Turning Investment Theses Into Action: Strategic Advisory for PE Portfolios

Every private equity deal starts with a thesis.

You’ve spotted an inefficiency. A growth opportunity. A fragmented market ready for roll-up. You’ve modeled margin expansion, pricing improvements, new service lines, or geographic growth. You’ve convinced your IC, your LPs, and your lenders.

But once the deal closes — who’s turning the thesis into execution?

That’s the gap where many lower middle market (LMM) deals get stuck.

At High Point Advisory Group, we specialize in helping private equity firms translate the strategy they bought into the company they now own. We work side by side with sponsors and operators to take plans off the slide deck and make them real — through financial structure, operational support, and strategic discipline.

In this article, we’ll show how our post-close strategic advisory helps PE-backed companies actually implement the change they need to grow — without slowing down or overbuilding. And if you’re looking for a tactical way to get started, we’re sharing our 100-Day Plan Checklist (free PDF) — just email us at info@highpointadvisorygroup.com to grab it.

Why Execution Falls Flat After the Close

Most lower middle market companies aren’t failing because they lack vision. They’re struggling because they don’t have the financial infrastructure, people, or playbooks to execute.

Even the most compelling investment thesis can fall apart post-close due to:

• No 100-day plan (or worse, a forgotten one)

• Confused operator roles with unclear swim lanes

• No margin tracking or pricing discipline

• Missing KPIs that make performance measurable

• Founders overwhelmed by new expectations

• No one owning the execution loop

What’s missing isn’t just strategy — it’s bandwidth, structure, and translation. That’s where we come in.

The Role of Strategic Advisory in a PE Portco

We sit between the sponsor and the operator — bridging what the deal thesis says should happen with what’s actually happening inside the business.

That means we:

• Convert your investment thesis into a focused 100-day plan

• Align operators with that plan through financial structure, KPIs, and visibility

• Support execution on specific workstreams (pricing, margin, staffing)

• Keep accountability flowing between sponsor and operator

• Ensure progress is measurable, documented, and aligned with investor expectations

We’re not just consultants with a spreadsheet. We’re a tactical execution partner who understands the realities of founder-led businesses, limited resources, and real-world complexity.

What a Real 100-Day Plan Should Do

The best 100-day plans aren’t 10 pages of initiatives — they’re focused, sequenced, and immediately actionable.

We help sponsors and CEOs align around:✅ 3–5 financial or operational priorities✅ Owner/driver for each✅ KPIs to measure success✅ Financial targets or guardrails✅ Weekly or monthly progress reviews

Then we support implementation. Because a 100-day plan doesn’t work if it just sits in the data room.

🔧 Want a 100-Day Plan Checklist?

We’ve created a clear and practical 100-Day Portco Execution Checklist — built from our real-world experience supporting PE-backed companies. It includes:

• Financial infrastructure must-haves

• Pricing and margin improvement tasks

• KPI setup steps

• Team and accountability guidance

• Strategic quick wins to build trust

📩 Want the full checklist as a downloadable PDF?Email us at info@highpointadvisorygroup.com and we’ll send it right over.

Pricing and Margin Execution: Where Value Is Won (or Lost)

One of the most common value drivers in LMM deals is margin expansion through pricing — yet it’s also the most poorly implemented.

We help PE firms:

• Analyze margin by customer, location, or SKU

• Identify unprofitable segments or underpriced services

• Design pricing changes that preserve volume and customer retention

• Align cost structure and compensation with new pricing logic

• Track actual margin improvements weekly or monthly

Most founders are nervous about pricing change. Most PE firms are too far removed from the day-to-day to manage it directly.

We sit in the middle — helping operators understand the “why,” modeling the impact, and making sure the plan gets implemented.

KPI and Reporting Design That Actually Gets Used

KPI dashboards are only useful if they’re:

• Aligned with strategy

• Owned by the operator

• Simple enough to review consistently

• Tied to real outcomes

We help design dashboards that connect the numbers to the business — so the team can manage by metrics, not gut feel.

This often includes:

• Gross margin by service line or location

• AR days, revenue per employee, utilization

• Booked vs. billed vs. collected revenue

• CAC, LTV, churn (for subscription or recurring models)

• Staff capacity or utilization by role

• Labor efficiency or overhead ratios

Then we coach operators on how to use these metrics in 1:1s, team huddles, and board updates. Visibility builds accountability.

Helping Founders Become Operators (Without Breaking Them)

A huge part of our job is helping founder-led companies evolve into institutional-grade businesses without damaging the DNA that made them valuable in the first place.

That means:

• Translating investor priorities into manageable operational targets

• Respecting founder intuition while adding structure

• Coaching, not replacing, existing leadership

• Filling gaps without making the team feel inadequate

We’ve worked with dozens of founder-led businesses. We know how to make change stick — and how to communicate it in a way that builds buy-in rather than resentment.

Often, we’re the “friendly third party” that can say what the board wants to say, but in a way the team actually hears.

How Strategic Advisory Fits Into the Broader Finance Stack

Our post-close advisory work doesn’t replace finance — it connects it to strategy.

We often layer strategic advisory on top of:

• Our controller or CFO support

• Our post-close financial cleanup

• Our diligence findings and working capital insights

This gives us context — we already know where the business needs help, where the numbers are misleading, and where the leverage points are.

That continuity creates a powerful loop:

• Diligence uncovers risks and opportunities

• Financial cleanup provides clarity

• Strategic advisory translates it into action

• Operational finance supports execution

We’re not just turning the lights on — we’re helping drive the car.

Who This Works For

We’ve supported post-close execution across a wide range of LMM businesses, including:

• Field services

• Industrial/construction

• Consumer health

• B2B services

• Recurring revenue or multi-location models

What they had in common:

• A clear investment thesis

• A capable but overloaded founding team

• Sponsors who wanted execution, not just reporting

Whether you’re running a $1M bolt-on or scaling a new platform, we help turn vision into velocity.

Why PE Firms Choose High Point for Post-Close Strategy

✅ We know both sides of the tableWe’ve sat in PE boardrooms and operated founder-led businesses. We know how to translate strategy into execution — and how to speak both languages.

✅ We don’t just advise — we doWe don’t leave behind slides. We roll up our sleeves and implement — from dashboards to comp plans to org design.

✅ We scale with your needsSome firms use us for 100-day planning only. Others keep us involved for 6–12 months to support execution or transition to internal leadership.

✅ We move fastWe know the clock starts ticking the day the deal closes. We help you build credibility and momentum in that critical early window.

Let’s Turn the Plan Into Progress

If your last deal closed and the investment thesis still lives in a memo instead of the operating model — let’s fix that.

At High Point Advisory Group, we help PE firms turn strategy into execution with founder-focused advisory support, real financial structure, and accountability that sticks.

📩 To get our 100-Day Plan Checklist (PDF), email us at info@highpointadvisorygroup.com — and we’ll send it your way.

Let’s build the kind of portco momentum that closes the loop between what you bought and what you build.

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