenge assumptions and help businesses avoid spending time and money on the wrong things. They also understand that strategy must translate into practical results. Whether the focus is improving profitability, strengthening operations, developing a marketing strategy, leading digital transformation or preparing for the next phase of expansion, the aim is to make a tangible difference to the business. For organisations with ambitious plans but limited resources, that combination of experience, flexibility and commercial focus can be particularly powerful. The right executive at the right time Fractional leadership is not a replacement for every full-time executive appointment. As businesses grow and their needs evolve, a permanent C-suite team may become the right solution. But there is no reason to assume that a business must wait until it can afford a full-time executive before accessing the expertise it needs. The important question is not simply whether you can afford to recruit a senior executive. It is whether your business can afford to go without the leadership and experience that could help it grow. At Fractional Execs, we connect businesses with experienced executives who can help turn ambition into action. The right person can bring clarity to complex decisions, provide leadership when it matters most and help your organisation build the capabilities it needs for sustainable growth. You may not need a full-time executive. You may simply need the right executive, at the right time.

My experience of Alan Giles’ Practical AI for Business Founders course Before taking Alan Giles’ Practical AI for Business Founders course, I thought I had a reasonable understanding of artificial intelligence. Like many people, I had experimented with tools such as ChatGPT and could see their potential for answering questions, generating ideas and helping with written content. I knew AI was becoming increasingly important, but I had not fully appreciated how widely it could be used or how much difference a better understanding of the technology could make to everyday working life. I am not a business founder or a technical specialist. I approached the course as an individual who wanted to understand more about a technology that is rapidly becoming part of our lives, both at work and beyond. What I discovered was that AI is not just for large companies with substantial budgets and dedicated technology teams. Used thoughtfully, it can help businesses of all sizes and people working in almost any role. More importantly, I began to understand the difference between what AI can do, what it cannot do and what we should never take for granted. AI is not magic, and it is not always right One of the most useful lessons was developing a more realistic understanding of AI. There is so much hype surrounding artificial intelligence that it can be easy to think of it as something almost human, capable of independent thought and judgement. In reality, generative AI works by identifying patterns and generating responses based on what it has learned. The distinction matters because a convincing answer is not necessarily a correct one. AI can misunderstand a question, make incorrect assumptions or produce information that is entirely false, sometimes with impressive confidence. These errors, often called hallucinations, are a reminder that human oversight remains essential. I had not fully appreciated how easy it is to trust an answer simply because it is well written and sounds authoritative. AI does not always recognise when it is wrong. Checking information, making decisions and taking responsibility for the outcome remain our job. Asking better questions gets better results I had previously thought of AI largely in terms of asking a question and receiving an answer. The course helped me understand why the way we frame a task makes such a difference. The clearer the instructions, the more useful the response is likely to be. AI needs context, an understanding of the intended audience, the purpose of the task and, where relevant, the tone and format required. Asking it to write a business blog is very different from explaining who the blog is for, what it needs to achieve and what the finished piece should sound like. It also made me realise that using AI effectively requires us to understand what we want to achieve in the first place. The technology can help us get there, but it cannot replace clear thinking about the objective. It is about working smarter, not replacing people One of my biggest takeaways was the potential for AI to reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks. Most of us have work that needs doing but does not necessarily make the best use of our time. This might include preparing routine documents, organising information, drafting communications, researching a topic or producing initial marketing content. AI can help with many of these tasks, freeing up time for activities that need human experience, creativity, judgement and personal interaction. For example, it could turn a lengthy report or webinar into draft social media posts, help organise customer enquiries or produce a first draft of a document. A person can then check the details, add their expertise and ensure the result reflects the organisation's needs and values. This could be particularly valuable for smaller businesses, where the same people often juggle marketing, administration, customer service and operational responsibilities. The time saved can be used more effectively. Of course, AI will change the way some jobs are done, and businesses need to consider that honestly. But there are also opportunities to support people, improve working practices and allow employees to concentrate on the areas where they add the greatest value. Choosing the right tools matters I had tended to think of AI tools as different versions of essentially the same thing. I now have a better appreciation of how their capabilities, features and integrations can vary. There is no single tool that is necessarily right for every task. The important thing is to understand what you need to achieve and choose accordingly. For businesses, this means starting with the problem rather than the technology. Where are the bottlenecks? Which activities consume too much time? Where could information be processed more efficiently or decisions supported more effectively? Only then does it make sense to consider which tools might help. I also became more aware of the potential for AI to move beyond answering individual questions towards carrying out sequences of tasks. This opens up possibilities for automating more complex processes, although it also makes testing, clear boundaries and appropriate supervision increasingly important. The technology is developing quickly, but businesses do not need to adopt every new development. Being selective is just as important as being informed. Get the process right before introducing AI Another lesson that stood out was that automating a poor process will not make it a good one. Before introducing AI, it is worth understanding how a task is currently completed. Are there unnecessary steps? Is the process consistent? Where is human judgement needed? If a process is complicated or poorly understood, introducing automation may simply reproduce the same problems more quickly. A better approach is to review the process first, make improvements where possible and then identify which elements AI could support. Starting small also makes sense, rather than attempting to transform an entire business at once. Establishing what works and measuring results before rolling out a new system company-wide allows problems to be identified early and gives people the opportunity to build confidence with the technology. The risks should not be overlooked For all its potential benefits, AI needs to be used responsibly. Confidentiality, data protection and security are particularly important when dealing with customer information or commercially sensitive material. Businesses need to understand how the tools they use handle information and ensure they meet their legal and regulatory obligations. There is also the question of cost. Saving time is valuable, but implementation, subscriptions, staff training and ongoing maintenance all need to be considered. The benefits should be measured against the investment, including what the business can achieve with the time released. Better customer service, improved sales activity and more time for business development may be just as important as straightforward cost savings. Successful implementation is about people and processes as much as technology. What I thought I knew, and what I would do differently Looking back, I would not say that everything I believed about AI was wrong. I already understood that it could be useful and had seen examples of what it could produce. What I had underestimated was the importance of using it strategically. I had not fully appreciated how much the quality of the instructions affects the outcome, how important it is to verify the results or how many routine tasks could benefit from carefully considered automation. I had also not thought enough about the difference between using AI occasionally as an assistant and incorporating it into a well-designed working process. The course helped me see that using AI does not have to be an all-or-nothing decision. You do not need to hand over an entire business function to an automated system or invest in a complicated platform to begin benefiting from it. Sometimes, the most useful starting point is a small improvement to an everyday task. Equally, there is no need to feel intimidated by the technology. You do not have to be a programmer or understand every technical detail