Scaling the Commercial Engine

When a business doubles ARR in a year, it’s usually a sign of two things: strong product–market fit and a commercial engine working hard under the surface. Summize had both, a high-velocity sales and marketing operation split across Manchester and Boston, a steady quarterly ARR uplift, and a clear ambition to keep pushing.

But even great teams hit growing pains.

As Summize ramped up its GTM investment, the leadership team wanted to make sure the engine underneath was running as efficiently and consistently as possible.

That’s where we came in, not to change direction, but to help sharpen what was already working, supporting the team through our wider Value Creation work with portfolio companies.

We ran a deep-dive RevOps review spending time with every part of Summize’s commercial funnel, Marketing, the SDR team, sales reps, leadership and operation. The goal wasn’t to point at problems, but to understand why any operational problems existed and what needed to change to support the next stage of growth.

A few things were clear:

• Reps were operating differently, and the top performers were outpacing the bottom by a high margin
• Territory structures were complex and ICP needed clearer refinement
• Lead handling could be tighter and faster
• Pipeline stages and criteria needed clearer definitions
• Tooling decisions (Gong, Planhat, AI tooling) needed a stronger operational foundation beneath them

In classic scale-up fashion, Summize was doing a lot right, but not all of it in the same way.

We created a practical, prioritised plan built around:

• A clear sales playbook
  Taking what the top performers were doing and making it repeatable.
• Sharper territories
  So sales effort goes where it delivers value.
• Stronger pipeline management
  Clear criteria for how deals move, forecast, and convert.
• Cleaner, more automated lead handling
  Faster speed-to-lead, fewer manual steps.
• A centralised RevOps function
  To bring consistency to processes, reporting and tooling.
• A CRM clean-up roadmap
  So new tools (Gong, Planhat) land on clean, reliable data.

None of this was about adding friction. It was about giving Summize the ability to scale on purpose, not just in motion.

Fast growth is great. Predictable, operationally sound growth is better. Strengthening consistency, clarity and focus across the GTM engine gives Summize:

• improved forecast accuracy
• more repeatable performance
• higher win rates
• less wasted effort
• a commercial structure that scales with the business

Summize is a company with clear momentum. This work makes sure that momentum compounds into long-term value, not operational drag.

“YFM helped us take a fast-growing GTM operation and make it sharper, clearer and far more scalable. Their perspective cut through the noise and gave us a practical roadmap we could act on straight away.”  – Laura Proctor, Chief Marketing Officer, Summize