AJ Gandhi: Why Go-To-Market Is the Most Underweighted Lever in Private Equity

Private equity has always been honest about which levers it trusts. Cost takeout, pricing, and M&A roll-ups work. You take the action, and the return follows. Go-to-market has never offered that kind of certainty, and so many funds have never pursued it with the same conviction.

The reliable levers are largely priced into how funds underwrite deals, especially since multiple expansion is unreliable and hold periods are extending. What is left is the lever PE has historically been least willing to invest in with conviction: revenue growth driven by a deliberately engineered go-to-market system.

AJ Gandhi, who has worked with more than 100 companies across Bain, Alexander Group, Salesforce, RingCentral and Marlin Equity Partners as an operator, advisor, and Chief Growth Officer, offers a clear perspective on why that gap persists.

It persists because go-to-market is uniquely multi-disciplinary. It spans strategy, pricing, sales, marketing, services, customer success, and the operations that tie them together. Few operators have mastered all of it, and fewer can orchestrate it as one system. Most diagnoses name a symptom - pipeline, sales productivity, the CRO - but the root cause sits one layer beneath.

Onour latest episode of the Brilliant People Podcast, Gandhi's argument is that the firms closing the gap have stopped looking for the broken function and started engineering go-to-market as one system, with the rigor PE applies to cost and capital structure.

Gandhi approaches go-to-market in a holistic way through the STEER framework (Strategy, Team, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Revenue System), a structured way of thinking about go-to-market as an integrated system, not a collection of functions. It’s how leading operators bring discipline to go-to-market, which enables accelerated revenue growth and improved productivity.

Why Go-To-Market Performance Drifts

One of the more striking observations Gandhi shares is that go-to-market rarely fails in a dramatic way. Companies don’t wake up one day with a broken commercial engine. Instead, they gradually lose the clarity that made them successful in the first place.

What begins as a clearly defined customer, specific problem and differentiated solution becomes something broader and less precise in nature.

• New segments get layered in
• New geographies feel within reach
• New channels promise incremental growth

Each move is logical on its own, but together, they dilute focus. The companies that outperform resist that pull by doubling down on what works and ignoring what doesn’t.

At Salesforce, Gandhi cut the enterprise account list from 11,000 to 2,000 over two years, and each rep's coverage from 50 accounts to seven. Productivity per seller rose meaningfully due to less surface area and more output. That is the dividend disciplined focus pays, and it is the kind of work most PE-backed B2B companies still don't do.

Dominate the core.

The Best Commercial Leaders Understand

For all the sophistication layered into modern go-to-market, the most important skill remains deeply human and rooted in understanding.

People don't want to buy anything. They want to solve their own problems.

That distinction reframes the entire role of a commercial organization, and the strongest performers stand out because they can:

• Engage customers at a peer level
• Diagnose problems with real business context
• Connect solutions directly to outcomes

Business-level understanding is what separates top performers from the rest. They can walk into a conversation and speak credibly about how a business operates, where it struggles, and what truly matters.

In that sense, the best sellers are truly operators in disguise.

Marketing: The Most Underestimated Function

If there is one place where go-to-market value creation in private equity breaks down most consistently, it’s marketing.

Historically, the bias has been understandable. Sales is easier to measure, and marketing has been harder to tie directly to outcomes. Investment followed that logic.

In many software businesses, the breakdown looks roughly like this:

• ~32% of revenue allocated to sales
• ~8% allocated to marketing

That imbalance is becoming increasingly difficult to defend because the buyer has fundamentally changed. Today:

• Research happens independently
• Shortlists are formed before sales engagement
• Brand shapes who even gets considered

As Gandhi states, Gartner estimates that 80% of the buyer’s journey happens without a salesperson in the room.

Which raises a fundamental question: if most buying decisions are made before sales engage, why is most investment still in sales?

The organizations pulling ahead are reframing marketing’s role entirely:

• Building awareness and consideration early
• Investing in product marketing and positioning
• Aligning marketing with financial accountability

Marketing determines whether you are even considered. In a private equity context, underinvesting in marketing removes companies from the buying conversation entirely.

Two Go-To-Market Models in Private Equity Are Emerging

Across private equity, go-to-market value creation is approached in two distinct models.

1. Conviction-led model

• Deep integration with deal teams
• Involvement from diligence through exit
• Dedicated, specialized go-to-market capability

2. Orchestration model

• Lean internal teams
• Diagnostic rather than embedded execution
• Heavy reliance on third-party advisors

The orchestration model is the majority approach. One or two operating partners diagnose what is working, then coordinate third-party advisors to execute. It is a useful role, but it is not a system.

The performance gap is already visible at exit, and the trajectory points wider. Firms that own go-to-market as a capability are building repeatable revenue engines across their portfolios. Firms that buy it as a service are dependent on the consistency of their vendors and the receptivity of their portfolio companies.

Pipeline Isn't the Problem - Precision Is

One of the more persistent misconceptions in go-to-market is that more pipeline equals better performance. But according to Gandhi, pipeline volume often masks deeper issues.

What matters more is:

• Whether pipeline aligns to the ideal customer profile (ICP)
• Whether target accounts are actually progressing
  
• Whether effort is concentrated where outcomes are most likely

Many organizations lose discipline at this intersection because they track activity, not movement; volume is measured, but focus isn’t. The shift toward ICP-based pipeline and account progression forces a different level of rigor.

In private equity, this is a valuation issue. Misaligned pipeline, poor ICP focus, and weak progression directly impact revenue predictability, EBITDA performance, and ultimately exit multiples.

Fragmentation = Constraint

For all the emphasis placed on strategy, talent, and tooling, Gandhi points to a more fundamental issue: fragmentation.

Across many organizations, sales, marketing and customer success operate independently, metrics are misaligned, and incentives run in different directions.

At the leadership level, alignment often exists, but it begins to fracture one layer down. From there, the misalignment compounds over time, slowing execution, diluting accountability and impacting growth in a negative way.

The next generation of go-to-market leadership will need to be less functionally siloed and more system-oriented.

In practice, that means:

• Leaders who understand multiple functions
• Teams measured against shared outcomes
• Organizations designed around the customer

Increasingly, it also requires CEO and CFO ownership of the go-to-market system.

Where This Leaves Private Equity Leaders

Private equity has always been disciplined about where it looks for value, but what’s changing now is where that value is now created.

In a more constrained environment, where incremental cost takeout opportunity is finite and multiple expansion is less predictable, go-to-market is moving from optional to essential. The firms and leaders who close that gap won’t do it by adding more activity. They’ll do it by:

• Sharpening focus
• Investing with conviction
• Building systems that align strategy to execution

Do the basics better.

The firms that treat go-to-market as a system, not a function, will be the ones that consistently win on growth.