to make sensible use of AI. You do, however, need to understand what you are asking it to do, recognise its limitations and apply your own judgement. Practical knowledge matters more than the hype Alan Giles’ Practical AI for Business Founders gave me a clearer understanding of how AI can be used in practice, both in business and in everyday working life. Although the course is aimed at founders, CEOs and other business leaders, I found the lessons relevant well beyond that audience. Anyone who spends time dealing with information, communication, administration or repetitive tasks can benefit from understanding where AI might help. My biggest takeaway is that AI is neither a magic solution nor something to fear. It is a tool, and its value depends on how well it is chosen and used. It can save time, support creativity and improve efficiency. It can also make mistakes, misunderstand instructions and produce answers that sound convincing but are wrong. The skill lies in understanding both sides and knowing when human judgement needs to take over. The question I now find more useful is not simply, “What can AI do?” but, “Where could AI make a useful difference to the way I work?” That is a practical starting point, whether you run a business, lead a team or simply want to make better use of your own time. AI will continue to evolve, and keeping up with every new development would be a full-time job in itself. What matters is remaining curious, questioning the hype and being willing to learn. Above all, I came away with a better understanding of how to use AI thoughtfully, rather than simply experimenting with it. Curious about what AI could do for your business? Alan Giles’ Practical AI for Business Founders is designed to help business leaders move beyond the hype and understand how to put AI to practical use. Find out more about the course and explore how you could apply AI to your own business: Discover 'Practical AI for Business Founders' - https://founder-ai-hub.replit.app/

There is a moment in the life of a growing business when something changes. The business is still working. Revenue is growing. Customers are coming in. The team is busy. The founder and leadership team are making decisions every day. But somehow, the leadership structure that worked perfectly well a year or two ago no longer feels quite enough. The business has become more complex. The decisions are bigger. The risks are greater. Opportunities are appearing that require experience the existing team may not have. Yet the answer is not necessarily to recruit another full-time executive. This is the Executive Gap. It is the space between knowing that you need senior leadership and being ready, or needing, to make a permanent appointment. It is one of the most important leadership challenges facing growing businesses, and one that is often overlooked. Instead, businesses tend to improvise. A CEO takes on another responsibility. A finance director picks up a strategic project. A commercial director starts covering an area that sits outside their usual role. A consultant is brought in to provide advice. Someone internally is given a new title and asked to grow into it. Sometimes these solutions work. Sometimes they work for far longer than anyone expected. And sometimes they quietly become the reason a business struggles to move forward. Growth creates different leadership problems The challenges facing a business at £5 million in revenue are not necessarily the same as those facing it at £20 million. The leadership team that successfully built the business may not have the experience, capacity or structure required for its next stage. That does not mean the existing team has failed. Quite the opposite. It often means they have succeeded. The business has simply reached a point where its requirements have changed. Perhaps it is preparing to enter a new international market. Perhaps it needs to rethink its commercial model. Perhaps it is considering an acquisition, preparing for investment or trying to professionalise an operation that has grown quickly. The business knows what needs to happen. The problem is that nobody has the time, experience or specific responsibility to make it happen. That is the Executive Gap. Sometimes it is a capability gap. The business needs expertise it does not currently have. Sometimes it is a capacity gap. The expertise exists, but the people who have it are already completely stretched. Sometimes it is an experience gap. The business has reached a situation it has simply never encountered before. And sometimes, perhaps most importantly, it is an ownership gap. Everyone agrees that something needs to change, but nobody actually owns the outcome. That last gap can be particularly expensive. Strategic projects rarely fail because nobody thought they were important. They fail because day-to-day priorities take over, decisions are delayed, and responsibility becomes spread across too many people. The question is not always “Who should we hire?” When a business identifies a leadership gap, the natural response is to think about recruitment. Do we need a CFO? Do we need a Chief Commercial Officer? Do we need a COO? Do we need a CMO? But there is another question worth asking first. What does the business actually need this person to achieve? The answer may reveal that the requirement is not necessarily permanent. Perhaps the business needs someone to restructure its finance function before bringing in a permanent CFO. Perhaps it needs commercial leadership to develop a new revenue strategy and establish a more effective sales operation. Perhaps it needs an experienced operator to professionalise the business before its next stage of growth. Perhaps it needs someone who has already navigated international expansion to help establish a new market. Or perhaps it needs a senior executive to lead a transformation, build the team and then hand over once the organisation is ready. These are all executive-level challenges. But they do not necessarily require an executive sitting in the business five days a week for the next five years. Experience does not always need to be permanent This is where fractional leadership can change the way businesses think about executive capability. A fractional executive brings senior-level experience, leadership and accountability into a business without requiring the organisation to make a permanent appointment before it is ready. That distinction is important. A fractional executive is not simply an interim solution and is not a consultant who produces a report and walks away. The right fractional executive becomes part of the leadership team. They take responsibility for a defined area of the business, bring experience to the decisions that matter and work alongside the existing team to create lasting change. The objective is not to create dependency. It is to create capability. That might mean building a commercial strategy, strengthening financial controls, developing an operating model, preparing a business for investment or creating the foundations for international growth. And when the business reaches the point where a permanent executive is the right answer, the foundations are already there. The Executive Gap is not a problem to be ashamed of There can sometimes be a reluctance to acknowledge that a business has reached a point where its existing leadership structure is no longer sufficient. Founders may worry that admitting they need additional leadership somehow means they have lost control. Established management teams may feel that bringing in an experienced executive challenges their own authority. But growth inevitably creates new requirements. No leadership team can have every skill required for every stage of a company's development. Recognising that is not a weakness. It is good leadership. The most effective businesses understand that leadership requirements change. They build the capability they need when they need it, rather than automatically building a permanent structure around problems that may only exist for a particular stage of growth. A global issue, not a local one The Executive Gap is not confined to one market. Whether a business is growing in the UK, Canada, the UAE, South Africa or the Cayman Islands, the underlying challenge is remarkably similar. Businesses grow faster than their structures. Opportunities arrive before the organisation has the capability to pursue them. Existing executives become stretched. Founders find themselves making decisions that should sit elsewhere. And important strategic priorities compete with the demands of running the business today. The specific circumstances may differ from market to market, but the leadership question remains the same. Do we have the right leadership capability for where the business is going next? That is a very different question from asking whether the business has enough people. What happens next? There is no single answer to the Executive Gap. Sometimes the right answer is a permanent executive appointment. Sometimes it is developing someone already inside the business. Sometimes it is specialist advice. And sometimes it is bringing in experienced fractional leadership for a defined period, with a clear objective and a clear outcome. The important thing is not to default automatically to one solution. It is to understand the gap. What capability is missing? What experience is required? Who has the capacity to lead it? Who owns the outcome? How long is that leadership actually needed? Those questions can change the entire conversation, because the issue may not be that your business needs another executive; it may simply need executive leadership for the next stage of its journey. And that is a very different problem to solve.

Why negotiation matters so much in small businesses In a small business, every conversation carries weight. In a small business there is nowhere to hide. There’s less of a buffer, fewer layers and tighter margins. A single unclear agreement can cost time, money or trust. Negotiation shows up everywhere: Setting expectations with customers Agreeing scope with suppliers Managing staff performance Resolving misunderstandings Protecting your pricing Handling late payments Prioritising work when everything feels urgent As a small business owner, you don’t need “tactics”. You need clarity, confidence and a repeatable way to handle difficult conversations. The misconception that hurts small businesses most Many owners still think negotiation is about being tough or persuasive. In reality, modern negotiation is: Clear — knowing what you want and what you can flex Calm — staying steady when others get emotional Curious — asking questions that reveal what the other side really needs Commercial — protecting your margin without damaging the relationship This isn’t about “winning”. It’s about running your business with fewer surprises and fewer fires to put out. You negotiate more than you realise If you run a small business, you negotiated today — probably before you opened your laptop. A customer asked for a discount A supplier pushed back on timelines A team member wanted to change priorities A partner needed reassurance Someone challenged your pricing You had to say “no” to something you didn’t want to do These are negotiations. And the quality of these conversations shapes the stability of your business. Three negotiation habits that make small businesses stronger 1. Preparation protects your margin Many of you, I would guess, just “wing it” because you’re busy. But preparation doesn’t take long — and it pays for itself. Take 5 mins before any important conversation, ask yourself: What do I want? What can I trade? What’s my walk‑away? What does the other side value? What emotional signals might appear? A small investment to help you avoid being pushed into decisions you regret. 2. Discovery is your best tool The best negotiators don’t argue — they uncover. A few well‑chosen questions can reveal: Why a customer is asking for a discount What a supplier is worried about What a staff member is actually frustrated by What a partner needs to feel confident Discovery turns tension into clarity. It’s the fastest way to get to a workable solution. 3. Emotional signals are information Small businesses run on relationships. People rarely say exactly what they mean — but they show it. Silence, hesitation, frustration, enthusiasm, defensiveness… these are signals. When you learn to read them, you stop reacting and start leading. You become the calmest person in the room — and that’s where your leverage comes from. # Why this matters for small business growth As your business grows, complexity increases: More customers More suppliers More staff More expectations More moments where clarity is missing Negotiation becomes the mechanism that keeps everything aligned. Owners who build negotiation discipline create: Clearer agreements Fewer disputes Stronger customer relationships Better supplier terms More confident staff More protected margins It’s one of the highest‑impact skills a small business owner can develop — and one of the most valuable capabilities a fractional leader can bring into the business. A final thought Negotiation isn’t about being forceful. It’s about being intentional. Those leading small businesses who master it, reduce stress, protect their time and build businesses that run more smoothly. And when you demonstrate good negotiation skills, your team follows — creating a culture of clarity and accountability. If you want your business to grow without chaos, start with the conversations that matter.

Your customers are already asking AI what to buy, and the engines recommend just three brands per category. I analysed the reasons behind 450+ AI brand recommendations to work out how to win, and it is not a new playbook. Somewhere today, one of your customers asked ChatGPT what to buy instead of searching Google. The answer named three brands. If yours was not one of them, you were invisible at the exact moment the decision was made, and the engines remember their favourites. I have watched this film before. I managed some of the biggest FMCG brands in the world at Johnson & Johnson, Beiersdorf and Unilever, then spent the last ten years inside the platforms reshaping how those brands go to market, at Meta and Pinterest. When social media arrived, those of us inside the tech giants were telling CMOs to move to vertical video, build for sound off and reverse the story arc. It was a big ask, and companies took years to act. We are seeing the same wave with AI now, and the same lag, except this time it's a tsunami. The good news is that if you have spent your career learning how business works, a good product, a fair price, real distribution and an earned reputation, then the way to win in AI is not to rip up the rule book. It is to re-engage those traditional muscles and make them legible to a machine. The window is closing AI adoption among consumers is already large and accelerating. Almost half of UK consumers, 47%, now say they are likely to turn to a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to research a purchase, up nine points in a single year (Attest, 2025), and ChatGPT itself pulled 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025, roughly five times the 368 million it took in the same period of 2024 (Ofcom, Online Nation 2025). Despite the facts, most businesses still treat AI as a way to write emails faster, not as the place consumers now go to discover and choose brands. And the discovery layer is smaller. On Google you get ten brands, ten blue links. In the AI engines we are seeing only three recommended. If I ran a brand today that would terrify me. Even worse, the engines have memories baked in, so if you are not one of those chosen three today, it will be harder still to become one as the models update along with their memories. Who is winning on the AI digital shelf? I built the AI Choice Audit to answer this question, capturing brand recommendations across six engines and seven UK FMCG categories, over 450 answers, and I analysed the reason behind every one. AI is converging on a handful of players per category. In skincare, CeraVe and La Roche-Posay win, both L'Oréal brands, while Nivea and Neutrogena barely register. In coffee, Nestlé is nowhere, while Lavazza and Illy lead on heritage, because people asking about coffee are asking about good beans and good roasteries. The winners are the brands that did the fundamentals- Product, Price, Place, Promotion- and made sure they had a digital