Commercial Operating Partners

You engineered the product.
Now engineer the revenue.

Revenue is not a team you hire. It is a system you engineer. At most founder-led companies, deals move at the speed of the CEO's calendar. We take ownership of the commercial work that waits on you, from first meeting to signature, and run it inside your team.

Request an assessment → See what we own
Operator experience across
  • ServiceNow
  • New Mountain Capital
  • AI-native healthcare
  • Private equity
  • Enterprise SaaS

The problem

The product gets engineered.
The revenue gets improvised.

Companies rarely fail because they hired the wrong salespeople. They fail because they built people before they built the system those people run on. Everyone builds product first. Everyone hires sales second. Almost nobody engineers the commercial system underneath. That is where we live.

The mandate

Accelerate sales velocity
and conversion.

One operator, embedded, accountable for the funnel from first meeting to signature. Each stage below is work that sits with the CEO today. We take it over and run it inside your team.

01

Top of funnel

Create qualified meetings

Where it waits on the CEO

Pipeline comes from your network and your outreach. The target list was built once and never maintained. Outbound runs when someone has a free afternoon.

What we own

ICP strategy and alignment across the team. The named-account list, built and maintained. An omnichannel outbound motion across LinkedIn, email, and phone, run on a weekly cadence at the volume that matters.

  • Qualified meetings per month
  • Share of pipeline not sourced by the CEO
02

Mid funnel

Meeting to validated opportunity

Where it waits on the CEO

You run discovery, build the business case by hand, and are the only person who can say whether a deal is real. Meetings that go nowhere still cost you the hour.

What we own

Qualification and stage-exit criteria so the team knows what a real opportunity looks like. The value model: what the product does, translated into quantified value on the buyer's numbers, so the opportunity is validated before it reaches a proposal. Deal desk from first proposal onward.

  • Meeting to opportunity conversion
  • Opportunity to validated-value conversion
03

Contracting

Validated to closed won

Where it waits on the CEO

You are the pricing approver, the solution approver, the contracts function, and the escalation path. Redlines, security reviews, and procurement sit in your inbox.

What we own

Pricing and discount approvals. Solution consulting approvals. Commercial redlines and term structure, working directly with your internal or external counsel through signature. Procurement and security unblocking, so a deal never stalls on paperwork nobody owns.

  • Contract to closed won conversion
  • Days from validated to signed
  • Average contract value

The scorecard Baselined in the first four weeks, then reviewed monthly against the same definitions: meetings created, conversion at each stage, days in stage, contract value, and CEO hours per week in commercial work.

The operating thesis

Commercial isn't a department.
It's a system.

Most firms optimize sales: better reps, more activity, another tool. We optimize the machine sales runs on. Seven functions, engineered as one system rather than assembled as separate tactics.

  1. 01Pricing
  2. 02Packaging
  3. 03Forecasting
  4. 04ICP
  5. 05Partnerships
  6. 06Governance
  7. 07Monetization

A commercial operating system compounds. Individual tactics do not.

Most companies don't have a sales problem.
They have a commercial architecture problem.

Operator track record

Built. Operated. Scaled.

$600M
Healthcare-AI company built from zero and exited to New Mountain Capital, as CEO operating partner on board strategy and integration.
$204M
Net-new ACV monetized across three enterprise-software business units through pricing and packaging strategy.
4
Commercial organizations built from zero: customer success, commercial strategy, deal desk, and partnerships.
$2B+
Private-equity transactions on the deal side: structuring, diligence, and value creation through exit.

New-business deal size +110%, upsell +250%, and 200%+ net revenue retention with zero ICP churn, from pricing and packaging redesign.

The Ladder

Three tiers. Same operator.
Increasing commercial altitude.

Every engagement starts where the business actually is, and is built to climb as the commercial problem changes shape, from operational stability to enterprise value.

I

Foundation

Operational Stability

Founder-led software companies without a revenue leader, where the founder still owns sales and the commercial system was never actually built.

  • ICP definition, segmentation & the named-account universe
  • Sales process, stage definitions & exit criteria
  • Pipeline, routing, territory & a forecast you can trust
  • CRM configured to the process, then administered
  • Weekly pipeline review & operating cadence
  • Embedded commercial advisory to the CEO

Outcome A revenue engine a founder can run on, and a CRO's judgment without the full-time hire.

II

Growth

Commercial Discipline

Revenue needs to become repeatable. Deal complexity, pricing pressure, and approval volume have outgrown an improvised motion. This is where the full funnel is owned.

Everything in Foundation, plus

  • Outbound motion: list, channel mix, sequences & qualification
  • Client value model & live business-case support
  • Deal desk: pricing, discount & solution approvals
  • Commercial redlines with your counsel, through signature
  • Packaging, comp & quota design
  • Renewal & expansion deal support

Outcome Higher conversion at every stage, larger deals, faster cycles, and protected margin.

III

Value Creation

Enterprise Value

Series B+, PE-backed, or preparing for a raise or an exit. Leadership or investors need a commercial story that holds up under scrutiny.

