The Organic Growth Playbook PE Doesn't Have.
You have playbooks for financial engineering, operational improvements, and bolt-on acquisitions. But the fourth lever, organic revenue growth, is where assumptions replace rigor.
Ed Marsh brings process engineering, empirical measurement, and industrial sales expertise to the one part of the value creation bridge most PE firms can't build on their own.
Industrial Revenue Growth
in a Zero Trust & Zero Click World
Buyers are 70% through their journey before they talk to a rep. SEO is broken. Form-fill models are dead. Trust is at all-time lows. You need a new one.
Zero Trust
Widespread skepticism toward corporations, media, and institutions has fundamentally changed how industrial buyers evaluate vendors. Buyers trust peers, podcasts, and firsthand experience, not website copy.
Building trust requires transparency, empirical credibility, and authentic expertise demonstrated through channels buyers already consume.
Zero Click
Google keeps users on-page with AI Overviews. ChatGPT and Perplexity answer without linking. Organic traffic is in secular decline. The SEO-to-form-fill model that drove industrial marketing for a decade is broken, and it's not coming back.
The website's role shifts from top-of-funnel lead gen to bottom-of-funnel conversion.
Is This You?
Ed works with lower-middle and middle-market industrial manufacturers ($25M–$250M revenue), adjacent companies in the manufacturing ecosystem, and the private equity sponsors that own them.
For Private Equity Sponsors
Your portfolio's organic growth is the blind spot in your value creation bridge. You have playbooks for financial improvements, operational efficiencies, and inorganic growth. But organic revenue growth? That's where deals stall and IRR targets slip.
- IRR targets in jeopardy from slow organic growth
- Bolt-on acquisitions underperforming on revenue
- Boards and lenders losing confidence
- Diligence missing whether sales team can execute
- Sales leadership churn at portfolio companies
- Unreliable forecasts you can't take to LPs
Managing Partners, Principals, Operating Partners: anyone responsible for portfolio value creation and organic growth execution.
For Portfolio Company Leadership
Your sponsor expects EBITDA growth your sales team hasn't delivered. The board is asking hard questions. Your marketing feels like 2015. You're unsure if it's people or process.
- EBITDA growth inadequate: you don't know why
- Not creating organic growth with new logos
- High sales turnover, poor hiring track record
- Inbound lead flow falling, marketing less effective
- 3+ years since transaction, 3 or less to target exit
Portco CEOs, CFOs, and boards wrestling with the gap between sponsor's revenue plan and the sales team's capability to deliver.
For Privately Held Manufacturers
The market has shifted beneath you. What built your company (founder-led sales, trade shows, reputation) isn't enough when buyers research anonymously and competitors are being professionalized by PE-backed operators.
- Leads drying up from traditional channels
- Complex sales with large buying teams, long cycles
- Difficulty hiring salespeople who can actually sell
- Marketing that hasn't evolved with buyer behavior
- Preparing for a potential transaction or succession
Business owners, CEOs, VP Sales at family-owned or privately held industrial companies with $25M–$250M revenue and complex B2B sales.
The Right Fit Matters.
Ed doesn't work with everyone. Here's how to know if a conversation is worth your time.
Ed Is a Fit If You…
Ed Is Not a Fit If You…
They Have Playbooks for Three of Four Levers.
Organic Growth Isn't One of Them.
Every PE firm has a waterfall slide: financial improvements, operational improvements, inorganic growth, and organic growth. They have proven playbooks for the first three.
Two Systems. Every Blind Spot Covered.
Ed's core diagnostic and improvement frameworks: the foundation everything else connects to.
Quality of Sales
Empirically quantify sales team strengths and weaknesses at individual and aggregate levels. This is Ed's core framework.
Overall Revenue Effectiveness™ (ORE)
Comprehensive diagnostic for mid-size industrial manufacturers. Being revised to include AI capabilities.
Every Blind Spot Has a System to Fix It.
Each addresses a specific blind spot preventing predictable, scalable revenue growth.
Latest
Horizontal feeds from Ed's channels and curated industry sources.
Explore the Thinking
Ed Marsh
Ed was going to be an architect, before he was going to be an engineer, before he graduated from Johns Hopkins, before he was an Army Infantry Officer (Airborne Ranger), before he set B2B industrial sales records, before he was partners with a German capital equipment manufacturer, before he founded a distribution company for industrial products in India, until he concluded that managing operational details wasn't what he enjoyed and started helping others.
Today, Ed works exclusively with lower-middle and middle-market industrial manufacturers and their private equity sponsors to build predictable, scalable organic revenue growth.
Talk to Ed About Your Organic Growth
Sharp diagnostic questions. An honest read on whether Ed can help, and if he cannot, who can.
An honest read on your organic growth.
No pitch deck. No proposal cycle. No follow-up automation. Ed asks sharp diagnostic questions about your organic growth challenge and gives you an honest read on what is actually happening.
- A clear next step, a better referral, or a few things you can do this week
- Ed's read on whether your growth problem is people, process, or strategy
- If Ed is not the right fit, he will tell you who is
Prefer to leave Ed a message instead?
No calendar, no obligation. Ed reads every message personally.
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Ed reads every message personally and usually responds within 24 hours.