wrapper. The machines reward the four Ps Chart 1 - 4 Ps Product shows up in 96% of all answers. The engine reads product listings like a spec sheet: what is in the formulation, what it is for, who it suits, the exact active ingredient for the exact problem. Your product pages have to cover every base. Place is cited in 42% of answers, and the single most common reason in the whole study is simply that you can buy it in the UK. The engine wants to know you are purchasable before it will put your name forward. Price is there too, cited in 31% of answers: the budget pick or the premium one, because the AI almost always slots a brand into a tier. Promotion is the one that really interests me, because it is not the type of promotion you would think. It is not a clever campaign. It is an expert vouching for you, a credible source citing you, and the moment a category touches health, the machine reaches for a white coat before it reaches for a brand. In pet care, that endorsement turns up in 88% of answers. So, it is worth thinking about how you craft your campaigns and the role of powerful claims spoken by experts in your story. “PR matters again, clinical testing matters again, long-form and craft matter again. So welcome home, PR and storytelling, but bring structured data with you.” Why AI recommends the brands it does Chart 2 - 8 reasons SEO is not GEO This is the misstep I am watching companies make, lifting their SEO strategy and applying it straight onto the AI engines. That is only half the story. Traditional SEO optimises a page to rank in a list. Generative engines do not rank pages; they name a single pick, then justify it with a reason. And most of those reasons are facts the model absorbed from third-party, earned, trusted sources, not from your website. In the audit, 65% of answers leaned on an earned signal, an expert endorsement, an independent lab test, or a certification. The vet recommends you, the lab certifies you, the journalist cites you, the retailer stocks you. If that sounds familiar, it should. That is PR: professional and medical marketing, distribution, the earned half of marketing. It is your brand story. AI describes your brand; it does not just link to it. It is not SEO, and it is certainly not the optimisation trick a wave of "AEO" and "GEO" agencies are about to sell you. “Even if you get GEO right, it will only get you found. It is your marketing that will get you chosen.” There is no single 'optimise for AI' brief The six engines tested do not reason the same way. ChatGPT checks whether you are actually buyable in 71% of its answers and looks for an expert endorsement in nearly half. Google AI Overview thinks like a retailer, with availability present in 59% of its answers. Gemini is the opposite, the purest product-rationalist, raising availability in just 16% of its answers and leaning hardest on the formulation. So, the same brand needs different briefs. A brilliant formulation with poor distribution loses ChatGPT and Google AI Overview but may still show up in Gemini. Chart 3 - Engine House Styles The cost of waiting I saw executives do nothing for a long time when social media started to scale, barely believing that their customers would look at Instagram instead of Vogue. This time you cannot afford to do nothing. The engines' memories harden with every model update, and the engines are settling on their three brands per category. If you are not showing up on the AI shelf today, you have a problem you need to fix right now. The brands that move now get written into the engine preferences. The ones that wait will be trying to break into a list that has already been decided. This is the most modern marketing challenge I have come across, and the answer is the most traditional thing we know how to do. Build a genuinely good product, earn real distribution, make it visible, and price it properly. And put the money back into the reputation work the machine actually reads: the experts, the labs, the certifiers, the press, the trade. Not the campaign that persuades a shopper who is no longer making the shortlist. The brand still has to be good. It just has to be good in a way a machine can read. And the way you make it readable turns out to be the oldest playbook there is. Naureen Mohammed is a fractional CMO for CPG businesses. She ran the AI Choice Audit across ten categories and six engines. If you want to know what the machines are saying about your brand and what to do about it, get in touch at info@fractional-execs.ca

“We’ve agreed the price. We’re happy with the deal. We just need the lawyers to put it into an agreement.” It sounds simple. Until the lawyers start looking under the bonnet. A customer contract may require consent before ownership can change. Important intellectual property may not be properly documented. A key employee may have contractual issues. There may be an unresolved dispute, an unexpected liability or an obligation the buyer simply didn't know about. None of these issues necessarily kills a deal…But they can change the deal. The purchase price may need to be renegotiated, the seller may need to address an issue before completion, the buyer may require additional protection, or the structure of the transaction may need to be reconsidered. And that is where a deal that looked straightforward can suddenly become complicated. The timing matters One of the biggest mistakes in a M&A transaction is waiting until the deal is commercially agreed before getting legal input. By then, the buyer and seller may have become committed to a price and an outcome. Discovering a significant issue at that stage can create unnecessary tension, delay and cost. Getting the right legal input earlier can make a significant difference. For a seller, it can mean identifying and fixing potential problems before they become negotiating points. For a buyer, it can mean understanding the risks they are taking on before committing to the transaction. In both cases, the objective is the same: to identify the issues that could affect the deal while there is still time to do something about them. Good M&A advice isn't about finding problems It is about knowing which problems matter, when they matter, and what can be done about them. A problem identified early is usually something that can be managed or negotiated. The same problem discovered just before completion can result in delay, additional cost or, in some cases, put the transaction at risk. The real value of M&A advice is therefore not simply in reviewing documents or identifying risks. It is in understanding the commercial objective and helping the parties navigate the issues that could stand in its way. The objective isn't simply to get the deal signed. It is to make sure that the deal you sign delivers what you intended to achieve.

I am five feet tall. I am afraid of heights. On May 13, 2022, I stood on the summit of Mount Everest. It’s not every day that these three facts belong in the same sentence. That's rather the point. Everest wasn't where this started. It was where it ended. In October 2017, I stood at the base of Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia, the first of what would become a four-and-a-half-year climb toward completing both the Messner and Bass versions of the Seven Summits Challenge - the highest peak on every continent, counted two different ways because two male mountaineers couldn’t even agree on where one continent ends and another begins. When I stepped off Everest in 2022, I became one of fewer than 130 Canadians to summit it, one of fewer than 30 Canadians to complete the Seven Summits at all, and the first Portuguese person to complete both versions of the challenge. This accomplishment is an elite club of about 500 worldwide. Somewhere in that same window, I also sold the language services company I had spent two decades building. I mention the business and the mountain in the same breath on purpose, because they taught me the same lesson from two completely different altitudes. The Room I Wasn't Built For Mountaineering, like most extreme sports, is built around a default body: tall, long-limbed, predominantly male. The gear, the pacing, the assumptions guides make about who can carry what and how fast- none of it was designed with a five-foot-nothing woman in mind. I spent every expedition making calculations that the rest of my team didn't have to do: how to close a stride gap, how to manage a pack built for bigger frames, how to out-plan what I couldn't out-muscle and how to choose the best one-piece expedition suit that was not made for a woman’s body to fit me. I'd already been doing that math for years, just in a different environment. I founded Language Marketplace in 2000 as a single mother to two young daughters, working full-time as a staff interpreter and freelancing on the side to keep the lights on. I ran the business out of the basement apartment of the house I owned, with no formal business plan, just with the sheer will to do it and the confidence in my knowledge of what I was offering. When I walked into banks, corporate clients, and industry conferences that were built around a different kind of founder, I felt the doubts and observed the looks many times. Not about being tall or short this time, but because I was a woman, a single mother, someone who'd built her expertise on the floor of the industry rather than in an MBA program. Those doubts in those rooms wore business attire instead of a parka, but they asked the same underlying question the mountains did, especially Everest: what makes you think you belong here? The First Attempt I didn't summit Everest on my first try. I turned back. That decision gets talked about, when it's talked about at all, as either heroic prudence or quiet failure. It was neither. It was that I read the facts: my health at that time and safety considerations of not putting others in danger. A decision I had to make in a moment when every voice in my head and around me had an opinion about what a woman my size should or shouldn't be attempting at 8,000 metres. Turning back wasn't the doubt winning. It was refusing to let the doubt make the decision for me, in either direction. I wasn't quitting because I was afraid, and I wasn't pushing on to prove a point to anyone. I was reading the circumstances, not the room. I've made that same call more times than I can count in business. There's a specific kind of crisis moment every founder eventually faces, such as a funding gap, a key client walking, a hire that isn't working out, a board member second-guessing a decision you've already made, where the loudest thing in the room isn't the data. It's doubt, and for women running businesses, that doubt rarely announces itself honestly. It shows up dressed as concern. “Are you sure you're ready to scale that fast?” “Have you thought about what happens if this doesn't work?” Questions that sound careful but are really asking the same thing the mountain asked me at 8,000 metres: what makes you think you belong here? What Actually Gets You Back Up One year after that first attempt, I stood on the summit of Everest. What changed wasn't my size, my fear of heights, or the mountain. What changed was that I'd learned to trust my own preparation and my own read of the situation over the room's fear of it - whether that room was a base camp tent or at a high-stake client’s office. That's the same instinct that grew Language Marketplace, debt-free, into one of Canada's largest privately owned translation and interpretation companies - more than $3.5 million in annual revenue, a staff of 24, and a network of over 1,500 freelancers, built without ever taking on outside capital or debt. It's the instinct that earned Canada's Top Female Entrepreneur recognition in 2012 and a place on the Profit 500 list the following year. And it's the same instinct behind the President's Award I received from Women Business Enterprises Canada Council for public policy work benefiting fellow WBEs, because once I'd learned to trust my own read of the room, the next job was making sure other women didn't have to learn it alone. Why This Is Where I've Chosen to Focus As a fractional executive and executive coach, I've chosen to build my practice specifically around women-owned businesses. Not as a diversity initiative, and not because I believe women need a gentler version of executive support. It's because I've already done the thing that matters in a crisis: performed under extreme, no-do-over conditions while being the exception to what the room expected, both on a mountain with no rescue helicopter at 8,000 metres, and in a boardroom with no venture-backed safety net. Most of the leadership advice available to a woman founder was written by, and for, someone who never had to prove they belonged in the room in the first place. That gap shows up in small but costly ways: coaches who mistake a founder's caution for lack of confidence, advisors who can't tell the difference between a real risk and an inherited one, board members who read decisiveness in a woman as recklessness when they'd read the identical call in a man as strength. A fractional executive who has actually stood in that gap, who has done her own math when the gear wasn't built for her, brings something no amount of theory can substitute: the ability to tell you, honestly, whether the doubt in the room is data or noise. The Real Summit Five feet tall. Afraid of heights. Standing on top of the world. I still think about how absurd that sounds, and I've come to believe the absurdity is the whole lesson. Being underestimated was never a verdict on what I could do, it was just the starting position I happened to be climbing from. The women building businesses today are climbing from that same starting position, in rooms that weren't built with them in mind either. My job now isn't to pretend the room is fair. It's to help them read it clearly enough to get to the top of it anyway.

