Portfolio companies are expected to deliver growth. But ask them which customers they should be serving and how they plan to beat the competition, and the answers get fuzzy fast. Benjamin Maurice has watched this play out for a decade. As founding partner at Benjamin Maurice LLC, a boutique strategy consulting firm, he’s worked with private equity firms and Fortune 500 companies across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The pattern repeats itself everywhere: companies chase too many opportunities and wonder why nothing sticks.
Know Where To Focus
Most portfolio companies don’t lack potential. They lack focus. Maurice puts it simply: “It’s about deciding which customers to serve and how to be the best in the world at serving those customers with specific offerings.” Sounds obvious, right? But walk into most companies and you’ll find teams spread across five, six, sometimes more customer segments. Resources get diluted. Results stay mediocre. His solution cuts against what most executives want to hear. Forget trying to win everywhere. “I recommend identifying two or three high-potential markets or customer segments and going deep.” That means saying no to opportunities that look good on paper but pull focus from where you can dominate. It’s uncomfortable. Nobody likes telling parts of the organization they’re not the priority anymore.
One client came to Maurice chasing growth across five or six different customer segments. The spreadsheets looked busy, but growth stayed flat. Most of those segments had limited potential anyway, but the company kept throwing resources at them. Something had to change. “We helped one of our clients refocus its go-to-market strategy from five or six customer segments, many of which had very limited growth potential, down to two major customer segments.” The company took those resources and put them where they could make a real difference. Three years later, revenue doubled. Not because they worked harder or got lucky. They just stopped wasting energy on markets they couldn’t win.
Understand How To Win
Getting leadership to agree on target markets solves one problem. Then comes the harder part. “Once you’ve aligned your organization on what markets, customers, and offerings to focus on, the next step is determining how to win,” Maurice explains. You need a value proposition that means something. Not marketing fluff, but real competitive advantages backed by the capabilities to deliver. Companies have to get specific here. What makes your offering different? Can you support that operationally? Maurice doesn’t let clients skip the hard questions. “It also means quantifying what investments are required and what return on investment you can expect.” Everyone wants growth, but not everyone wants to fund it properly or wait for results.
Take Ownership
The best strategy document ever written won’t move the needle if leadership doesn’t own it. Maurice has seen too many strategies die in implementation because the team never really bought in. “Throughout this process, organizational buy-in is key. Your company’s leadership team should feel full ownership for the strategy.” This is where things get messy. “Deciding where to play and how to win can be challenging, especially when you don’t have enough data, for example, on the market, customers, or competitive landscape, or when there are many disparate opinions within your organization.” Companies get stuck between incomplete information and internal disagreements. That’s usually when Maurice gets the call.
Maurice brings perspective from working across four continents in both consulting and operating roles. His fluency in French, Mandarin, and English helps when portfolio companies need to coordinate across regions. But more than language skills, he’s seen what works when the pressure’s on. The pitch to private equity investors and corporate executives is straightforward. Growth doesn’t come from doing more things. It comes from doing fewer things better than anyone else. “Together, we can turn potential into performance,” Maurice says. That means hard choices about focus, honest conversations about capabilities, and leadership teams willing to own the outcome.
Connect with Benjamin Maurice on LinkedIn to explore strategic growth solutions and leadership alignment.
