I was at a major industry conference this week. Two days. Thousands of people. The kind of room where deals get made and relationships get rekindled. And one question came up – not once, not twice, but three separate times from three completely different people:

“Tom, how do I apply your commercial thinking when I’m an employee with a sales target?”

It’s a fair question. Most of what I write is aimed at founders. But a lot of you reading this aren’t founders. You’re commercial directors, heads of sales, account managers, BDMs – people with real responsibility and a number to hit. Wondering whether the frameworks I talk about actually apply to you.

They do. But probably not the way you’d expect.

The target isn’t the problem

Having a sales target doesn’t make you commercial. And not having one doesn’t make you uncommercial.

I’ve worked with founders who are deeply unstrategic – despite owning the business outright – and employed commercial leaders who built things that outlasted them by a decade. The difference isn’t ownership. It’s long-tail thinking.

When I moved into the #2 role – working alongside an MD who had been my biggest competitor for fifteen years – I had a remit, a structure, and yes, performance expectations. What I didn’t have was freedom to do whatever I wanted. Rightly so.

But I could still choose how I approached the work. The target told me what to deliver. It didn’t tell me how to build.

The two modes most people get stuck in

You’ll recognise both of these if you’ve ever worked in sales.

Mode 1: The overpromiser

Every conversation is optimised for the close. Whatever gets the deal over the line gets said. Features that don’t exist yet. Timelines that aren’t realistic. Outcomes the delivery team will quietly wince at when they read the contract. The number gets hit. The client gets disappointed. And somewhere between signature and first invoice, trust quietly leaves the room.

Mode 2: The perpetual qualifier

The overcorrection. So allergic to being pushy that they never quite get to the ask. Brilliant in a room. But the close comes late – sometimes they even talk themselves out of the right deal. I once sat in a meeting where the client had said yes, clearly and unambiguously, and my colleague kept going. We were kicking him under the table. He wasn’t dishonest. He just couldn’t hear anything except his own voice. Good at conversations. Bad at outcomes.

Neither is commercial thinking.

“What does this client actually need to succeed – and how do I make sure we’re the ones helping them get there?”

That question is available to anyone, regardless of who signs their payslip.

What I learned sitting in the commercial seat

When I worked through a post-acquisition integration, I wasn’t the founder. I had a brief, objectives, and a lot of complexity to navigate: two businesses to merge, two cultures to align, two client bases to retain.

What made it work wasn’t the target. It was the decision – made early – to invest in the relationship before the result.

My working relationship with the MD was built on a simple foundation: complementary capability and genuine trust. She brought things I didn’t have. I brought things she didn’t have. And we agreed from day one that ego had no place in the work.

That’s not a soft principle. That’s a commercial strategy.

Because when clients see two people operating like that – each genuinely in service of the outcome and not their own visibility – they trust you differently. They give you more. They stay longer. They refer you. The target gets hit. Not because you chased it. Because you built something worth buying.

What this looks like in practice

One of the people who asked me this question is already doing it. She just didn’t know it yet.

She’s building a community from scratch. Showing up consistently. Putting in the unglamorous work of creating real relationships before there’s any obvious commercial return. A client base that looked sparse twelve months ago is starting to compound. She asked how to apply commercial thinking as an employee. The answer was: you already are.

That’s what the long tail looks like from the inside. Not a strategy deck. Not a pipeline review. Just someone consistently doing the right things for the right people – before the results are visible. Then one day looking up and realising the results are very visible indeed.

Stop asking “how do I close this?” Start asking “what does a good outcome look like for them in twelve months?”

The other answer

What if you’re an employee who isn’t building – you’re surviving? Five years inside a PE-backed business with an earn-out on the table and a culture you’d rather not think about too hard. Hit the number, collect the reward, get out.

I understand why that feels like commercial thinking. It has targets. A plan. A finish line. But it’s the opposite of what I mean.

The long tail only works if you’re building something that compounds. Five years of grinning and bearing it doesn’t compound. It just ends – and you start again from scratch, probably burned out, carrying habits that took years to form.

The question isn’t just “what’s my number?” It’s “what am I building of any value while I’m hitting it?”

The point

Commercial thinking isn’t about whether you own the business. It’s about whether you’re thinking beyond the transaction.

You can have a target and still think in decades. You can have a boss and still build things that last. You can be an employee and still be a genuine commercial leader.

The founders I work with need someone who thinks like that. Most of them have never had it. Maybe that’s the opportunity.