Alan Giles, CEO/Co-Founder, FEtch (Fractional Execs Technologies) Every founder hits the "Complexity Wall." It’s that moment when your vision has successfully translated into a product, your first customers are live, and the business is finally breathing on its own. But suddenly, the "founder-as-the-everything-engine" model breaks. You are spending your mornings fighting internal operational fires, your afternoons trying to build a sales strategy from scratch, and your evenings staring at fragmented data in five different spreadsheets. The traditional answer to this crisis has always been the same: Hire a full-time VP. But in 2026, that playbook is increasingly high-risk. Hiring a senior executive is a costly decision, with a high salary, equity package, and a three-month onboarding period, all with the risk that their corporate strategies may not suit your fast-moving startup. But what if you didn't have to choose between "doing it yourself" and "making an expensive, permanent hire"? The most successful growth startups we see today aren't focusing on building a larger headcount, they are focusing on building a more intelligent revenue engine. They are shifting from the model of owning the talent to accessing the expertise—bringing in high-level fractional leadership that comes pre-packaged with proven, repeatable growth systems. They’ve realised that scaling isn't just about adding more people to the payroll. It’s about replacing the chaos of "heroic effort" with a systematic, AI-augmented approach that creates predictable revenue growth from Day 1. In this article, we’re going to look at why the fractional C-suite has become the secret weapon for startups that want to scale fast, stay lean, and keep their core vision intact. Q. Are you "Ready-to-Scale"? How do you know if you need a fractional C-Suite, or just a better process? Use this quick audit to identify if you’re currently hitting the "Complexity Wall." The Founder Bottleneck Test Q. Do you find yourself acting as the "Final Approver" for routine sales emails, minor product tweaks, or operational questions? The Reality: If you are still in the loop on decisions that don't directly involve product strategy or fundraising, you are the bottleneck. A fractional executive isn't just an extra pair of hands; they are a decision-making proxy who frees you to look at the horizon rather than the road directly in front of you. The "Heroic Effort" vs. "Repeatable System" Gap Q. Are your revenue targets met through consistent, predictable processes, or by the "heroic effort" of the founders pulling all-nighters to close a deal? The Reality: If revenue growth relies on your personal network or your ability to jump on every sales call, your business isn't scalable, it's a high-performance consultancy. FEtch bridges this gap by installing the "Growth Engine", the workflows and AI-driven automation that keep the revenue flowing even when you're off the clock. The Fragmentation Problem (The "BIG" Check) Can you answer "What is our customer acquisition cost (CAC) for this month?" in under 60 seconds without digging through a dozen spreadsheets? The Reality: If your data is fragmented, your strategy is based on gut feeling, not evidence. Our "Business Insights for Growth" (BIG) dashboards unify your tech stack so you can make informed decisions in real-time. The "Premature Hire" Risk Are you feeling the pressure to hire a full-time VP because "that’s what startups do," even though your budget is tight and your process isn't fully defined? The Reality: Hiring a £200k/year executive to fix a process that doesn't exist yet is a recipe for a "bad fit" disaster. A fractional C-suite allows you to "stress-test" the role, build the foundation, and then decide if/when a permanent hire is truly the right move. If you recognise three or more of these issues, your revenue engine is likely running on manual. Click here to book a 20 minute intro/discovery session with Alan and see where the gaps are. The "FEtch" Differentiation (Why Us?) From "Strategic Advice" to "Strategic Action" Traditional consultants are masters of the "audit", they arrive and point out what you’re doing wrong, leave a 50-page slide deck on your desk, and proceed to walk out of the door. The work, and the stress of implementation, remain entirely on your shoulders. Congratulations, you’ve added to your ‘to-do’ list! At FEtch, we operate on a different philosophy: Execution is the only form of strategy that matters. We don't just tell you how to build your engine; we bring the mechanics, the fuel, and the tools to build it for you. That ‘to-do’ list? Consider it ‘done’. The "Agent-Supported" Leadership Stack What sets our fractional leadership apart is that they aren't working alone. Every FEtch fractional executive arrives with an "Agentic Team" already to be integrated into your tech stack. We bridge the gap between human strategy and machine efficiency. One example of this, deployment of a fractional revenue team, marketing/sales/customer success can be done in a systemic manner, getting the right support you need at the time you need it, only for the time it is needed for. By leveraging the Agent Supported Leadership Stack from FEtch, you have actual progress happening whilst the strategic changes are bedding in. Whilst a CMO is determining the right marketing strategy, they can take heart that any pipeline generation activities are not waiting for them, they can be set going and changed along the way to incorporate any new changes. Meet "Drew" (Our Business Development Agent): Forget the "spreadsheet death spiral." Drew takes your contact data, and develops it into real leads through targeted outreach, rationalising your contact database along the way. So many companies use the size of their database as a sign of success, when a large part of it is either stale, or worse, dead. Drew will constantly validate your database, providing interesting and engaging content for them to interact with. Once a contact shows real interest, this gets passed to Alex. Meet "Alex" (Our Lead SDR Agent): While your fractional sales leader is designing your outbound strategy, Alex is, in parallel, executing it 24/7. She qualifies leads, researches their unique pain points, and holds meaningful conversations with them, to ensure that neither they or you waste valuable time, driving opportunities through the funnel, not half-baked leads. Alex doesn't replace your sales team, she makes sure they are busy with better opportunities to close, letting the sales team do what they do best, CLOSE. Meet “Owen” (Our Customer Support Agent): An often missed, yet increasingly important growth metric is Customer Satisfaction scoring (CSAT). A very easy way to ensure that your customers stay with you is to deal with them well when problems arise. Around 60%-70% of all inbound customer support calls are ‘level 1’ in nature, meaning that they can be dealt with quickly and efficiently by an Agentic AI solution like Owen. Many companies still have basic IVR systems in place, which drive frustration levels through the roof due to complexity and the need to repeat questions and answers. Deploying Owen has a two-fold benefit, in that customers get resolution of basic issued quickly and effectively, and the CSAT scores can improve dramatically – reducing churn. Did you know it costs around 8 times as much to attract a new customer as it does to upsell to an existing one? Keep you existing customers happy! The "Plug-and-Play" Revenue Engine When you partner with FEtch, you aren't just filling a seat; you’re installing a pre-configured revenue machine. Our executives use their fractional time to: Deploy: Plug any relevant AI agents directly into your existing CRM. Or, where Agentic AI is not the best fit, we deploy the right part of the FEtch Growth Engine that suits your requirement. Tune: Optimise the "Growth Engine" based on your specific product and market. Hand-off: Train your internal team, mentoring them to use these tools effectively so that when you do decide to hire full-time, they are stepping into a system that is already working, not a pile of broken processes. There is still time to effect change in 2026: The era of the Generalist Manager is over. Today, the most valuable leaders are Orchestrators, people who know how to blend human strategic judgment with the brute-force speed of AI. FEtch provides that orchestration from Day 1. Be one of those organisations that have moved beyond the productivity phase of AI deployment, and that are enjoying the growth phase, using AI to improve the revenue of the company. You can reach out to me to book an intro call here: https://calendly.com/alangiles/fetch-intro-call-with-alan-giles Alternatively, message me on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alangiles/

