The Private Equity Podcast, by Raw Selection · Sep 29, 2026 · 24m · 14m saved
With Dan Bernoske, founder and CEO of Cortado Group
On the sales teams he reviews at newly bought private equity portfolio companies, Dan Bernoske says one or two reps out of ten are doing almost all the work.
Most buyers keep the legacy sales team out of habit, or loyalty to the founder who built it, rather than checking what the performance data actually shows. Bernoske built Cortado Group on the opposite instinct: look at the numbers immediately, and be ready to act on what they say.
"So, it might be one or two out of 10 that are actually driving that number."
He founded Cortado Group in 2019 with, in his words, "a laser focus on go-to-market growth for companies that need to grow," and now runs a firm large enough that the work is "way beyond just me."
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 24 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 8 principles that matter.
Key Takeaways
Only 1 or 2 reps out of 10 are actually driving a sales team's number, and comp plans often reward the other eight for staying comfortable
A portfolio company's CRM is routinely treated as an afterthought, not the strategic system he says it should be
A working CRM needs three things before it's useful: a defined sales process, clean data entry, and dashboards built on both
Sales call transcripts are becoming the raw material for AI coaching, since no manager can sit in on every call
A manager with 50 reps and two direct managers can mine the transcripts for patterns instead
A qualification framework like BANT turns a sales call into something that can be audited later
Budget, authority, need, timing — the four things he says a rep has to establish
Before any AI model gets chosen, he wants three things in place: a human champion, a defined problem, and a proprietary "context engine" built from the company's own data
AI is unbundling the sales rep's job, pushing the rote parts to a new "AI engineer" role while reps keep the relationship work
Treating AI as a replacement for a sales rep is the single biggest mistake he sees, and a bad robocall can permanently burn a sales territory
1. Moving Too Slow on Talent
Asked the biggest mistake he sees private equity firms and portfolio companies make, Bernoske pointed to speed.
PE firms want to move fast but often don't
"So they don't move quick enough. Which sounds crazy because they all want to move fast, but often they don't move fast enough." — Dan Bernoske
He breaks go-to-market problems into two lenses: talent and what he calls performance conditions. On talent, the sales team that closed the deal is rarely the one equipped to carry a company through the next five years of a private equity hold, he said, and buyers keep it anyway out of comfort. Founders get the same treatment in reverse — some get replaced too fast, when the "renegade nature" that made them difficult is often exactly what a company still needs.
"And often we see that renegade nature is exactly the scrappiness you need to get to the next level." — Dan Bernoske
On the performance-conditions side, he said many buyers still don't treat a portfolio company's CRM, whether Salesforce or HubSpot, as a strategic system, leaving the business "flying blind" without reliable data to act on.
