Commercial Excellence Insights & Tips

7 Steps to Productive Commercial Performance Reviews

Jon April 14, 2025 No Comments

Download the Rhino Quarterly Commercial Performance Review Why the QCPR Matters More Than You Think For operating partners and sales leaders navigating commercial performance challenges inside a portfolio company, the [...]

10 Tips to Unlock Organic Growth in Private Equity Portfolio Companies

Jon November 15, 2024 No Comments

For private equity portfolio companies facing flat growth, quick wins are vital. They spark momentum, fund longer-term investments, and build confidence across the organization. While cost-cutting, acquisitions, and restructuring often [...]

Organic Growth via Marketing: A Blueprint for Private Equity Firms

Jon September 4, 2024 No Comments

Private equity (PE) firms have traditionally relied on a mix of financial engineering, strategic acquisitions, and operational improvements to generate returns. However, in recent years, there’s been a growing emphasis [...]

Six B2B Marketing Offers that Immediately Improve Leads

Jon June 19, 2024 No Comments

B2B sales and marketing teams that struggle with organic growth are typically looking for new ways to engage audiences. Traditional B2B Marketing Offers include: But the tried-and-true tactics are running [...]

Six Moves to Make When Cash Flow is Tight and Marketing Budget is Cut

Jon June 11, 2024 No Comments

Managing a portfolio company’s marketing strategy can be an intricate dance, particularly when cash flow is tight. However, cutting back on marketing can be a fatal mistake. Instead, refining your [...]

Align Sales and Marketing

Jon June 6, 2024 No Comments

When organizations successfully work to align sales and marketing teams, the resulting synergies can exponentially generate organic growth momentum. However, the relationship between these two departments often encounters friction. While [...]

5 Areas Where Private Equity Value Teams Can Help Fix Revenue Growth

Jon June 6, 2024 1 Comment

When a portfolio company needs to fix revenue growth issues, it can be a cause for concern for private equity firms. However, identifying areas for improvement and implementing effective strategies [...]

Rethinking the CMO Role in Mid-Market B2B

Jon June 5, 2024 No Comments

Filling the CMO role in B2B poses a significant challenge for operating partners at private equity firms and CEOs of portfolio companies. It’s a recurring and often complex issue. However, [...]

The 7-step DIY GTM Playbook (that everyone will want to use)

Jon May 8, 2024 No Comments

Why is GTM so important? GTM – or go-to-market – is often how Private Equity prefers to talk about Marketing. It’s more strategic. More sales-centric. Whereas marketing, if we’re being [...]

Going from Go-to-Market Strategy to Successful Execution: A Guide for Private Equity Operating Partners

Jon March 13, 2024 No Comments

Operating partners play a pivotal role in driving the success of portfolio companies. One of the key areas where their expertise shines is in crafting effective go-to-market strategies and seamlessly [...]

Four Conversations Private Equity Should Start Now to Spark Portfolio Revenue Growth in 2024

Jon January 16, 2024 No Comments

In 2023, the private equity market faced significant headwinds, characterized by reduced exit volumes, diminished values, and elongated holding periods. As operating partners or members of value teams in this [...]

Crafting Effective Value Creation Plans that Drive Organic Growth

Jon January 9, 2024 1 Comment

Private equity portfolio success hinges on the ability to not only identify promising investment opportunities but also to actively drive value within portfolio companies. One crucial aspect of this value [...]

Buzz vs. Value: Why Private Equity Marketing is Hard to Get Right.

Jon January 8, 2024 No Comments

Marketing is essential to any business strategy and plays a pivotal role in achieving success. Whether a startup, well-established company, or private equity firm, effective marketing is crucial for growth [...]

Metrics and Reporting that Drive Organic Growth Insights: Tips for Value Teams

Jon December 19, 2023 No Comments

Operating partners and value teams at mid-market private equity firms play a pivotal role in driving organic growth and value creation within portfolio companies. To get started, building organic growth [...]

Marketing Budgets that Maximize Value Creation for Private Equity-Backed Businesses

Jon December 19, 2023 No Comments

Driving organic growth is a critical objective for portfolio companies. Operating partners play a pivotal role in achieving this goal, and a key component of their influence lies in helping [...]

Six Keys to Organic Growth: A Blueprint for Mid-Market Private Equity Value Creation.

Jon December 19, 2023 No Comments

Operating partners at mid-market private equity firms play a pivotal role in driving organic growth and value creation within portfolio companies. To navigate the complexities of today’s business environment, it [...]

The Art of Private Equity Value Creation and the Power of Marketing

Jon July 11, 2023 No Comments

While financial engineering and operational improvements have traditionally taken the spotlight with private equity value creation, a strategic and well-executed marketing approach has emerged as a potent catalyst for driving [...]

how to build an insourced team investors love

PE-Backed CMOs: How to Build Marketing Teams that Investors Love

Jon April 24, 2023 No Comments

When it comes to marketing, most of us envision an internal team responsible for creating a brand voice, coordinating campaigns and events, and serving sales prospects that require nurturing. However, [...]

How Private Equity Can Help Their Portcos Accelerate Marketing Performance

Jon February 9, 2023 No Comments

As we go deeper into a number of Mid Market Private Equity portfolios, here’s what we’re noticing: If there are 10 companies in a portfolio there will be: 10 different [...]

ABM: Outsource or DIY?

Jon November 3, 2022 No Comments

ABM is the latest craze rolling through the digital marketing landscape over the past year. You can’t escape it no matter how hard you try. So, is this the best [...]

Why CMOs should cut their own budgets

Jon October 27, 2022 No Comments

There’s a growing sentiment that marketing leadership doesn’t belong at the executive level of an organization. The reasoning behind it is fairly straightforward: CMOs are struggling to prove ROI in [...]

Common pitfalls when issuing a Marketing RFP

Jon October 22, 2022 No Comments

These are observations and recommendations for the Marketing Directors and CMOs, and everyone else in their orbit that's involved in creating marketing RFPS and screening responses.

How Private Equity can benefit from the SEC’s Marketing Rule

Jon October 20, 2022 No Comments

Instead of simply summarizing the SEC's new Marketing Rule for you, we'll assume that since you're reading this article you're already familiar with it. Let's dive into how to practically [...]

Three things insourced marketing gets right, and wrong

Jon October 11, 2022 No Comments

Mavenray typically works with CMOs, CEOs and Marketing Directors on enabling and augmenting their internal capabilities. There are things we often see from the outside that can be a little [...]

Pros and Cons of Hiring a Fractional CMO

The Pros and Cons of a Fractional CMO

Jon October 11, 2022 No Comments

Executive teams are looking to part time marketing leaders to help set their trajectory on the right course. Fractional COOs, CFOs and CEOs are far less common, but Fractional CMOs [...]

Growth marketing in a recession – Tip #1: Reach new audiences

Jon October 11, 2022 No Comments

With a cold recession brewing, we here at Mavenray are preparing for the worst. As we think through the market, we're finding creative ways to help our clients make the [...]