In a recent episode of Dream and Soar with Chuck and Friends, Chuck sat down with Craig Levinsohn, Chief Strategy & Revenue Officer at Chief Outsiders, to unpack one of the most pressing questions in private equity today:

“How can portfolio companies achieve their next phase of growth—and do it predictably, consistently, at scale, and profitably?”

Craig introduced a system that’s helping answer that question across more than 30 PE-backed companies: Profit GPS™, a proven strategy and execution framework that translates revenue and margin goals into detailed, coordinated, and measurable action plans across the business.

The episode also featured a spotlight on Concord Servicing, a portfolio company that used Profit GPS to align its go-to-market efforts, strengthen its operating model, and chart a clear path to exponential annual growth.

Why Predictable Growth is so Hard to Achieve

Even with compelling market opportunities and capital support, many portfolio companies struggle to grow with consistency. Craig highlighted four common obstacles:

1. Revenue Volatility: Unpredictable and inconsistent performance undercuts valuations, delays exits and threatens leadership confidence.

2. Siloed Execution: Sales, marketing and operations strategies and key initiatives aren’t aligned to shared financial outcomes.

3. Lack of Prescriptive Playbooks: Sales reps are handed goals—but not clear, step-by-step paths to achieve them.

4. Low Win Rates & Long Sales Cycles: Imprecise targeting and poor deal execution jeopardize performance.

The private equity industry is actively responding. The 2024 BDO Private Equity Survey, which gathered insights from nearly 700 U.S. fund managers and portfolio CFOs, found that PE firms are now emphasizing margin improvement, sales enablement, and operational alignment as key value creation levers.

As Bain & Company’s 2024 Private Equity Outlook put it: “Value creation in today’s climate requires deeper operational execution and better forecasting—not just traditional financial engineering.”

Introducing Profit GPS: A Strategy and Execution Framework for Scalable Growth

To solve these challenges, Craig developed Profit GPS—a system designed for mid-sized, growth-oriented companies, including those in PE portfolios, that need to deliver consistent, scalable, and profitable growth.

At the heart of the system is this principle: Deconstruct overall revenue and margin targets into the key operational levers that drive success.

Those levers—such as deal types and sizes, segment strategies, deal and opportunity volumes, historical win rates, and sales cycle timing—are used to build a model that guides execution across every function.

The Profit GPS model becomes the financial and operational blueprint that aligns sales, marketing, operations, and finance to a shared roadmap—and informs detailed rep-level sales plans, marketing programs, and resource allocation.

How Profit GPS Works

Step 1: Set Realistic, Defensible Financial Goals

Most companies still plan top-down: “last year plus 20%.” Profit GPS flips that on its head by building forecasts grounded in:

• Market trends and demand signals
• Team capacity and sales productivity
• Historical conversion rates and sales velocity
• Competitive intensity
• Pipeline health and timing
• And other factors…

The result is a target that’s not only achievable but also tightly linked to operational inputs and constraints.

Step 2: Break Down the Goal into Actionable Levers

Once the overall financial targets are set, Profit GPS breaks them down across a set of key levers that ultimately drive success. These are some of the ways companies are able to operationalize their goals with precision:

• Customer type (new customer acquisition vs. expansion)
• Industry or segment
• Deal types, sizes and deal volumes
• Opportunity volume required to hit deal targets (based on historical win rates)
• Sales cycle length to ensure timing aligns with in-year revenue targets

This reverse-engineering approach improves forecasting accuracy and gives leaders visibility into what needs to happen—and when—to stay on track or adjust early.

Step 3: Align Teams with Execution-Ready Plans

With the model complete, Profit GPS supports the creation of detailed Sales Rep Plans that directly ladder up to the overall financial model. These plans serve as the tactical bridge between strategy and day-to-day execution.

Here are a sample of some of the key components typically included in each plan:

• Individual revenue and margin goals
• Deal and opportunity targets by segment and customer type
• Pipeline development timelines based on sales cycle dynamics
• Named new and expansion accounts based on ICP and wallet share
• Marketing initiatives mapped to rep-level priorities and needs

This framework allows sales managers and reps to collaborate around the specific levers that drive performance—not just high-level quotas. It also enables more granular reporting and forecasting, giving leadership better visibility into revenue and margin performance.

With this level of precision and coordination, organizations can make faster, smarter adjustments when threats to the plan emerge—or to capitalize on new opportunities.

As the Churchill Asset Management 2025 PE Sentiment Survey found, PE leaders are increasingly focused on execution discipline and pipeline management as macro conditions demand tighter control. Profit GPS enables both.

Concord Servicing: A Blueprint for Predictable Growth

To demonstrate the impact of Profit GPS, Craig shared the story of Concord Servicing, a PE-backed company navigating a transition between PE owners. Concord’s goals were clear:

• Improve revenue forecasting and margin performance
• Align GTM functions to a shared strategy
• Build a repeatable growth planning and reporting process

With Profit GPS, Concord:

• Clarified growth targets by customer and product segment
• Built a detailed strategic revenue and margin playbook using the Profit GPS tool
• Deployed aligned sales and marketing plans across the team (aligned to the revenue and margin playbook)
• Established reporting, quarterly reviews and playbook updates to drive ongoing results

As Sean O’Neill, Concord’s President and CSO, said:

“Profit GPS made revenue an organizational goal—not just a sales goal. The model is repeatable, transferable, and gets better every quarter.”

The outcome: A confident roadmap to support Concord’s aggressive growth goals—built on alignment, accountability, and execution.

Why PE Firms Should Care

The McKinsey Global Private Markets Review 2025 makes one thing clear: GPs and LPs are demanding faster time-to-value and more consistent performance from their portfolio companies.

Profit GPS compresses time-to-impact by:

• Aligning teams in just 4–6 weeks
• Sharpening forecasting accuracy
• Enabling prescriptive sales planning
• Supporting scalable, margin-aware execution
• Driving shared accountability across the C-suite
• Providing visibility and agility to respond quickly to changing conditions

It’s not just a spreadsheet. It’s not just a strategy. It’s a system that brings operational discipline to revenue generation.

Ready to Build a Predictable Growth Engine?

If you're a private equity firm leader, running a portfolio company, or are a privately held business aiming for your next phase of growth—Profit GPS can help.

📞 Schedule a 30-minute strategy session with Craig Levinsohn to learn how Profit GPS can turn your growth goals into a roadmap for execution

Watch the full Dream & Soar episode: