Commercial strategy & advisory
We help companies find what is actually blocking growth, then build the commercial engine to get past it.
The premise
They stall because something in the commercial engine has drifted — the positioning no longer matches the buyer, the sales story doesn't land, marketing is producing activity instead of pipeline, or the strongest opportunities are sitting with nobody driving them.
From the inside, that drift is almost impossible to see. Everyone is busy, the numbers are explainable, and the real constraint hides behind a dozen reasonable-sounding ones.
We come in from the outside, find the constraint, and work alongside your team to clear it. Not a report handed over at the end. A working relationship that produces commercial momentum.
What we get asked
If several of those are live questions in your business, that is the conversation we're built for.
The idea behind the name
Ready,
steady,
spark.
A firestarter creates the spark that produces momentum. The collaboration is what turns that momentum into revenue. We work alongside founders, executives, sales teams, marketing teams and partners — not from the outside, handing over recommendations and leaving.
How engagements workWhat we do
Most engagements start in one of these and pull in the others as the real constraint becomes clear. We don't sell a fixed methodology — we go where the revenue problem actually is.
Commercial strategy
Deciding where to point the company before pouring more effort into the current direction. Which segments deserve investment, which opportunities are real, and what the sequence should be.
Sales strategy
The mechanics of converting interest into revenue: who you target, what you say, how the process is built, and where deals are actually being lost.
Marketing strategy
Making sure marketing is built to support commercial objectives rather than run parallel to them — starting with whether the positioning and the value proposition are clear enough to sell against.
Business development & partnerships
The fastest growth often comes through someone else's customer base. Identifying which relationships are worth building, how to structure them, and making the introductions where we can.
Executive advisory & fractional leadership
For leaders who need someone senior to think with — evaluating opportunities, pressure-testing decisions, reviewing the proposal before it goes out. In some engagements this runs deeper, closer to a fractional CRO, CGO or head of business development.
That's normal, and it's usually the first thing worth figuring out. A first conversation costs nothing and generally makes the answer obvious.
Start a conversationHow we work
Our preferred model is a monthly retainer. It gives you ongoing access to senior commercial thinking without the cost or commitment of another executive hire — and it means we're close enough to the business to be useful, not parachuting in for a project and disappearing.
We price on the value of the thinking and the commercial impact, not on hours. What we do not do is open-ended, unlimited availability: every engagement has a defined scope, cadence and set of deliverables, written down before we start. That protects both sides.
The sequence
You tell us what's happening commercially and what you've already tried. We tell you honestly whether we think we can help, and whether we're the right people for it. Sometimes the answer is no, and it's better for everyone that we say so.
A focused look at the engine: positioning, sales story, pipeline, process, marketing alignment, partnerships, and where the real constraint sits. You get a clear written read on what's blocking growth and what we'd do about it — useful whether or not you continue with us.
We agree what we're working on, what gets delivered, how often we meet, how we communicate between meetings, and what sits outside the retainer as a separate project. No ambiguity, no drift.
Scheduled strategy sessions, work on the agreed priorities, review of live opportunities and materials, introductions where they're useful, and access between meetings within the agreed terms. Reviewed on a set cadence so the engagement keeps earning its place.
Scope
The exact mix varies by engagement. This is the shape of it, so you know what you're buying.
Other structures
Some situations call for something else, and we'd rather say so than force the model. Fixed-scope strategic projects for a specific decision or launch. Fractional commercial leadership where a company needs someone embedded for a defined period. Workshops where the goal is getting a leadership team aligned in a room. Performance or success-based structures where they make commercial and legal sense.
What we avoid is low-value hourly billing, for the simple reason that it rewards the wrong thing.
Who we help
We work best with leadership teams who want an outside perspective and are prepared to act on it. The product or service is usually solid. What's missing is the commercial clarity, the engine, or the momentum.
Signals
Where we tend to work
We're deliberately not sector-locked — commercial engines fail in similar ways across industries. That said, this is where we spend most of our time.
Where we're not the right answer
If what you need is execution capacity rather than commercial direction, a specialist agency will serve you better and we'll usually point you toward one. If leadership isn't ready to change anything, no amount of strategy will help. And if the honest answer is that you need a full-time hire rather than an advisor, we'd rather say that in the first conversation than bill you for six months of finding out.
Who we are
Firestarter Collaboration is a two-partner practice. We're not career consultants — we co-founded and still run a B2B revenue business that books qualified sales conversations for enterprise technology companies. That means every piece of advice we give has been tested against our own pipeline first. When we say a positioning won't land or a process won't convert, it's because we've watched it happen at scale.
Firestarter is where we bring that experience to companies who need commercial clarity without another executive on payroll.
The partners
Paul has spent his career on the revenue side of B2B technology — building sales organizations, opening channel and partner relationships, and turning stalled pipelines into forecastable ones. As Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of TechnologyMatch, he built the commercial engine behind a demand-generation business serving enterprise technology vendors and distributors, including some of the largest names in the industry.
He's the partner who'll ask why the deal really died, what the buyer actually heard, and which three accounts deserve all the attention this quarter. He's direct about it, and he's usually right about where the money is.
Tonya is the partner who turns commercial instinct into something a team can actually run. As Co-Founder of TechnologyMatch, she owns the methodology — how buyers are qualified, how conversations are structured, and how a sales motion is documented so it produces the same result on the fiftieth call as it did on the first.
Where Paul sees the opportunity, Tonya builds the system that captures it: the qualification framework, the discovery structure, the messaging that survives contact with a real buyer. If your team knows what to do but not how to do it consistently, she's the one you want in the room.
How we work together
Where growth should come from, which opportunities are real, and what to stop doing. Paul leads this, with Tonya pressure-testing whether the plan can actually be executed.
The sales process, the qualification criteria, the messaging, the playbook. Tonya leads this, with Paul making sure it stays pointed at revenue rather than becoming process for its own sake.
Ongoing sessions, review of live deals and materials, introductions, and the honest outside perspective a leadership team can't give itself. Both of us, on the cadence we agree.
When an engagement needs something we don't do — creative production, recruiting, a specialist in a particular channel — we bring in people we've worked with and trust, and we tell you that's what we're doing. Firestarter is built to stay small at the center and reach wide when it needs to.
Based in
Most of our work happens over video and in your pipeline, not in a conference room. When being in the room matters — a leadership offsite, a critical pitch, a partner negotiation — we travel.
Start a conversationStart a conversation
A first conversation is 45 minutes and costs nothing. Come with the commercial problem as you see it — we'll tell you honestly whether we can help and what we'd do first. A few details up front means we can be useful straight away rather than spending the call on background.
Your email app should have opened with your details filled in and addressed to us. Send it, and we'll come back to you within one business day, usually with a couple of questions and a time to talk.
If nothing opened, email us directly at ignite@firestartercollaboration.com.