Straight answers.

Coach to Success is an operator-led sales and operations consulting firm. We help service businesses between $5M and $50M — and the private-equity firms that own them — build sales teams that close and operations that protect EBITDA. Engagements include the Profit Leak Audit, the 90-Day Sales Sprint, advisory retainers and interim leadership.

Steve Lindstrom is the Managing Director of Coach to Success and leads every engagement himself. Over 25 years he has run sales teams of 5 to 50+, led the team that grew a branch office from under $11M to $28M in 24 months (VP of the Year), and founded and ran his own firm in the construction industry. Read his story.

Extensive sales training certifications including the Sandler Sales System, Franklin Covey Courses, Selling to VITO, Leadership Foundations, Building Financial Intelligence and Selling to International Clients, plus DISC behavioral profiling. Details are on the About page.

Coach to Success is led by Steve, our Managing Director, who is personally in every engagement. Where an engagement needs additional hands — analysts for a large audit, or a second coach for a multi-branch sprint — we bring in trusted specialist partners under his direction. You always know who is accountable.

Book a free 30-minute call. It is blunt and useful: bring your trailing-twelve P&L if you have it and the problem if you don’t. You will leave knowing whether we can help, which engagement fits and what it would cost.

Steve, our Managing Director, talks to you directly — not a customer service rep. He asks about the business, the numbers and the problem, tells you plainly whether we can help, and names the engagement that fits. If we can help, a one-page proposal follows within 48 hours. If we can’t, we say so and point you somewhere useful.

Audits and sprints are fixed-fee. Retainers are a flat monthly fee. Interim roles are a day rate for a defined term. Nothing is billed by the hour and every engagement has an end date. Exact figures are scoped on the first call and written down before work starts.

A fixed fee, agreed before we start and scoped to your revenue, number of branches and the depth of the ledger. We put the fee in writing before we start, and the first finding is often larger than the fee: the first item Steve found as an operator was a $1,300-a-month phone contract for an office with no desk phones.

Service and trades businesses between $5M and $50M in revenue — MEP, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, roofing, design-build, home services and the other trades — and the PE portfolio companies among them. Under $2M you need a great salesperson before a consultant, and we will say so.

A Profit Leak Audit delivers its ranked list in two to three weeks and the first recovered dollars follow the read-out. A 90-Day Sales Sprint shows activity by week three and closes landing by weeks nine to twelve. Interim roles deliver a flash report by day ten.

We guarantee the work is finite, written down and led by Steve personally. We do not guarantee outcomes, because results depend on your team executing the plan — see the note on results. What we do promise is plain speech: if the team cannot get there, you hear it in month one.

A Profit Leak Audit takes two to three weeks. A 90-Day Sales Sprint is exactly that. Advisory retainers run three, six or twelve months. Interim leadership roles are scoped to the transition, usually 90 to 180 days.

Selling by understanding the buyer’s problem before proposing anything, then presenting your work as the solution to that specific problem rather than a price for a scope. We teach it through positive empathy (start with the customer’s problem), understanding (how each person needs to be spoken to — DISC) and connection (build the relationship with team members and clients), grounded in Sandler, Franklin Covey and Selling to VITO principles.

DISC is a behavioral model that describes four styles: D (dominant — wants the point), I (influencing — wants the relationship), S (steady — wants safety and process) and C (conscientious — wants the data). Most sellers only know how to sell to their own type. Teaching a team to read and adapt to all four is one of the fastest lifts in close rate we know. Read the field note.

A twelve-week program that diagnoses the team, installs a written sales process, trains DISC-based selling, coaches live deals weekly and measures activity, pipeline and closes every Friday. It ends with a manager who can run the system without us.

A seasoned sales leader who runs your sales team part-time — the weekly meeting, the pipeline review, the coaching, the hiring — until you can justify or find the full-time hire. We provide it through Fractional & Interim Leadership, with Steve in the chair.

Yes. Scorecards, interview guides, DISC guidance and a 30-60-90 onboarding plan are part of Sales Team Transformation, and we can sit in on final interviews.

A fixed-fee, two-to-three-week review of your trailing-twelve P&L, general ledger detail, vendor contracts, recurring charges, equipment and warehouse practices and job-costing reports. You receive a ranked list of leaks with annual dollar values, the fix for each and who owns it.

Usually because indirect costs — equipment, vehicles, consumables, labor burden, overhead contracts — were never charged to the jobs that consumed them, so project margin looked healthy while the office absorbed the cost. Sometimes because the estimate, the contract and the close-out used three different definitions of margin. The field note explains the five leaks.

No. Most leaks are fixed with standards, cadence and negotiation using the systems you already own. We will tell you when a tool would genuinely help, but we do not sell or implement software.

Yes. A mutual NDA is standard before we see a P&L or general ledger, and every engagement runs on a written agreement that covers confidentiality.

Yes. Operating partners bring us trades and field-service portfolio companies that are off plan. We provide interim VP/GM leadership, a 90-day stabilization sprint, Profit Leak Audits and sales rebuilds, with weekly board-ready reporting. Read the PE brief.

Yes, for a defined term, typically 90 to 180 days, on-site as the role requires, ending with a permanent leader in the chair and a cadence they can run.

An operator who has carried one. Coach to Success works with mechanical contractors — HVAC, plumbing, electrical and MEP — that make money on jobs and still miss EBITDA. Steve has run a $20M+ service branch P&L in the trades himself and has been in conversation with private-equity firms about mechanical portfolio companies in exactly that position. The playbook is the same in every trade: a Profit Leak Audit of the trailing-twelve P&L, indirect costs billed to the jobs that consume them, job costing that matches the estimate to the invoice, and a weekly cadence. See the industries we serve.

Yes. We work with restoration owners, branch leaders and their investors on drying-equipment cost recovery, job costing, warehouse control and sales teams that hunt. See disaster restoration.

Yes. Steve spent years in the construction industry — as sales manager and lead designer, as the founder of a firm he ran with a team of 19 and $17M+ in annual sales, and as senior sales manager of a construction company where continual project and contract audits raised average project gross margin from under 20% to 27% and above. We work with design-build owners on estimating, contract audits, the sales team and the P&L. See design-build and remodeling.

Coach to Success has offices in Florida and California and serves clients in all 50 states. Most work is remote via Teams; we travel for discovery, key sessions and interim roles.

Remote-first, on-site when it matters. A typical retainer is a weekly video session with the leader, a monthly review with the team and scheduled site visits for the moments that need a person in the room.

Email info@coachtosuccess.pro or book a call through the contact form. We reply within one business day.