Martel

WHAT I BUILD

Commercial Engine

Build the commercial engine that turns your growth thesis into volume you can predict, from referral demand to payer economics to the next market or service line.

For PE-backed healthcare platforms where the sales motion that got the company here can’t produce growth you can predict.

What’s actually going on

The board is asking where growth is coming from and the honest answer involves a lot of qualifiers. The CRM is a graveyard. The forecast is whatever the head of sales feels that week. Revenue is growing but no one can attribute it. The pipeline depends on relationships one person manages and goes opaque when that person is in a meeting.

The growth plan assumed commercial machinery the platform does not have yet. There are partnerships, channels, and segments the thesis named, but no intake, no qualification, and no reporting underneath them. There are markets and service lines the thesis named too, and the platform still is not in them, because no one has built the path. And the revenue the platform already earns is under-reimbursed: payer contracts nobody owns, renewals nobody calendars, a payer mix nobody watches. Every win depends on someone's heroics. Nothing is repeatable, and the sponsor knows it.

How I help

I come in to build the commercial engine with your team. ICP definition first, then the intake and qualification logic, then the pipeline design and reporting cadence the sponsor and board can read. When the next move is into a new market or service line, I build that path too: market and service-line scoring, then the entry pathway itself, whether that is a new market, a new service line, an affiliation structure, a de novo, or a PSA. When the wound is payer economics, I build that machinery as well: the contract inventory, the renewal calendar, the rate strategy, and the path to risk. The deliverable is the engine running inside the business, with the team trained to feed it and read it.

Depending on what is underneath, the work spans ICP definition, BD infrastructure with source tracking and conversion metrics, referral and retention design, payer economics (rates, mix, capture, and the path to risk), commercial team structure, market and service-line scoring, the entry pathways that grow the footprint, and the commercial operating cadence that ties it together and rolls up into your operating cadence so the board reads one number.

I build inside the pipeline reviews and commercial cycles you already run. The BD and commercial teams are in the room for it, so they own the engine when I leave.

How we’d actually work

Two to three days a week, embedded with your commercial leadership. Three to twelve months for the core build, longer if the build spans multiple channels, segments, or markets. Always with a scheduled end and a real handoff to your head of commercial, BD lead, and operations. Your team runs the cadence with me before I leave. The commercial cadence runs without me. I take two platforms at a time, which keeps me present in each engagement.

I don't show up with a pre-built scope. Every engagement starts with the Value Lever Diagnostic: I talk to the BD and commercial leaders, sit in pipeline reviews, and look at what's happening in the CRM, then come back with the sized answer: what to build, in what order, with what investment, and whether I'm the right person to do it.

When this tends to be the right call

A few moments where this work shows up:

• The board update on growth sounds like the same aspirational list as last quarter.

• The sales motion that got the platform here can't produce growth you can predict.

• Revenue is growing but no one can attribute which channel produced it.

• The pipeline lives in one person's head and goes dark when that person is busy.

• The platform is under-reimbursed, the payer mix is drifting, or no one owns the contracts it signs.

• You know expansion is next and can't say which market or service comes first.

• The thesis named markets or service lines the platform still hasn't entered.

COMMERCIAL ENGINE
The commercial engine
Organic top-line growth: referral and acquisition systems, the commercial team, new-market entry, new service lines, and payer economics: rates, mix, capture, and the path to risk.
PE-backed multi-site physician platform
Growth Engine Build
Commercial operating system on top of four affiliation pathways
Platform grew from 16 to 36 practices, 100 to 400+ providers, $50M to $100M+ revenue. One commercial operating system across intake, routing, pipeline, and capacity planning.
PE-backed multi-site physician platform
Affiliation Pathway Build
Addressable market expanded from one segment to the full landscape
Addressable market expanded from one physician segment to the full independent practice landscape. Two distinct pathways, both generating consistent deal flow after launch.
Payer-backed MSO platform
Business Development System Build
Commercial engine built from zero and validated through a three-market pilot
All five BD domains built from fragmented baseline to operational maturity. Platform grew 97 to 170 providers during the engagement.
PE-backed multi-site physician platform
Clinically Integrated Network Build
Partnership rejected, partner became competitor. Built the growth engine they wouldn't.
Anchor payer contract secured. 400+ providers and ~28,000 attributed commercial lives reached through a pathway that didn't exist before.
PE-backed multi-site physician platform
Market Entry Strategy Build
Regional thesis converted into executable market blueprint
Platform expanded from 1 market to 4. 20 practices added, 200+ providers, $50M in incremental revenue over three years.
PE-backed multi-site physician platform
Medicaid Capability Build
Medicaid capability built across nine practices in seven months
$1.4M run-rate revenue, $800K EBITDA, and an entire pediatrics practice category newly accessible as M&A targets.

Where is the platform stuck?

Sponsor asking where growth is coming from and your answer involves a lot of qualifiers? Tell me about the platform and what the gap is.

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