Revenue Builders · 3 Sep 2026 · From the week of 31 August
Strategy That Teams Actually Execute with Dr. Chuck Bamford
These are notes on the conversation, checked against its transcript. The episode itself has the full discussion.
In brief
Dr. Chuck Bamford, managing partner at Bamford Associates and adjunct strategy professor at Duke Fuqua and Notre Dame Mendoza, joins hosts John Kaplan and John McMahon for this replay of the Revenue Builders podcast. The conversation covers how strategy combines table-stakes execution with a few true competitive advantages, how to choose and test a competitive set, and how to translate corporate KPIs into daily activities, compensation and customer conversations. The main argument is that many execution failures come from misalignment, especially compensation plans and treating strategy as an annual event rather than an ongoing process.
For founders
- Strategy has two parts: matching competitors on table-stakes basics so customers are not frustrated, and building two or three real advantages that customers would choose you for.
- Build your competitor list from the companies you most often win against or lose to, plus proxies for unusual approaches, and keep it to five or six.
- Treat a claimed differentiator as orthodox if more than one competitor does it as well as you, and as not a true advantage if a competitor could copy it within a week.
- Narrow your ideal customer profile with explicit criteria, as the packaging client in the episode did when its hit rate rose from about 5% to 41%.
- Start strategy from how customers see their options, including substitutes and doing nothing, and check it with clients rather than deciding it in a room.
For revenue leaders
- Base rep compensation on the activities you want reps to perform, and treat missed KPIs as a flaw in the leader's design.
- Convert corporate KPIs into specific daily activities for each role, since Chuck argues that leadership's goals are hypotheses about which activities will move those KPIs.
- Watch for reps who hit output KPIs by over-promising or frustrating customers, which Chuck saw in one global sales team under pressure to hit their KPIs or be out.
- Make sure reps can use each differentiator in discovery to shape buyer decision criteria, and confirm the customer agrees it solves a pain point.
- Bring sales, marketing, product and customer success into strategy sessions, with as many layers as possible and leaders willing to hear hard truths.
What was said 22, most useful first
Build the competitor list from bump competitors and proxies, and keep it to five or six companies. Listen
Chuck calls the companies you win against, lose to, or meet most often bump competitors, and adds proxies for companies doing something unique. He says to confirm the list with customers and not to take more than five or six, because too many competitors will overwhelm the analysis.
“So I always start with what we call bump competitors, right?”
A differentiator is not rare if more than one competitor does it as well as you. Listen
Chuck's rule of thumb is that if only one other company does something as well, it is still relatively rare, but if more than one does, it is orthodox. Orthodox things should be done well but not better than others, and the team should put its money, time and attention into the true separators.
“my rule of thumb is if one other company is doing it just as good as me, still pretty rare, but if more than one is, then it's orthodox.”
Convert leadership's KPIs into the specific activities each role should perform, because leadership's plans are hypotheses about what will move those KPIs. Listen
Chuck says leadership believes investments and employee activities will move KPIs but rarely defines those activities or turns KPIs into activity metrics. He gives the example of a fry clerk at McDonald's who cannot see how the job ties to strategy, and says this conversion is hard work that many leaders skip or cannot do.
“one of the big disconnects in business is that everything that leadership does is hypothesis.”
Base compensation on the activities you want reps to perform, and treat missed KPIs as a flaw in the leader's design. Listen
Chuck says he frustrates clients by insisting that compensation be tied to the activities the company wants employees to do. If those activities do not produce the KPIs, he says it is the leader's fault for designing them, and he contrasts this with telling reps they must sell a set dollar amount each month.
“the compensation needs to be based on the activities that you want those employees to do.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Narrowing a generic ideal customer profile to explicit criteria lifted one packaging client's hit rate from about 5% to 41%. Listen
Chuck says the client pitched whoever reached out, with a hit rate of about 5% on the proposals it made. He worked with it to define which customers were poor fits and which needed the product and would pay, then had students at Notre Dame build a precise prospect list, and three years later the sales team's hit rate was 41%.
“They had about a 5% hit rate on their, on the one they tried to pitch.”
Listen to the episode Pipeline & demand generation Link to this
Strategy has two halves: avoid frustrating customers on table-stakes basics, and build two or three real competitive advantages. Listen
Chuck says half of strategy is matching competitors on the ordinary things customers expect, such as billing, invoicing and response speed. The other half is two or three true advantages that customers would choose you for. He says a company should be able to tell a customer face to face why they should buy from it.
“Half of strategy is not frustrating your customers, so half of strategy is going through the orthodox table stake, things that we do day in and day out, and ensuring that we're not frustrating our customers relative to what they could get with competitors.”
Table-stakes capabilities need to sit at roughly the competitive median before differentiators can separate you. Listen
Chuck says a company that is below its competitors on basics like billing, invoicing and responsiveness will frustrate customers, and he uses restaurant and bank analogies to make the point. Only once those basics are at median do differentiators have an effect.
“But those table stake things all have to be relatively at median for us to then have cool things that will really separate us.”
A real advantage is one you can tell a customer, face to face, as the reason to buy from you, and have the answer be true. Listen
Chuck says a real advantage is one you can state directly to a buyer in the form 'you should buy from me because', and the reason must be real. He says figuring out what those advantages are and aligning the organisation around them constitutes strategy.
