Your Best Revenue Strategy Might Be a Culture Problem in Disguise

I've been thinking about the word culture a lot lately.

It comes from the Latin colere — to cultivate, to till, to inhabit. It started as a word for growing crops. Somewhere along the way it became the word we use to describe the invisible systems that determine how people move, meet, and make meaning at work.

And after nearly 30 years leading teams across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, I've come to believe this: most revenue problems are culture problems in disguise.

What I Hear in the Field

In 2025, I had over 1,000 conversations with founders, technical leaders, and revenue teams across 20 cities.

The same pattern kept surfacing.

Companies doing solid work, losing deals to competitors who weren't better — just clearer. Sales teams that had every tool imaginable but couldn't get alignment internally, let alone externally. Leaders who were burning out not because the workload was impossible, but because trust had eroded somewhere along the way.

You can invest in every sales tool, every CRM, every automation platform. But without trust — internally, between teams; externally, with clients — it's just an expensive build-out with no soul.

The Cultures That Win

The times I've thrived in my career were never about the title or the perks. They were the moments when we were learning, stretching, and building something together. When leaders were present and people trusted one another enough to have the hard conversations.

I'd bet your best work experiences came from the same place: growth, trust, and real connection.

The organizations that consistently win revenue are the ones where that's not accidental. They've built it on purpose — through how they hire, how they communicate, how they handle the moments that don't go according to plan.

Culture can't be mandated. But it can be modeled. And the strongest cultures grow in the small moments leaders can't script.

What This Means for Revenue

Here's the through line I see across every client engagement:

When a team doesn't trust each other internally, they can't present a unified front to buyers. When leaders aren't clear on direction, salespeople fill the gap with features instead of vision. When communication breaks down inside the organization, it shows up in the pitch room — every time.

Revenue architecture isn't just about pipeline metrics and CRM hygiene. It's about building an organization where people know the story they're telling, believe in it, and can deliver it consistently — even without the founder in the room.

That's the work. And it starts with culture.

A Question Worth Sitting With

Not: What's our close rate?

But: Do our people trust each other enough to have the conversations that would actually change it?

If the answer is uncertain, that's where we start.

I work with B2B companies as a Fractional Chief Revenue Officer — embedded, 10 to 15 hours a week, for 12 months. Not to add more tools or tactics, but to diagnose where the real gaps live and build the revenue engine that lets you scale beyond founder-dependent sales.

Sometimes that's messaging. Sometimes it's process. And sometimes it's culture — which, when you fix it, fixes everything else.

Apply for a CRO Readiness Call →

Monique Lecomte is a Fractional Chief Revenue Officer with 28+ years of B2B leadership experience and $100M+ in closed enterprise deals. She helps growing B2B companies build scalable revenue engines through her Master the Message framework and Fractional CRO engagements.