Commercial strategy that gets portfolio companies sold.
Three integrated assessments that reveal how your business actually grows, and where belief, reality, and GTM execution have come apart.
Strategy, finance, and execution: reconciled, not just aligned on a slide.
Corporate strategy sets direction. Finance funds it. GTM executes it. Commercial strategy is the discipline that keeps those three in sync, and diagnoses where they've drifted apart before it shows up as a growth problem.
Growth DNA™, our proprietary diagnostic system, is how we do that work. It's the toolkit, not the pitch.
Determine how your firm's growth beliefs differ from operating reality, and where that misalignment costs you return on capital.
Replace opinion with evidence. Understand what your market actually rewards and align growth investments with current reality.
Map which customer segments generate sustainable margin growth, and how those segments shift as market conditions change.
We Diagnose Systems, Not Tactics
See your growth system clearly
Our diagnostics don't add more data. They reveal where belief, behavior, and market reality align (and where not) so you know which activities to fund and which to defund.
Market Orientation Analysis
See how your company actually competes.
We identify the gap between how leadership believes the business creates value and how it actually operates, then show how that misalignment slows growth.
Outcome: clarity on which go-to-market orientation actually drives your system, and where strategy, budget, and execution are pulling in different directions.
Market Research & Intelligence
Replace opinion with evidence.
We uncover what customers value today and what competitors are doing, so leaders make growth decisions with confidence, not instinct.
Outcome: decisions grounded in current market reality, not internal bias, legacy assumptions, or last year's plan.
Dynamic Market Architecture
Focus where growth potential is greatest.
Traditional segmentation treats markets as fixed groups. DMA maps markets as evolving demand spaces, identifying how customer needs and value drivers shift, so capital follows opportunity instead of chasing legacy segments.
Outcome: precision on where to invest, where to defund, and which customers to exit before margin erodes.
A Unique, Scalable Framework
Together, these three diagnostics form the Growth DNA™ System, revealing the gap between belief, behavior, and market reality. Reallocate capital with evidence your board will believe.
Real Growth, 15+ Years' Experience
“Commercial strategy closes the gap between the money you invest and the people who spend it.”
Robert Collings, Principal
Latest Research
4 percentage points below market. Every year.
Our analysis of 500 lower mid-market firms ($25M–$100M) over 10 years found that misaligned orientation and capital deployment is the primary driver of underperformance.
Firms with alignment grow at 7–8% against a mid-market baseline of 6%. Firms without it rarely exceed 2%, and frequently go negative.
Growth Insights & Intelligence
Evidence-based perspectives, case learnings, and diagnostic tools to help you see growth differently. Challenge how you think and move before others do.
Why a market orientation drives growth
Mid-market firms stall from an inward focus. Firms with a market orientation grow up to four times faster and reach $100M more predictably.
Diagnosis: the missing growth control
Budgets control how much you spend, not where or why. Diagnosis fills that gap, linking effort and investment to what actually drives growth.
Why small firms stay small, and how to fix it
Many firms fail to fund what the market rewards today. Realignment (of focus, funding, belief, and operations) is how small companies get big, fast.
Why Commercial Strategy, Not Generic Consulting
Frequently Asked Questions: Commercial Strategy
Why the focus on diagnosis and strategy?
Because most firms skip the part that matters most.
What many consultancies call diagnosis is really onboarding: a way to slot you into their existing playbook, not to understand how your company actually grows.
We treat diagnosis as the discipline it is. Every major consultancy, from Kearney to McKinsey, starts there.
We're building a practice that does it faster, for companies that can't (or shouldn't) spend millions finding out what's really going on.
How do you engage with clients?
We begin with a leadership survey, stakeholder interviews, and limited access to growth investment data (high-level allocation, not detailed P&L).
Each component of the commercial strategy diagnostic can run independently:
- Market Orientation: ~1 week
- Market Research: ~2-3 weeks
- Dynamic Market Architecture: ~2-3 weeks
For the full system, strategy, finance, and execution assessed together, plan on 5-6 weeks. If capital reallocation is the goal, we recommend all three: recommendations grounded in one diagnostic are recommendations grounded in one-third of the picture.
Who do you work with?
Lower middle-market firms ($25M-$100M revenue) and PE-backed portfolio companies inside the hold, facing board pressure, margin compression, or a financing window that's forcing the growth-versus-margin question.
Industry-agnostic, strongest in B2B services, professional services, and tech-enabled businesses where growth potential is trapped by misalignment rather than by the market itself.
Do you use AI or proprietary tools?
Yes. We use AI for data synthesis, pattern recognition, and demand-space modeling in the Dynamic Market Architecture diagnostic.
It's a force multiplier, not a substitute for judgment. Every recommendation is reviewed against domain expertise before it reaches you.
We don't deliver algorithmic output without context and verification.
What makes COLLINGS&CO different from generic strategy or growth consultants?
We diagnose the system that determines capital allocation: whether corporate strategy, finance, and go-to-market execution still agree on what the business is actually funding.
Most consultancies diagnose one piece, market position or execution gaps, and treat the other two as someone else's problem.
Engagements are lean, time-bounded, and built to leave leadership more aligned, not dependent on us to stay that way.
We don't build platforms, run campaigns, or layer on operations by default.