Founder Ed Marsh Consulting | B2B #Strategy & Revenue Growth Consultant | #B2BSales | #IndustrialMarketing | #Governance | #Veteran | SMS (978) 591-6400
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Joined February 2009
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That’s going to end well…
Why does everyone fret about trying to accommodate this aberrant behavior?
And yes, I don’t care if it’s 53%, it’s still aberrant because it’s unsatisfactory for good business.
Instead set the specific goal of hiring only 2nd & 3rd standard deviation talent. Leave the rest to your competitors….or the co-interviewing parents.
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"The LLM told me so." You get to use that excuse exactly once. If you can't trace an AI number back to the source data, keep it out of the board deck. #AIAnalytics
Gartner predicts 40%+ of agentic AI projects get canceled by end of 2027.
My take: that's a management failure, not a tech failure.
Map every customer-facing task, high-judgment to admin, first. Then decide where agents fit.
#AIAgents #PrivateEquity
Orbit Media's 2026 blogging survey: 14% of marketers report strong results, a 13-year low.
It's built on written articles, not the video and podcast buyers consume without clicking.
That's not a small gap. It's the story. #B2BMarketing #ContentMarketing #IndustrialMarketing
Nikos of Databox told me about an e-shop whose AI said retention was fantastic. It had only seen page one: the oldest, most loyal customers. Ask your AI how many records it used before you trust the number. #AIAnalytics
Confidently Wrong! AI is great at data analysis but NOT data engineering nitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1pKkOXkRl…
Years of travel, board meetings, IC updates, GPs calling every time a number moves. Portco CEOs grind on faith that it pays off when the bell rings. Then they get replaced. Not for lack of effort. Because the company didn’t grow.
What’s left is organic growth. The biggest value creation lever in middle-market industrials, least understood. Most “operator” CEOs can quote OEE but not their win rate.
If you’re the new CEO coming in mid-hold with hopes to ring the bell, that’s the question to ask before you sign. Otherwise you’re stepping onto the same treadmill your predecessor just got pushed off.
#QualityOfSales
The risk isn't that AI gives you a wrong answer.
It's that it gives you a wrong answer you believe.
Great at analysis. Not at data engineering. Most teams ask it to do both.
If the thesis needs another $2M of EBITDA, how many net new sales activities does that take, and can your current team actually produce them?
At one portco: 6,000 to 8,000+ activities per rep per year, depending on role and segment. #SalesFunnel #PrivateEquity
Your AI hands you a pipeline number for the board deck. Fast, clean, nice chart.
Nothing about it tells you whether it's the truth or a well-written guess.
Anthropic's data team: without structured context, Claude's analytics accuracy didn't exceed 21%. With skills on a governed data foundation, above 95%.
Same model. The gap is data engineering, not the AI.
A portco grew revenue 3 straight years. Great waterfall slide. But the growth came from a market with nowhere else to send its money, not the sales team.
Buy that at face value and you didn't buy a swimmer. You bought the tide. #PrivateEquity #SalesLeadership
Attackers worked out that shutting down a production line pays more than locking up email or ERP. Production goes to zero.
Dragos: ransomware vs. industrial orgs up 87% in 2024, manufacturing hit hardest.
Brian C. Reed of Anaconda on the IGI podcast. #OTSecurity
Either your current team can produce enough activity to hit the number, or they can't. Coaching and optimistic forecasts don't change that.
It's arithmetic, not motivation.
#SalesLeadership #PrivateEquity
A CEO to a seller: “Stop chasing me. Find the owner of the problem in the management tier.”
Going high by default isn’t a strategy. Find who actually owns the pain.
Brian C. Reed on the Industrial Growth Institute podcast. #B2BSales