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 problem across a pretty wide range of contexts — PE-backed portfolio companies, global nonprofits, regulated services, CPG, and professional services. The environments are different. The plumbing problems are remarkably similar.

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.

Calculator · Capital Equipment

Installed Base Revenue Modeler

Model aftermarket revenue opportunity from a known installed base of capital equipment. Quantify annual leakage to third-party MRO and generate a prioritized intervention model by service urgency and contract value.

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?

Neither party wants to be the one who makes it weird. So both perform alignment while privately disagreeing. The org absorbs the cost.

The Two Operating Systems Problem

Work happens in one system. It gets reported from another. The translation layer between them is where accountability goes to die.

Start With the Decision, Not the Dashboard

The question isn't what to put on the dashboard. It's what decision needs to get better, and what would have to be visible for that to happen.

The AI Adoption Problem Isn't About AI

The people who approve AI investments are almost never the people who'd have to change their behavior for AI to work. That's the real problem.

Marketing's Real Job

Whether marketing operates above the content-and-creative level is almost entirely a function of what the organization has decided to ask of it.

Ramp Time Is a Systems Problem

When a new rep takes nine months to reach productivity instead of four, the diagnosis is usually wrong hire or slow learner. It's almost never that.

The Priming Window

The best reps reach buyers 12–18 months before any formal process starts. Here's why that works and how to build it into a motion.

GTM Operating Model Teardown

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

Deal Memo: Commercial Transformation

A commercial transformation writeup structured the way a PE firm reads 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