Everything in Growth, plus

  • Monetization model: transaction, usage, value, or outcome based
  • Commercial policy, governance & pricing committee
  • KPI architecture & board-reporting cadence
  • Commercial diligence, buy side or sell side
  • Raise readiness & post-acquisition integration

Outcome Revenue growth, margin expansion, retention, and enterprise value.

AI-native commercial systems

We don't implement AI.
We engineer the commercial system around it.

AI-native businesses face commercial questions the last generation never had to answer. How do you price consumption when cost scales with usage? How do you package a product that improves itself? How do you forecast and govern revenue when the unit economics keep moving? We built the GenAI commercial model across a multi-billion-dollar software portfolio, and the commercial engine of an AI-native healthcare company from zero. Engineered, not guessed.

  • Usage & consumption pricing
  • AI packaging & monetization
  • Commercial governance for AI economics
  • Founder-led AI go-to-market

Selected operator work

The model, proven in the seat.

Two commercial systems the founder built and ran himself, before Oak Tree Foundry existed. The same operating model is what clients get.

AI-native healthcare automation

Situation

Product-market fit, but no commercial system. Pricing, packaging, and go-to-market assembled ad hoc.

Problem

Deal size, retention, and forecast credibility were all exposed to a motion that was improvised, not designed.

Approach

Built the commercial function from zero. Engineered value-, transaction-, and outcome-based pricing; stood up deal desk, customer success, and commercial governance.

Result

New-business deal size +110%, upsell +250%, 200%+ NRR with zero ICP churn. Contributed to a $600M exit to New Mountain Capital.

Enterprise IT & security software

Situation

New GenAI capabilities across three business units with no commercial model. Pricing and packaging undefined.

Problem

New AI capability risked being underpriced, mispackaged, and impossible to forecast or govern at scale.

Approach

Architected the GenAI pricing framework, packaging tiers, and discount governance. Launched a partner-led MSSP motion from zero.

Result

$204M net-new ACV over 30 months, including $20M+ from the new partner-led offering.

The operator

Built by someone who has built the machine.

Nick Faber has spent his career engineering commercial systems. Pricing and monetization at ServiceNow across a multi-billion-dollar software portfolio. The commercial operating model of an AI-native healthcare company, from zero through its exit to New Mountain Capital, as CEO operating partner. The deal side of $2B+ in private-equity transactions. In every seat, the operator who built and ran the system, accountable for the number.

Nick on LinkedIn →
Nick Faber, founder of Oak Tree Foundry
  • Commercial value creation
  • Pricing & monetization
  • AI commercialization
  • Partnerships & GTM
  • PE diligence & integration
  • Board-level operating

Why a Commercial Operating Partner

We fill the seat the market leaves empty.

The seat between a strategy firm that diagnoses and leaves, and a full-time executive you hire for one function.

Not a strategy firm.

Strategy firms diagnose and leave. We stay and operate the engine we design, accountable to the outcome, not the deliverable.

Not a RevOps consultancy.

Most RevOps firms come from CRM administration or marketing ops. We bring board-level commercial strategy and PE value-creation experience to the same seat.

Fractional, not overhead.

Commercial diligence runs seven figures for a one-time thesis. A full-time commercial leader is a high six-figure loaded cost, for one company. We're embedded, productized, and accountable across a focused portfolio.

What we believe

A few things we hold to.

  1. The CRM usually isn't the bottleneck.
  2. Pricing decisions compound faster than hiring decisions.
  3. You can't hire your way out of a system problem.
  4. Commercial architecture is a moat. Sales tactics are not.

Questions

For the executive doing the diligence.

What is a Commercial Operating Partner?

An embedded operator who takes ownership of the commercial work that otherwise sits with the CEO: pipeline creation, deal desk, pricing approvals, and contracting through signature. Underneath that, we build the system the work runs on, so the next hire inherits a machine instead of rebuilding one.

How is this different from RevOps?

RevOps administers the tooling. We architect and run the commercial strategy the tooling serves. RevOps comes from CRM. We come from pricing, monetization, and PE value creation, and we stay accountable to revenue, margin, and enterprise value.

When should a founder bring one in?

When the founder still owns sales and the system underneath was never built, or when a scaling org has outgrown improvised pricing and forecasting. Ahead of a raise, a scale phase, or an exit, when the commercial story has to hold up in diligence.

How do engagements work?

We start with a four-week Commercial Operating Assessment: funnel forensics, an inventory of every commercial decision still routed through you, and a sequenced 90-day plan. From there, a monthly operating partnership at a fixed fee, scoped to deliverables and operating cadence, never hours. Three-month engagement, thirty days notice to terminate. Scope climbs the ladder as the commercial problem changes shape.

Who is an ideal client?

Growth-stage and PE-backed software companies, often founder-led or run by a single sales leader, that have product-market fit and are ready to engineer revenue with the same rigor they gave the product. Healthcare AI and AI-native businesses are a particular focus.

Start here

Start with a Commercial Operating Assessment.

Four weeks to a clear read on your commercial system: where revenue is engineered, where it is improvised, and what to build first. You get a commercial constraint map, an inventory of every commercial decision still sitting on you, deal and pricing forensics, and a sequenced 90-day plan with owners.

Book a 30-minute call → nick@oaktreefoundry.com

Or text 925-413-4002, or find Nick on LinkedIn.