The Boardman International Blog shares insights from Boardman Members. In this post, Delfin Vassallo shares three discussion points that boards can use to accelerate commercial excellence.

After 25 years working for companies big and small, I have identified one common denominator repeating way too often across many industries and geographies: poor collaboration between areas responsible for creating products and those developing business and final go-to-market strategies.

Delfin Vassallo is a multicultural digital mind who speaks four languages and dreams in five.

While Boards in Europe typically don’t get involved in operational topics, they should empower CEOs to act as the glue connecting all commercial workstreams—from intelligence gathering to business development to go-to-market. When this alignment is missing, great ideas fail to translate into revenue. Achieving Commercial Excellence goes beyond pushing for sales; it means creating an end-to-end process, from concept to launch, where every part of the organisation collaborates seamlessly, guided by shared insights and agile execution.

In defining more accurately what Commercial Excellence could be in today’s fast-changing environment. Here’s my framework suggestion to address fragmentation, slow decision-making, blurred accountability, and inconsistent go-to-market execution.

1. Intelligence Gathering: Turning Market Signals into Actionable Insights

Commercial Excellence begins with a deep understanding of customers and markets. Leading companies maintain a permanent Voice of Customer effort, using structured feedback and trend analysis to identify unmet needs early.

AI and synthetic data now enable firms to scale up research and simulation, creating a comprehensive and realistic picture of their customers and potential markets. These insights feed directly into R&D and Product Management, helping prioritise high-value projects and avoid wasted investment.

When eliminating silos, customer centricity doesn’t stay locked in one department. It becomes the foundation of every strategic decision.

2. Business Development: Converting Insights into Real Business Opportunities

The next step is to translate insights into validated business cases. It requires cross-functional collaboration between sales, marketing, product management, R&D, and external partners.

The Agile methodology, born and widely used by software engineers, offers an attractive way to define, test, and prioritise new ideas quickly. Imagine R&D, Product Management, Sales & Marketing seated at the same table, literally, working in three-month sprints, validating scenarios, identifying quick wins and prioritising the subsequent big bets they should go for, together.

If, on top of that, we put an AI-driven process for business modelling, we could have faster validation and highlight the most promising paths.

3. Go-to-Market: From Strategy to Execution

Once opportunities are validated, execution becomes the critical differentiator. Too often, the final stretch, the “last 100 meters of the race”, is where companies “drop the ball.”

This step is crucial for organisations entering new markets. Aligning global strategies with local needs requires not only company culture fit, but also ensuring regional teams are equipped with the right sales enablement materials addressing what potential customers need and want. The central role of the CEO and leadership is to connect global strategy with local reality, ensuring accountability across functions.

Additionally, AI-powered tools can accelerate this stage by speeding up the creation of sales & marketing assets, refining messaging, and supporting data-informed go-to-market decisions, ultimately leading to a stronger product-market fit.

Three Questions for the Board

1. How effectively are our innovation, business development, and go-to-market teams sharing insights and aligning goals?
2. What role does the CEO play in connecting these workstreams and ensuring end-to-end accountability?
3. How are we leveraging AI and synthetic data to validate opportunities and accelerate our go-to-market cycles?

The Payoff: Agility, Speed, and Scalable Growth

By combining agile methods with AI and synthetic data, companies can significantly reduce go-to-market time, enhance decision accuracy, and foster cross-functional collaboration—building an actual Commercial Excellence engine that drives revenue and profit.

About the Author

Delfin Vassallo, is a business mind who utilises marketing and creative thinking to drive business profits. Delfin has over 25 years of global marketing experience, creating and implementing commercial strategies for industrial and technology-driven sectors. Striving to make brands likeable, trustworthy, and profitable.​ Vassallo has a lengthy background in mentoring and managing marketing, strategy, creative, and customer service teams across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Originally from Mexico, with 18 years of living and working in Finland and experience from multiple Nordic and Global roles. Regularly vlogging on LinkedIn about digital trends, strategy, leadership and board work. Vassallo is a Boardman Member.

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