Private Equity
How PE operating partners can evaluate revenue growth consultants
6 mins read
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Name the gap first: a diagnosis, help to implement a plan or more leadership capacity. Each needs a different kind of support.
Ask for evidence from a comparable situation, and check the role the named people played in it.
Meet the people who will do the work, and agree what the management team has to provide.
Agree the baseline, the review rhythm and the internal owner of each workstream before work starts.
Plan the handover from day one, so the capability stays when the consultants leave.
To evaluate revenue growth consultants, start with the job you need done, then judge each firm's evidence against it. Decide whether the portfolio company needs a diagnosis, help to implement a plan or more leadership capacity. Then ask for evidence from a comparable situation, meet the people who will do the work and agree the baseline and review plan before anything is signed.
This guide covers choosing the support. If you still need to find where growth is constrained, start with our guide to identifying revenue growth constraints, then come back to this one.
Is the gap diagnosis, implementation or leadership capacity?
Each gap needs a different kind of help, and job titles won't tell you which one you are buying.
Diagnosis. Nobody agrees why growth is behind plan, or the data doesn't support a clear view. You need an independent, evidence-based answer, quickly.
Implementation. The plan is clear, but the management team lacks the time or expertise to deliver parts of it. You need people who will work alongside the team on agreed workstreams.
Leadership capacity. The business needs someone in an executive seat with authority over the sales organisation and accountability for the number. That is an appointment, interim or permanent, and a different contract from a consulting scope.
Merlin5's private equity work covers the first two: commercial diagnostics, and practical execution support working alongside leadership teams.
Titles vary from firm to firm. A consultant can diagnose, design or help implement an agreed scope, and the contract sets what they are responsible for. An operating partner works within the sponsor's operating model and may support several companies. Ask how much time they can commit and what authority they will have.
McKinsey's June 2026 article on PE value creation draws a similar line. It separates the sponsor's operating resources, which may be spread across several companies, from dedicated transformation capacity inside the company's management, and it stresses clear ownership of each initiative and regular operating reviews.
If the plan itself is in question, our guide to the commercial levers in a value creation plan covers which levers to test before you bring anyone in.
What evidence shows they have done this before?
Ask for evidence from a situation like yours: a similar size, sector, sales model and ownership. It should be evidence the person approving the fee can defend to the relevant decision makers, so check it.
A redacted deliverable from a comparable engagement, such as a diagnostic report or a roadmap.
A reference who can describe the named person's role, as well as the firm's.
The decisions the work led to, and what changed afterwards, with the period it was measured over.
Which figures are targets and which are results. Many case studies quote an ambition. That is fine, as long as it is labelled as one.
Merlin5's own case studies label targets this way. The Littlefish case study covers a Bowmark-backed business and describes a diagnosis and a roadmap in support of its ambition to double in size within three years. The case study presents the doubling as Littlefish's ambition and doesn't report it as a result.
Who will do the work, and what will the company provide?
Meet the people named in the proposal, as well as the partner who pitches. Ask:
Who leads day to day, and how much of their time is committed?
Have they carried a revenue number or run a sales organisation themselves?
What will the management team need to provide: data, interviews, workshop time and a named internal owner?
Who inside the company owns each workstream once it starts?
Put the answers in the proposal, including who inside the portfolio company owns the daily processes, the decision rights and the review rhythm.
McKinsey's playbook for new portfolio company CEOs makes the same point from the management side. It advises understanding what the sponsor and board expect, setting up regular formal and informal reviews, and drawing on operating groups, functional specialists, senior advisers and trusted consultants.
What should the proposal specify before work begins?
A good proposal answers these questions in writing:
The question the work will answer, or the plan it will deliver.
The baseline: today's value for each measure the work is meant to move, and how it is calculated. The four sales velocity drivers give a common starting point: qualified opportunities, average deal value, win rate and cycle length.
What is in scope and what isn't, including the data the team must supply.
Who decides what, and when the work stops or changes direction.
How diagnosis and delivery relate.
On the last point, Merlin5 keeps the two separate. After a Growth Assessor™ diagnostic, whether Merlin5 delivers the plan is a separate decision, made once the findings are in, and some organisations carry out the plan themselves.
How to evaluate revenue growth consultants side by side
Send every shortlisted firm the same questions and compare the answers. The sheet below is illustrative. Add two columns of your own: what is still uncertain after the evidence, and who in your team will review it.
Question | Evidence to request |
|---|---|
Have they handled a comparable situation? | A redacted deliverable and a reference for the named person |
Who will do the work? | Names, roles and committed time |
What must the company provide? | Data, interviews, workshop time and an internal owner |
What will change, and how will we know? | Baseline, measures and review dates |
What stays after they leave? | Handover plan, documents and trained owners |
The sheet has no pass mark. Its job is to show the gaps, so the final decision rests on evidence you can defend.
How will you judge progress?
Agree the review rhythm and the evidence before the work starts. For each workstream, record the baseline, the action, the accountable person, the change you expect to see and anything else that could explain it, such as a new product, a price change or a shift in the market.
Choose early measures that fit the work, such as qualification quality, stage progression or forecast accuracy. Revenue effects can take longer to assess and have many causes. Judge the consultants on what they were contracted to deliver, and keep the investment case's revenue target as a separate measure.
What should stay with the business afterwards?
Plan the handover from the start. By the end, the company should own the process documents, the dashboards and the management routines, and named people should be running them.
The Source 1 Solutions case study shows one sequence: diagnose, then design with the leadership team, then hands-on delivery across process, capability, infrastructure and talent. It also included coaching frameworks and leadership enablement, so the business could keep the work going.
Where to start
Write down the gap: diagnosis, implementation or leadership capacity.
Agree the baseline and the internal owner with the management team.
Send every shortlisted firm the same evaluation sheet, and compare the answers side by side.
Frequently asked questions
Should the firm that diagnoses the problem also fix it?
It can, but agree the two separately. If delivery is agreed before the diagnosis, the recommendation can drift towards what the adviser sells next. Deciding on delivery after the findings lets you judge the proposed work against the diagnosis.
Is a revenue growth consultant the same as an interim CRO?
No. An interim CRO takes an executive role with authority over the sales organisation. A consultant works to an agreed scope alongside the management team. Some firms offer both, so check which one the proposal describes.
How quickly should we see results?
Agree early signs of progress in advance, such as forecast accuracy, pipeline quality or stage conversion, and set the date you will review them. Revenue effects can take longer to assess and have more causes.
What experience should the people doing the work have?
Look for people who have carried a revenue target and run commercial teams themselves, and ask them to show it in the work they propose. Merlin5's partners describe that experience on the About page: carrying revenue targets, managing forecasting pressure and advising private equity firms and portfolio companies.
Sources
McKinsey & Company, "Unlocking full potential: Five practices reshaping PE value creation", 25 June 2026. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/transformation/our-insights/unlocking-full-potential-five-practices-reshaping-pe-value-creation
McKinsey & Company, "A playbook for newly minted private equity portfolio-company CEOs", 24 September 2021. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/private-capital/our-insights/a-playbook-for-newly-minted-private-equity-portfolio-company-ceos
NEXT STEP
Talk to operators who have carried the number
Merlin5's partners have carried revenue targets and advised private equity firms and portfolio companies. Start with a conversation about where the plan is stuck.
Speak To Merlin5
WRITTEN BY
Chris Thomas