How much Gross Profit is your Leadership team leaving on the table?
You're Not Losing Profitability - That's the Effect.
You're Losing Leadership Team Coordination - That's the Cause.
When Sales, Operations, and Finance run on different assumptions, execution breaks down. It’s like your favourite team hitting the field with three conflicting game plans - momentum stalls, opportunities slip by, and goals go unmet.
We help leadership teams uncover where and how their individual and shared actions fall short. We equip them with the tools and insight to build strategic, tactical, and commercial capability. This empowers them to design and execute high-impact plays, in rhythm, around a single unifying metric: Gross Profit.
Why Gross Profit? It is the critical engine that drives profitability, valuation, and cashflow growth.
Ways To Engage
Choose what fits your focus — and how you like to work.
Whether you're looking to lift your leadership team's rhythm, sharpen your value proposition, or explore ideas at your own pace — there’s a way to start that fits your priorities.
The Strategy Segment
Work With Me DirectlyCore ServicesFor businesses ready to link strategy, financial planning, and team performance into one execution rhythm. Includes:
→ Quarterly Game Plan facilitation
→ Strategic foresight and scenario planning→ Three-way forecast modelling & integration→ Cross-functional leadership coaching
The Strategy Room
Interactive Sprint ProgramsLearn moreFor teams wanting hands-on, coach-led structure without full in-person delivery. Choose from two sprints:
→ The Gross Profit Performance Cycle – For better execution, quarter by quarter
→ The Competitive Advantage Sprint – To refine your offer and sharpen your strategic edgeSideline Insights
Lessons from The FieldStay ConnectedEvery leadership team runs plays — but not all of them work. This section shares patterns, breakdowns, and small wins that help leaders plan, adjust, and execute like a real team.
Whether you’re watching from the stands or coaching from the sideline, these insights are here to sharpen your eye.
About Me and Why I Created The Strategy Segment
I’m Chris Cooper, founder of The Strategy Segment.
After years working across finance, strategy, and executive facilitation, I saw the same pattern play out in businesses of all sizes:
- Sales chased revenue
- Operations fought fires
- Finance cut costs
Each function worked hard — but rarely together.
And strategy? It lived in slide decks, not in daily decisions.
Forecasts weren’t trusted. Gross Profit quietly eroded.
Everyone was busy — but progress was fragile.
I created The Strategy Segment to change that.
Not every business needs more strategy — most need the right segment of strategy:
- The part that connects today’s reality to what your business is good at — your competitive advantage
- The part that turns near- and mid-term tactical decisions into long-term strategic outcomes
- The part that aligns Sales, Operations, and Finance around Gross Profit — the commercial engine that fuels growth, valuation, and cashflow
My approach blends commercial insight, financial modelling and visual tools, financial modelling into one repeatable rhythm. It equips leadership teams to build the capability to execute together — quarter after quarter, not just plan in theory.
Why Planning Is a Source of Competitive Advantage
I beleive that planning is one of the most underused sources of competitive advantage – but only when its commercially grounded, visually engaging, shared across a team and energised.
Static strategy – the kind buried in documents – fades fast.
But when a leadership team can see, shape and sequence the right actions together – tied to market forces, delivery capacity and cashflow – they umlock a level of agility and forward momentum most teams struggle to achieve let alone sustain.
That’s why I don’t just run strategy sessions.
I help leadership teams build a planning spine they can execute against quarter by quarter – so that their strategy doesn’t sit still.
And it’s the rhythm of an increasingly capable and coordinated team – not just the plan – that drives execution, quarter by quarter, play by play.
Who i work with | What You Get & Why It Matters
I work with founders, managing directors and leadership teams who are tired of hard work not showing up in terms of increasing proftability and cashflow - and are ready to build the team coordination, cadence, and systems that turn their plans into results, quarter by quarter.
What You Get - and Why It Matters
Many leadership teams are full of effort — but misaligned and that affects business performance. They face:
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→ Strategies that die in PowerPoint slides
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→ Forecasts that don’t drive behaviour
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→ Functional managers working hard, but not together
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→ Commercial decisions made without shared context
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Here’s how we fix that — and what you actually get:
Deliverables - Tools That Build Coordination
- 3-Horizons Strategy Compass – High-level view of industry and market forces, Gross Profit stretch targets, and commercial constraints. Guides direction and shapes each quarter’s priorities with context and purpose → Think of it as your season strategy brief — refreshed regularly to align plays with real-world situations.
- The Winning Quarter Map – Surfaces the immediate market forces, opportunities, and risks shaping your next quarter.
→ Your pre-game analysis board. - Quarter Execution Plan – Breaks your game plan into commercially viable and actionable plays — who does what, when, and with what commercial impact → Your game-day tactics.
- Monthly Pit Stops – Facilitated check-ins to review execution flags, cost shifts, forecast updates, and play adjustments → Like a locker room huddle between quarters.
- End-of-Quarter / Year Review – A meaningful review to track Gross Profit growth, capability lift, and team coordination progress over time. Used to recalibrate the 12-Month Strategic Compass and refine the system for the year ahead → Ensures each quarter and year ends smarter than it began — with clarity, momentum, and sharper execution.
Outcomes - What You Walk Away With
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You’re not buying documents. You’re building a team that executes better, quarter by quarter, play by play.
