You have a real product. What you don't have is a commercial system.

The most common thing I see: a founder with a real product and genuine market interest who can't explain why deals aren't closing.

It's usually not a sales problem. The ideal customer is fuzzy, the sales cycle has never been mapped, and no one has defined what qualified actually means for their specific buyer. I come in and diagnose that before we do anything else. Then we build backwards from a real goal — a launch, a fundraise, a contract — into a plan that actually sequences the work.

I've done this in hard tech, mobility, alternative energy, and government-adjacent markets, where the buyer is complex and the sales cycle is long. I'm also embedded in the Detroit startup ecosystem, which means the introductions I make and the context I bring are grounded in relationships that already exist.

The pattern holds across industries: traction without commercial infrastructure stalls, and the fix is almost always more specific than founders expect.