Guide
What is a commercial system?
A commercial system is the way a company finds, wins and keeps customers, written down and built into its tools, so that results do not depend on a few individuals.
- It covers four things: your market, your sales motion, your tools and your people.
- It is built in four stages: diagnose, design, build, enable.
- It is finished when your own team runs it without outside help.
- With Solaris Spire it starts with a diagnostic, from US$10,000.
How do you know you need a commercial system?
You need one when the company has revenue but selling still depends on the founder or a few strong salespeople. Customers have shown they will buy; the commercial function has not yet become repeatable.
Common signs:
- The founder still drives most of the selling.
- Pipeline is inconsistent from quarter to quarter.
- The ideal customer is not clearly defined.
- Opportunities are qualified differently by each salesperson.
- The CRM is not kept up to date, so forecasts are unreliable.
- Marketing and sales work separately.
- The team spends too much time on manual work, and makes little use of AI.
- There is no regular cadence for reviewing pipeline and forecast.
What does a commercial system include?
Four parts. Each should fit the company it is built for, which is why a template rarely works.
| Part | The question it answers | What is written down or built |
|---|---|---|
| Your market | Who do we sell to, and why do they buy? | Ideal customer profile, segments, positioning and messaging |
| Your sales motion | How are deals found, qualified and won? | Sales stages with entry and exit criteria, qualification rules, forecasting method, playbook |
| Your tools | What does the manual work for the team? | CRM and data structure, workflow automation, AI workflows, dashboards |
| Your people | How do managers and salespeople run it? | Management cadence, coaching, training on the company's own pipeline |
How is a commercial system built?
In four stages: diagnose the commercial problem, design the go-to-market model, build the revenue system, and enable the team to run it.
| Stage | What happens | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Diagnose | Find what is working, what is broken, why, and what to fix first. | Commercial health assessment, root-cause analysis, priority matrix, 30/60/90-day roadmap |
| 2. Design | Decide where to compete, how to win and how the team should sell. | Ideal customer and segmentation, positioning, sales stages, qualification framework, sales playbook |
| 3. Build | Turn the design into working infrastructure inside the company's own tools. | CRM and data architecture, workflow automation, AI workflows, dashboards and forecasting |
| 4. Enable | Coach managers and salespeople until they run the system themselves. | Manager operating cadence, coaching on live deals, training, documentation and hand-over |
What does a GTM diagnostic cover?
A GTM diagnostic is a structured review of how a company sells today. It typically takes two to four weeks and looks at seven areas.
- Market: ideal customer, segmentation, competition and how buyers decide.
- Go-to-market: inbound, outbound, partnerships and coverage.
- Funnel: lead handling, qualification, conversion and where opportunities leak.
- Sales: method, discovery, pipeline management and forecasting.
- Organisation: roles, capacity, management and compensation.
- Systems: CRM, data, reporting, automation and where AI could help.
- Economics: deal size, cost of acquisition, win rate, sales cycle and pipeline coverage.
It does not fix the problem. It establishes what is wrong, why, and what should happen next.
How is building a commercial system different from the alternatives?
Most alternatives provide one part: advice, people, technology or training. A commercial system build joins them and ends with the company's own team in charge.
| Alternative | What it mainly provides | How a commercial system build differs |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy consultancy | Advice | Goes on into implementation and operating capability |
| GTM consultant | Go-to-market strategy | Adds the systems, engineering and enablement |
| Sales consultant | Sales improvement | Addresses the wider commercial system |
| RevOps consultancy | Systems and data | Starts from commercial strategy, not from technology |
| AI consultancy | AI projects | Applies AI specifically to revenue |
| Sales training company | Skills | Ties the skills to the company's actual system and pipeline |
| Sales agency | Sales capacity | Builds the company's own capability instead of replacing it |
What does it cost?
Solaris Spire has three offers. Prices are starting prices in US dollars, and each engagement is scoped and priced before it starts.
| Offer | What it covers | Starting price |
|---|---|---|
| The Blueprint | A diagnostic, ending in a diagnosis and a prioritised roadmap | From US$10,000 |
| The Build | The Blueprint, then design and build of the system | From US$50,000 |
| The Handover | The Build, then enablement of the team | From US$75,000 |
Questions
What is a commercial system?
A commercial system is the way a company finds, wins and keeps customers, written down and built into its tools. It covers who the company sells to, how deals move from first contact to close, how revenue is forecast, and how managers run the team, so that results do not depend on a few individuals.
Is Solaris Spire an outsourced sales agency?
No. Solaris Spire does not supply salespeople, carry a quota or sell lead generation. It builds the commercial capability that allows a company to scale, then enables the company's own team to run it.
Does Solaris Spire guarantee a revenue increase?
No. Solaris Spire does not promise a revenue percentage. It commits to a fixed scope, named deliverables and a system the client's team can run. Stronger pipeline, better conversion and more reliable forecasting are consequences of a better commercial system, not promises.
How long does a GTM diagnostic take?
A GTM diagnostic typically takes two to four weeks. It ends with a commercial health assessment, a root-cause analysis, a priority matrix and a 30/60/90-day roadmap.
How much does it cost to build a commercial system with Solaris Spire?
Solaris Spire has three offers with starting prices in US dollars. The Blueprint, a diagnostic, is from US$10,000. The Build, which adds design and build of the system, is from US$50,000. The Handover, which adds enablement of the team, is from US$75,000. Each engagement is scoped and priced before it starts.
Who needs a commercial system?
Growing B2B companies that have customers and revenue but not yet a repeatable revenue engine. Typical signs are founder-led sales, inconsistent pipeline, unreliable forecasting and salespeople who each sell differently.
What does the company keep at the end?
The company keeps every deliverable: the diagnosis and roadmap, the go-to-market and sales design, the playbook, the configured tools and workflows, and the management cadence. The engagement is designed to end with the company's own team running the system.
Glossary
- Go-to-market (GTM)
- How a company reaches, sells to and keeps its customers.
- Ideal customer profile (ICP)
- A description of the kind of company most likely to buy and to succeed with what you sell.
- Qualification
- Deciding, against stated criteria, whether an opportunity is worth pursuing.
- Pipeline coverage
- The value of open opportunities compared with the revenue target for the same period.
- Revenue operations (RevOps)
- The work of aligning the processes, data and tools used by marketing, sales and customer teams.
- Operating cadence
- The regular rhythm of pipeline reviews, forecast reviews and one-to-ones through which managers run a sales team.
More guides, in preparation
- Moving from founder-led sales to a sales team
- What a GTM diagnostic should deliver
- Sales stages and qualification: a working template
- Where AI helps a sales team, and where it does not