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→ A quarterly planning rhythm that actually gets used — not archived
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→ 10–15% Gross Profit improvement by aligning the team around the right plays, constraints, and financial goals
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→ Clear visibility on which levers are driving margin, throughput, and cash
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→ A 3-way forecast that becomes a live tool, not a static model
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→ A management team that can see, plan, and execute together — not in silos
Add On Services - Game Changers — For Teams Facing Bigger Plays
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3-Way Forecast Build & Integration
→ Essential when finance feels disconnected from operations -
Team Coaching for Sales, Ops, or Finance Leads
→ Crucial when one part of the team is out of rhythm -
Strategic Scenario Planning
→ For businesses in volatile industries or shifting terrain -
Internal Cadence & Dashboard Design
→ When you’re ready to embed the process company-wide
What I Do - The Quarterly Game Plan
Strategy You Can Execute, Like A Team on Game Day
Consulting
Facilitation
Coaching & Training
Mentoring
Speaking Engagements
Core Leadership team Coordination drives gross profit
Most businesses are built around functional expertise – Sales drives revenue, Operations delivers output, and Finance controls the numbers.
But real value isn’t unlocked in the functions.
It’s unlocked in the space between them – where the leadership team either plays in sync or drifts apart.Even high-performing departments can miss the mark if they’re not coordinated. Without a shared rhythm, strategy turns reactive, resources get misused, and Gross Profit falls short – quietly and consistently.
That’s why we focus on building team coordination around one commercial anchor: Gross Profit. It’s the number that reflects whether the whole team is converting plans into results – and whether those results are enough to fund growth, cover costs, and generate real momentum.
Our work equips leadership teams to shift from functional islands to a collaborative unit – one that makes better trade-offs, shares resources smarter, and plays to win together.
The 4 Phases of the Game Plan
1️⃣ Reset the Baseline
Like a pre-season review. We surface friction points, commercial gaps, and execution fatigue. We unpack what’s costing GP – pricing leaks, delivery delays, siloed decisions – and name them clearly.2️⃣ Align the Core Team
We bring the captains together. Using your 3-way forecast, we set a shared GP stretch target, review capacity, and define the levers we’ll need to pull – margin, mix, cycle time, delivery, or cost.3️⃣ Create the Winning Quarter
Now we build the game plan. Using the Winning Quarter Map and Quarter Execution Plan, we sequence projects, processes, and plays that each function owns. The 3×3 matrix and play tracker keep responsibilities visible and interdependent.4️⃣ Run the Rhythm
We install the “match calendar.” Monthly check-ins, forecast flag reviews, and live adjustments keep your team accountable, coordinated, and focused on the quarter’s most critical actions.Like any great team, it’s not just about playing hard – it’s about playing smart, together, and toward the number that funds your future: Gross Profit.
The Strategy Room
We offer two transformative online programs: the first focuses on enhancing core leadership team collaboration to drive gross profit growth, and the second revolutionises strategy creation, communication, and implementation using visual tools, tailored for adapting and succeeding in today's dynamic markets.
The Gross Profit Performance Cycle
Quarter by Quarter. Play by play.This program helps leadership teams move from disjointed effort to commercial coordination — using Gross Profit as the shared scoreboard.
Instead of strategy documents that fade or forecasts that sit unused, we install a live quarterly rhythm: where Sales, Operations, and Finance build, test, and refine high-impact plays together. Across six live sessions, we help your team:
Get In Touch- Reset their commercial baseline and GP targets
- Link forecasts to delivery capacity and cash availability
- Sequence cross-functional actions that actually drive results
- Review and adjust plays mid-quarter — not just after the fact
- Develop a planning rhythm that improves execution over time
The focus is practical, the tools are visual, and the outcomes are measurable.
Think of it as installing a coordination engine—where strategy lives quarter to quarter, and Gross Profit becomes a shared performance anchor.
Ideal for teams that want to:
- Strengthen internal handoffs and ownership
- Get clearer on what’s driving margin and throughput
- Turn forecasting into a decision-making advantage
- Build capability while chasing results
The Competitive Advantage Sprint
Define your edge. From the Outside InThis live program helps you rethink what makes your offer valuable — through the lens of your customers, competitors, and market forces.
In six sessions, we guide you through a structured sprint to reshape your product, service, and experience offering based on real customer jobs, decision patterns, and lifecycle needs.
We combine frameworks from customer value design, B2B buying logic, and competitive positioning — but the process is tailored to your business. You’ll explore:
Get In Touch- What your customers are really trying to get done – and what’s in their way
- Where your current offer increases traction, and where it doesn’t
- How value is perceived across price, experience and retention
- What makes your products defensible – and what doesn’t
- The market forces shaping what happens next
This sprint helps you rediscover your strategic edge and sets the context for your next level of execution — through your Quarterly Game Plan.
Live, practical, and commercially focused.
Bring your team, sharpen your thinking, and walk away with a clearer, pressure-tested value proposition.
Get in Touch
If your team’s effort isn’t translating into the results you expected — or if the path forward feels unclear — reach out. No agenda. Just a real conversation to unpack what’s going on and where it might make sense to focus next.
Advanced Insights & Exclusive Content
Tools, conversations, and insights to strengthen strategy, sharpen tactics, align core leadership teams, and drive Gross Profit execution.