Commercial Operations · GTM Strategy · AI

DAVID
HOPPER

I work on commercial operations — the unglamorous infrastructure stuff that determines whether a business grows on purpose or just gets lucky. This site is where I share tools and ideas I'm working on.

Building Thinking

David Hopper

Chattanooga, TN

◆ PE-Backed Manufacturing ◆ Commercial Excellence ◆ Revenue Operations ◆ AI Adoption & Transformation ◆ GTM Infrastructure ◆ CS Operations ◆ Marketing Ops ◆ CRM Architecture ◆ PE-Backed Manufacturing ◆ Commercial Excellence ◆ Revenue Operations ◆ AI Adoption & Transformation ◆ GTM Infrastructure ◆ CS Operations ◆ Marketing Ops ◆ CRM Architecture

About

A bit about me

I've spent most of my career on a fairly specific problem: why do smart companies with good products still struggle to grow predictably. The answer is usually somewhere in the plumbing. Broken pipelines, informal pricing, marketing and sales rowing in different directions.

I've worked on this across a pretty wide range of contexts — PE-backed manufacturing at PlayCore, global nonprofit at Compassion International, regulated services at Stericycle, CPG at Kraft Heinz, and earlier stints at Deloitte, Golin, and ProAssurance.

The stuff on this site is me thinking out loud — tools I've built to test ideas, frameworks I've found useful, writing about things I keep running into at work.

Industries

Manufacturing & Industrials
Global Nonprofit
Regulated Waste & Compliance
CPG / FMCG
Professional Services
Specialty Insurance

Environments

PE-backed portfolio companies
Publicly traded corporations
Global nonprofit at scale
Big Four consulting
Integrated agency
Early-stage ventures

$1B+ Revenue Environments

4

Global Reach

25+

countries of operational scope

Building

Building

Simplified, standalone versions of tools and systems built in real contexts — integration dependencies removed, proprietary data scrubbed, logic anonymized.

GTM Coverage Model Designer

Put in your revenue target, deal size, win rate, margin, churn, and contract length. Get back a recommended team structure, pipeline requirement, CAC ceiling, and flags for where the math breaks down.

Deal Diagnostic

Win / Loss Analyzer

Walk through a deal — champion strength, response quality, process discipline, pricing position — and get a verdict, pattern flags, and specific playbook recommendations.

Commercial Maturity Scorecard

20 questions across the five things that tend to break first in a commercial org. Takes about 8 minutes. Shows you where you're leaking value.

Portfolio Assessment

Churn & Expansion Scorecard

Score multiple accounts across health and expansion signals, then see the full portfolio plotted on a 2x2 matrix with a recommended play for each quadrant.

GTM Org Designer

Two modes: build a commercial org from scratch based on your stage and motion, or diagnose accountability gaps in the one you have.

Thinking

Thinking

Who Actually Decides?

Decision authority in PE-backed companies is rarely as clear as the governance documents suggest. The ambiguity is structural, and it compounds under pressure.

The Distance Between Strategy and Tuesday

Most organizations are reasonably good at strategy and reasonably good at execution. The problem is the translation layer between them.

Start With the Behavior, Not the Metric

Most BI projects fail because teams skip the design brief. Define the decision or behavior change first, then build backward to the dashboard.

The AI Transformation Paradox

Executives who want AI transformation often resist the foundational investments — data, process documentation, communication habits — that would make transformation possible.

Marketing's Real Job

Marketing gets perceived as content and creative because that's often what it's designed to be. Pricing strategy, sales enablement, and product direction are where the function actually earns its seat.

Designing Enablement for the Rep in Front of You

Most sales enablement programs are designed by people who understand learning, but not what it's like to carry a quota. That gap shows up in adoption, ramp time, and behavior change that doesn't stick.

The Priming Window

The best reps I've worked with were reaching buyers 12–18 months before any formal process started. This is my attempt to explain why that works and how to build it into a system.

GTM Operating Model Teardown

Two fictional-but-realistic company teardowns — a PE-backed manufacturer and a scaling SaaS CS org. What's broken, why, and what I'd fix first.

Field Case Study

Deal Memo: Commercial Transformation

A writeup of a commercial transformation I led, structured the way a PE firm would want to read it. Including what didn't work.

Contact

Say
hello.

If something here resonated or you want to compare notes on commercial ops, I'm easy to reach.

[email protected] LinkedIn 734-968-3262