Recently, one of our Fractional Executive colleagues, Wayne Carrigan, provided keen insights into the strategic, and increasing, role trust plays  in helping organizations grow in today’s increasi ngly “messy” world.   I’d like to build on this critical topic by providing hands-on guidance on how  the organizations we work with can “harness trust” effectively. Of course, to harness trust, we will need to allocate resources and have a specific/measurable objective. Let’s focus on one all clients face (at one time or another): growing by generating new sales revenues.   The Business Benefits of Harnessing Trust Ask any successful executive, and they will undoubtedly claim, with great confidence, that leveraging referral sources – essentially “bearers of trust” – is absolutely critical to achieving sales goals. That certainly makes sense given the results from findings across industries which consistently conclude that leveraging referral sources systematically (i.e., via formalized referral programs) produces a host of sales-related benefits, particularly when compared with organizations without such programs. Among these benefits:   ·       Referred leads convert at rates 3 to 5 times higher than non-referred leads [1] . ·       Referral-driven opportunities advance through pipeline stages 20 to 30% faster [2] . ·       Referred business generate 16–25% higher lifetime value [3] . ·       Referrals reduce customer acquisition costs by 30 to 60% relative to paid media [4] . ·       Structured referral programs report return on investment ranging from 3x to 10x [5] .   Given that our clients are always looking for ways to increase the number of high-quality prospects and accelerate them quickly through the sales funnel, it is possible to see these impressive results and conclude it’s time to redirect marketing and sales resources to programs that optimize referrals.   While the data strongly points to the unique power of referrals, before you do this, there is a harsh and overlooked reality upon which ALL  successful referral programs are based: Not all referrals are created equal . With that said, three best practices need to be applied to effectively leverage referrals in ways that deliver top (and bottom) line results: ·        Best Practice #1 : Only focus on the kinds of referrals that are most effective at generating profitable business – i.e., High Impact Referrals   ·       Best Practice #2 : Address the obstacles that prevent the organization from tapping into the most effective referrals   ·       Best Practice #3 : Ta ke actions that have been proven effective at producing the referrals you actually want   Let’s unpack each of these three best practices.   Best Practice #1: Focus on High Impact Referrals – i.e., Referrals That Mean Business As a well-seasoned professional, you’ve seen a host of referral behaviors over the years. Those behaviors have produced a wide range of outcomes that have caused you to conclude, “ That was a waste of time and expense ” through to “ Wow, that’s a game-changer for us ”. What’s frustrating is that such outcomes appear to be unpredictable or random. However, the good news is you can identify, measure, and manage the specific kinds of referral behaviors , that lead to consistently acquiring new and profitable business – i.e., those behaviours that result in High Impact Referrals  (HIR). By managing these referral behaviors, you can predict likely outcomes and refine your sales and marketing plans accordingly.   To begin, let’s recognize that underpinning all types of referral behaviours is trust , specifically two types  of trust:   ·       Type #1: The trust a referral source has in you, your product and/or your organization; and ·       Type #2 The trust your prospective customer (i.e., ICP) has in your referral source.   These two types of trust evolve independently. When they combine, they shape your referral sources’ referral behaviors – the result being the degree to which they are effective at successfully finding, qualifying, and converting a prospect into your next new customer .   To see how this plays out in day-to-day business interactions, let’s plot today’s most common referral behaviors along the Continuum of Two Trusts (see Figure 1) .       Figure 1: The Continuum of Two Trusts Let’s consider one common referral behavior: introducing two people at a business function or, on a social media platform such as LinkedIn. This kind of referral behaviour can happen when both  types of trust are low .  That’s because for a referral source to initiate an introduction (or make a “connection” in social media), they don’t need to have a high level of trust in you. At the same time, a prospective customer knows how easy it is for a referral source to make a connection (or social ‘Like’ or re-tweet). So, the level of trust that accompanies the connector  (that is, the trust in your referral source) is low. This type of referral behavior is at best spotty when it comes to consistently increasing the likelihood of gaining a profitable new customer or reducing the time (and cost) required to acquire a new customer. Other referral behaviors displayed when one or both types of trust is low include acting as reference on a proposal and making a recommendation in response to generic needs like, “We’d like to lower our HR admin costs. Do you know someone?’   Now, in contrast, consider these specific behaviours which referral sources display only when both types of trust are high:   ·       Proactively identifying opportunities ·       BANT-qualifying opportunities and making sure they fit your Ideal Client Profile ·       Facilitating meaningful conversations between you and the prospect ·       Initiating opportunities when the time is right given the prospective customer’s unique conditions and constraints ·       Initiating opportunities when your company has the capacity to on-board and satisfy the unique needs of a specific prospective customer ·       Placing their personal and/or professional reputation on the line by providing a hearty endorsement for you (often in a public setting) ·       Endorsing you to prospective customers in ways that effectively “block out” your competitors from being considered   When your referral sources show these behaviours, you’re getting High Impact Referrals  – which yield the impressive business benefits of harnessing trust identified earlier.   Best Practice #2: Address the Obstacles to High Impact Referral Behaviour   Having pinpointed what High Impact Referral behaviours looks like, let’s focus on the obstacles preventing organizations from enabling, and realizing the benefits of, these types of referral behaviors.   These obstacles fall into two broad “buckets” (see Figure 2 below). The first set of obstacles are misaligned attitudes about referrals which give rise to the second set of obstacles, a lack of organizational support. The former prevents initiating structured referral programs, and the latter hampers their implementation.   Figure 2: Obstacles to Leveraging High Impact Referrals   Misaligned Attitude About Referrals Resulting Lack of Organizational Support  Your company’s reputation will produce referrals by itself (i.e. organically) and that ANY referred business is worthwhile. Absence of processes for evaluating the contribution to your top and bottom lines of referred business.   Referral sources are limited to your existing and “satisfied” customers. Restriction of tapping into referrals until after completion of successful customer engagements.   Referrals will only happen consistently when there is a financial benefit for your referral sources.     Development of reward programs that fail to factor in the “cluster of motivations” that referral sources have for referring AND not referring your company.     Referral sources just need to know more about your products or services to be successful.     Absence of initial and/or on-going assessment of referral sources’ evolving skills and opportunities to refer your company.   Relationship management is not scalable compared to online demand-generation and lead nurturing.     Absence of any referral targets and limited emphasis on relationship-building skills in the marketing of your product or service.   Best Practice #3: Take Actions That Haven Proven to Produce High Impact Referrals   While overcoming these obstacles requires a concerted effort, doing so can be part of a growth strategy that catapults companies in highly competitive markets. After all, the number of companies that are adopting structured referral programs has been growing over the last few years 6  – unsurprisingly given a recent study showed 74% of companies concluded leveraging referrals is the least expensive way of acquiring new customers 7 .   Here’s are five steps to overcome the obstacles preventing you from harnessing high impact referral behavior and achieving the benefits of High Impact Referrals.   ·       Step 1 : Ask your Sales (or Marketing) Department to identify how much revenue your business received over the last 12 months that can be attributed to referrals.   ·       Step 2 : Ask your Sales (or Marketing) Department to review the profitability of the business that originated through the five to ten referral sources that have brought you the greatest number of opportunities in the last 12 months.   ·       Step 3 : Along with your Sales (or Marketing) Department leader, speak with the three referral sources who have brought you the most profitable business opportunities to you in the last 12 months so that you can gain an understanding of why  they consistently bring you profitable business .   ·       Step 4 : Assign responsibility for identifying the reasons why referral sources bring you opportunities that are/ are not profitable – and why people you thought would be great referral sources are choosing not to refer profitable business.   ·       Step 5 : Set initial benchmarking referral targets for a sample of your referral sources – just as you would for your sales efforts, your proposal response efforts, and your demand-generation campaigns.   By following these five steps, you can outline personalized action plans that address the strengths and weaknesses of each of your chosen referral sources. In so doing, you will be able to assess the organizations and industries in which your referral sources have the two types of trust they need to bring you profitable business. As a result, you will be able to facilitate, and measure, high impact referral behaviors and achieve the business benefits from leveraging referral sources systematically.   Andrew Brown is the President of Bridgemaker Referral Programs and author of the Amazon #1 Best Seller, “ Get Referred: How to Increase Sales Velocity, Volume, and Value .”   You can find out more about Bridgemaker Referral Programs in the Fractional Executives Partner page .   You can reach Andrew at him at GetReferred.Biz . 1 SaaSquatch (2022). Referral Marketing Benchmark Report ; HubSpot (2023/2024). State of Marketing & Sales Strategy Report . 2 Heinz Marketing (2020/2023). Pipeline Velocity Research & The State of B2B Referral Marketing ; Influitive & IDC (2022). The Power of Social Proximity in B2B Buying . 3 Kumar, V., et al. (Wharton School). Research on Customer Referral Value . 4  Impact.com  (2023). The Partnership Economy Report ; Referral Rock (2023). Referral Program Benchmark Report . 5 Referral Rock (2023). Referral Program Benchmark Report ; Influitive & IDC (2022). Immediate ROI of Referral Marketing. 6 What You Should Know About B2B Referrals. Benchmarking B2B Referral Program Adoption and Results. (Heinz Marketing and Influitive). 7 The State of Referral Marketing in 2017 (Web Profits).

One of the most common growth challenges I see in expanding companies is the transition from founder-led sales to a scalable revenue organization . In the early stages of a business, the founder is often the company’s most effective salesperson. They know the product intimately, understand the customer problem deeply, and carry the passion that helped create the company in the first place. Early deals are won through relationships, instinct, and persistence. For a time, this approach works extremely well. But eventually growth stalls. Not because the product is weak or the market opportunity is limited, but because the revenue model has not evolved beyond the founder. The Founder Sales Trap Founder-led sales has several predictable characteristics: Opportunities live in the founder’s head rather than in a pipeline system Customer relationships are personal rather than institutional Sales processes are informal and undocumented Hiring decisions are based on personality rather than sales competencies Forecasting is based on intuition rather than measurable pipeline metrics This model can produce strong early results, but it is extremely difficult to scale. When companies attempt to hire salespeople into this environment, the results are often disappointing. New hires struggle to replicate the founder’s success because the system that supports consistent selling does not exist. The founder is not the problem. The absence of a revenue system is. The Shift to a Revenue Engine Moving beyond founder-led sales requires a structural shift. Instead of relying on individual heroics, organizations must begin building a revenue engine  — a repeatable system that enables multiple people to generate consistent sales results. This typically involves several foundational elements. 1. A Defined Go-to-Market Strategy The organization must clearly identify its target markets, ideal customers, and value proposition. Without this clarity, sales teams chase opportunities rather than pursue a structured market strategy. 2. A Structured Sales Process Successful sales organizations define the stages of their sales cycle, the actions required at each stage, and the criteria for advancing opportunities. This allows managers to coach effectively and improves forecasting accuracy. 3. Pipeline Discipline Revenue becomes predictable when organizations build consistent pipeline generation systems — not when they wait for deals to appear. 4. Sales Leadership Capability Many companies promote strong salespeople into management roles without training them to lead. Effective revenue organizations develop sales managers who can coach, forecast, and drive accountability. 5. Revenue Infrastructure Compensation models, CRM systems, playbooks, and performance metrics all form part of the revenue infrastructure that supports scalable growth. The Role of Revenue Leadership This transition is where experienced revenue leadership becomes critical. Companies that successfully scale revenue rarely do so by accident. They design and implement the operating systems that support sales performance across the organization. When done well, the results are significant. Sales teams become more productive, forecasting improves, leadership gains visibility into pipeline health, and the company develops the ability to scale growth beyond the founder’s personal network. In other words, the company moves from selling opportunistically to generating revenue systematically. A Leadership Milestone The shift from founder-led sales to a scalable revenue engine represents an important milestone in a company’s development. It signals that the organization is no longer simply proving its product. It is building the infrastructure required for sustained growth. For founders and CEOs, the challenge is recognizing when this transition needs to occur — and ensuring the right revenue systems are built before growth stalls. Because in the end, sustainable growth is not driven by heroic sales efforts. It is driven by well-designed revenue systems that allow teams to win consistently.