# Mike Coutts

Mike Coutts writes about improving commercial operations at manufacturers, especially the CRM, ERP, pricing, quoting, and data processes that affect revenue and post-acquisition integration.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/mike-coutts/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcoutts
- LinkedIn followers: 1,485
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, ai-adoption, manufacturing
- Based on 11 dated posts, latest 2026-10-07

## Summary

Most useful for operational questions about CRM, ERP, pricing, quoting, and post-acquisition commercial integration.

- Best for: A manufacturing-focused private equity firm wanting a post-deal commercial operations assessment.
- Not for: A CRM or AI platform vendor seeking paid LinkedIn sponsorship with guaranteed reach.
- Check first: Ask for basis behind the 50 to 300 basis points EBITDA estimate and LinkedIn post analytics.

### Takeaways

- Manual Tax is their term for costs of work left to spreadsheets and manual processes.
- Before ERP or CRM cutover, settle price-book rules, discount approvals, and source of leadership metrics.
- CRM trust starts with one disputed number, tracing inputs, and useful returns for data entry.

## Main ideas

- **Manual work in commercial operations carries a cost**: Coutts uses “Manual Tax” for the gap between commercial work and the systems meant to support it. Spreadsheets and workarounds can leave quoting, pricing, and rebates disconnected from the CRM. They argue that putting AI on top of those processes does not remove the underlying work; it can automate it.
- **Settle commercial decisions early in an acquisition**: Coutts says acquisition integration often gets a plan for plant operations but only a deadline for commercial systems. If teams move existing pricing, customer records, and approval habits into a new system without deciding how they should work, the new system preserves old problems.
- **CRM data depends on trust and useful returns for the people entering it**: Coutts describes a loop: managers distrust the numbers and rely on gut; the CRM becomes optional; thin data then gives managers more reason to distrust it. Their proposed first step is to follow one disputed number back to its inputs and make sure the people entering data get something useful in return.
- **Measure the cost of waiting, not just the cost of investment**: Coutts argues that businesses scrutinize purchase and operating costs but often leave delay out of the model. Its effects can surface as slower quoting, forecasts people do not trust, or deals that stop closing—and become harder to address when they appear during diligence or a value-creation review.
- **Start AI adoption with a small, measurable use case**: Coutts reports that teams facing AI mandates are tired, while familiar problems such as messy data, administrative work, and weak change management remain. They argue that the first use case should be small and measurable, rather than the ambitious example on a presentation slide.

## Work to read

- [The Manual Tax, in one paragraph](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcoutts_across-manufacturers-ive-worked-with-commercial-activity-7497689462399766528-j8Si)
- [What acquisition announcements leave out](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcoutts_most-acquisition-announcements-i-read-this-activity-7513572698355236864-K_bM)
- [The trust loop that makes CRM data thin](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcoutts_the-word-that-showed-up-most-in-the-comments-activity-7508146999238750209--Chf)
- [The cost of waiting, and who pays it](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcoutts_something-i-keep-noticing-personally-and-activity-7493701790228615168-bhk4)
- [A field report from Dreamforce, and a caution about AI](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcoutts_this-dreamforce-felt-thin-it-was-my-tenth-activity-7506372858768711680-w6GV)

## Brand relationships

- **Salesforce** (mention)

## Partnerships

Mike Coutts's posts do not mention sponsorship, advertising, or paid-partnership formats. The only commercial contact is an open invitation: in a post about spreadsheet-heavy commercial operations, they say they will attend Dreamforce on September 15–17 and invite people working on this problem at a portfolio company to meet for a conversation. It is an offer to talk shop with operators and investors, not a purchasable package: the posts provide no rate card, sponsored-placement example, audience specification, disclosure of a paid brand deal, or partnership inquiry route. For a paid engagement, confirm terms directly through LinkedIn; no official partnership or media-kit page is present, so ask for available formats and terms.

## Alternatives

- Vernon Keenan: Choose Keenan over Coutts when the 90-day assessment is really a Salesforce estate question: whether an acquisition's CRM org can be governed, released, and safely changed by AI agents, and what a platform asset is worth. Keenan's posts analyse ServiceNow's acquisition of Sweep as a move to see inside Salesforce estates and govern agents working there without moving CRM data. They frame a metadata graph as giving agents a dependency-resolved model of the org they are about to change, and call the reported price a strategic valuation signal for a category the Salesforce DevOps ecosystem undersold. That is the better lens if the portfolio company's risk sits in release automation, permissions, code dependencies, platform control, or platform strategy rather than pricing habits and commercial operating cadence.
- Felix Markman: Choose Markman over Coutts when the assessment needs a skeptical technology-adoption voice and an ROI test. Markman's posts argue that AI replacing the UI is a keynote line, while adoption and production proof are the real barriers. They warn that putting an unproven surface on production CRM costs more than a refund: a year of cleanup and a trust hit with the business. Markman also argues that the hardest problems yield to clean data, governance, and systems that earn user trust, and writes about wanting to deliver ROI from revenue operations. For a PE firm deciding whether to fund an AI or interface change during the first 90 days, that challenge forces the buyer to ask what will actually be adopted and measured.
- Jose Aleman: Choose Aleman over Coutts when the post-close problem is sales capacity and forecast credibility rather than manufacturing quote-to-cash. Aleman's posts work through the arithmetic of hiring 10 reps against a $10M target, ramp versus sales cycle, pipeline slicing, territory damage to existing producers, and the risk that the CRM is the last place a rep admits a deal is dying. They also argue that RevOps owns the absence of surprise, and that boards can plan around a miss they saw coming in week three but not one they discover the same day. If the investment committee's first worry is missing the number because the capacity plan is mathematically impossible or late-stage risk is invisible, Aleman addresses that directly.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/