For Private Equity

The returns moved. From the deal to the operating company.

For twenty years, a good entry and cheap debt did most of the work. That market is gone. What is left is the harder kind of value creation: getting the portfolio company to sell more, profitably, quarter after quarter. I have been the operator who does it.

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The annual EBITDA growth a 2.5x return now demands, more than double the 2015 bar. Bain, 2026.
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Of buyout-backed companies are now held past four years, a record. McKinsey, 2026.
2.5x
The return today's deals still target, now earned from operations, not from multiples.
The Shift

Financial engineering built the last decade of returns. It will not build the next one.

Bain put a number on what every deal team already feels. A 2015-vintage deal reached a 2.5x on roughly 5 percent annual EBITDA growth, because multiples and leverage covered the rest of the distance. The same return today needs 10 to 12 percent, year after year, from operations. Bain calls it "12 is the new 5."

McKinsey is blunter. Operational value creation is now the primary source of alpha, and more than half of the world's buyout-backed companies have been held past four years. That is a large inventory waiting on an exit story its current growth rate does not support. Goldman Sachs frames the new bar as low-double-digit earnings growth, with AI emerging as a genuine revenue lever.

Inside the operating company, the shortest path to that growth runs through the revenue engine.

Not a rebrand. Not another platform purchase. The selling system itself: process, leadership, talent, and now AI. That is the work I have done from the inside, through diligence and through exit.

Where I Come In

An operator who has been inside the companies you are evaluating.

Three exits, two of them to private equity. I have run the revenue org through diligence, tightened it before a sale, and sat in the board meeting when the number was the whole conversation. Five ways I help a fund and its portfolio.

  • Revenue and sales diligence: an operator's read on the pipeline, the forecast, and the team, before you sign or before you exit
  • The first 100 days: baseline the revenue engine, fix what is costing money now, and leave the rest alone until it is understood
  • Talent, assessed: OMG evaluation of the sales org, so you know who can scale and who has hit their ceiling, per company and across the portfolio
  • The system, installed: fractional CRO and full revenue architecture to build what diligence said was missing
  • The bench: Revenue Bench sources and places quota-carrying talent, every candidate OMG-assessed and coached through the ramp
Choose Your Seat

The plan assumes growth. Someone has to produce it.

Three people end up owning that line, and they need different things.

01

Operating Partner

Six companies, one of you. Whatever works has to travel between portcos, or it does not count. I build the playbook once and make it portable.

02

Portfolio Company CEO

Diligence stress-tested your contracts, your churn, your customer concentration. It never stress-tested the sales engine. The plan assumes it performs anyway.

03

CRO / VP Sales

You inherited a number you did not set and a team you did not pick, on about eighteen months of patience. I have sat in that seat and can shorten the climb.

The Evidence Read the full private equity briefing. The complete thesis, the Bain, McKinsey, and Goldman research, and four portfolio playbooks. No signup. At Best Sales Team Training, the directory Steve co-founded.
Operating Partners and Portfolio CEOs

Put an operator on the revenue line.

A 30-minute conversation about a portfolio company, where its revenue engine stands today, and what would move it. No hard sell.

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