“And I always tell people you have to be able to go eyeball to eyeball with the customer and say, you should buy from me because. And it'd be real.”
Strategy cannot be built by sitting in a room, because it has to start from how customers see their options. Listen
Chuck argues that customers begin by seeing all their possibilities, including substitutes and not buying at all, so a company's comparison should start there. He says that view then has to be validated with clients so the company does not fool itself.
“I think my take is generally we cannot do strategy by sitting in a room.”
Find out why competitors win business rather than how large they are. Listen
Chuck says he starts by asking the team who it wins against, who it loses to, and which companies act as proxies for doing something special, then sends people out to research them. He says he is stunned by how little executives know about their competitors, and he does not care about competitors' headcount or revenue.
“I don't care about how many employees they have or what their revenue figures are. What I care about is why do they win business?”
Buyers quickly narrow their comparison to three to five competitors. Listen
Chuck cites research he says covered both B2B and B2C buying and found little difference between them. He says the company's aim is to make sure it is among those three to five.
“Most buyers, whatever those are, relatively quickly narrow down to three to five that they're going to compare.”
If a competitor could take a capability away within a week, it is not a competitive advantage. Listen
Chuck says a key test is the runway, meaning how long a competitor would need to neutralise the capability, and he distinguishes between something merely differentiated and a true advantage. He also says the substitutes for each advantage should be considered carefully.
“You come up with something really cool that a competitor can take away from you in a week. It's not competitive advantage.”
Judge a competitive advantage by whether it lets you charge more, cost less to deliver, or win customers away from competitors. Listen
Chuck says value can be assessed in three ways. The company can charge more, which he calls his personal favourite. It can cost less to deliver for various reasons, which lets it earn a better margin at the same price. Or, which he calls the big one, customers will go past competitors and buy from the company because of the advantage.
“And it's either I can charge more, my personal favorite, by the way, or it costs less for various reasons”
Pressure from output KPIs alone can lead reps to promise anything or frustrate customers to close deals. Listen
Chuck says that when he asked a global sales team of about 260 people what they were measured on, many described behaviour that hurts the strategy. Some promise anything to get a sale, and others frustrate customers, because they have to hit their KPI or they are out.
“Some of them are promising anything they want to, anything they can promise to get.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Compensation plans drive behaviour, so pay that is misaligned with corporate goals will override them. Listen
John McMahon describes, from his time as a first-line sales manager at a large company, ignoring internal requests that did not connect to his pay, which rewarded only what his salespeople sold. He says he asked each requester how the request would help his salespeople sell more, and if they could not answer, it was not a priority.
“they don't understand when you put these compensation plans in place, that drives behavior.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
A nonprofit client grew from 6.8 million to 42 million on its annual figure after aligning everyone around one clear focus on what it does well. Listen
Chuck says the client had been doing good work for a long time but lacked focus, and on a second engagement its employees and volunteers were all saying the same thing about what the organisation focused on and what separated it. He says donations poured in as a result, and he uses this to argue that companies should focus on implementation.
“they went from 6.8 million to 42 million in annual.”
Put as many people and levels as possible into strategy sessions, and ask them to set aside being offended. Listen
Chuck tells leadership to include as many people and layers as they can stomach. He opens sessions by asking everyone to reserve their right to be offended, so that what is wrong and what separates the company can be discussed without it becoming about egos.
“I need you to put as many people in that room as you can stomach.”
Chuck has turned down engagements where the CEO or executive is not open and transparent about what is going on. Listen
Chuck says he does not believe strategy work succeeds when the leader cannot be open about what is happening in the business, so he has declined clients on that basis. He is describing a condition he applies before taking on work.
“We've turned down clients where I just don't feel like the CEO or the executive can be open and transparent to what's going on.”
For culture, what matters to strategy is whether the values enable strategic change, and aligned values let change happen quickly. Listen
Chuck says he does not much care what a company's values are, only whether they enable strategic change. When people are aligned he can make a strategic change fairly quickly, and he argues speed wins because outmanoeuvring competitors to a new position is how you win. Where values conflict, change is very difficult.
“All I care about with values culture is does it enable strategic change or not?”
Culture is people executing on the knowledge and skills a company gives them, so it should be built on those first. Listen
Kaplan describes a sequence in which companies first give people the knowledge they need to compete and separate from competitors, then invest in their skills, and then hold them accountable, so that character becomes culture. He presents this as the link between culture and strategy.
“When companies provide their people with the knowledge that they need to be able to compete and separate themselves from the competition, they invest in the skills and their ability to do it.”
During an economic slowdown, reset strategy only if the advantages no longer hold, and watch rather than panic at competitive moves. Listen
Chuck says a company should hold its line in turmoil and reset only if it no longer believes its advantages are still advantages. He ties real resets to big discontinuities such as a recession or a pandemic, and says companies should watch, observe and change in response to ordinary competitive moves, but not panic.
“we shouldn't panic. We should watch, observe change but not panic.”
A differentiator reaches the buyer only when reps can use it to shape decision criteria, and the customer confirms it solves a pain point. Listen
Kaplan says a differentiator has to be taken down to the three-foot conversation, where reps know how to influence the buyer's decision criteria and use discovery questions designed to set traps for competitors. He says the test is whether the customer acknowledges that the differentiator solves one of their pain points and creates value, and without that the path is not finished.
“you have to get customer acknowledgement that your differentiation again is solving one of their pain points and creating value for the customer.”