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Growth That Doesn't Just Rest On You: Nicole McNamee x commonsku
Fractional sales and operations leadership, built for the promo distributor who has outgrown running everything themselves.
There's a stage every growing distributor hits where the thing that built the business starts to slow it down: you.
Every pricing question, every new-hire decision, every "wait, how do we handle this one?" still lands on your desk. The team is busy. Orders are up. And somehow you feel more buried than you did at half the size.
Sound familiar?
What's New: A Partnership Built for Your Next Stage of Growth
commonsku has partnered with Nicole McNamee Consulting to give growth-ready distributors access to fractional sales and operations leadership — built specifically for the promo industry.
Through this partnership, you can tap Nicole's expertise across:
What Nicole Brings to the Table
Senior sales and ops thinking, sized to where your business actually is.
Sales strategy and pipeline discipline
Operations and workflow structure
Team performance and accountability
Revenue execution
Nicole spent more than 20 years in promo, ranking in the top 1% of salespeople before moving into fractional leadership. She steps into distributor businesses as a part-time VP of Sales, Chief of Staff, or COO — the senior sales and ops brain you need at this stage, without a six-figure full-time hire.
This isn't just another vendor relationship. It's a strategic addition to commonsku's growing ecosystem of best-in-class partners, each one built to solve a real problem distributors hit as they scale.
Book time with Nicole McNamee →
How We're Solving the "Everything Runs Through the Owner" Problem
If you're running a shop of roughly 4 to 20 people doing $2M or more, you know this stage well. You've outgrown the informal systems and tribal knowledge that got you here. But you're not quite ready to hand a full department to a full-time executive. That in-between is where growth quietly gets expensive:
Where Growth Quietly Gets Expensive
Three things every owner-led shop feels at this stage.
💸
The exec you can't justify yet
A seasoned VP of Sales or COO is a six-figure commitment plus benefits, ramp time, and risk. At your size, that's a heavy bet to place before you're sure of the seat.
🚦
The owner bottleneck
When strategy, accountability, and the hard calls all route through one person, the business can only move as fast as that person can. Growth makes the bottleneck worse, not better.
🧠
The tribal-knowledge trap
Process lives in people's heads. Handoffs depend on who remembers what. As you add team members and clients, the gaps show up as dropped balls, fuzzy margins, and reps chasing status instead of selling.
These aren't signs you did something wrong. They're what success looks like at this stage. Nicole helps you build the next layer of structure so the business stops leaning entirely on you.
What This Means for You: A Clearer Way to Lead Through Growth
Picture your month running differently. Instead of reacting to whatever's loudest, your team is working a shared plan. Sales has a rhythm. Everyone knows what they own.
Here's how the partnership gets you there:
◎
You lead with clearer priorities
Nicole helps you name the few growth moves that actually matter, so your team executes against a plan instead of putting out fires.
▦
Your sales process gets real structure
Pipeline discipline, follow-up, revenue goals, performance expectations — the habits that turn growth ambition into consistent sales activity.
↻
Accountability becomes a rhythm, not a reminder
Clear roles, clear owners, clear ways to measure progress. Less "did anyone follow up on that?" and more forward motion.
◇
You get executive guidance at a fraction of the cost
Fractional means you get the senior thinking when you need it, sized to where your business actually is.
And because commonsku is the platform underneath it all, the strategy has somewhere to run. Nicole helps you align your people and process with the system your team already works in every day — from quote to PO to invoice — so the plan shows up in the work, not just the whiteboard.
The real-world payoff: time back to sell, lead, and serve clients, and a business that can grow without resting on your shoulders alone.
See it in action
Join Nicole McNamee and David Shultz, commonsku's Chief Partnerships Officer, for a 30-minute conversation: How Growing Distributors Can Strengthen Sales, Operations, and Leadership.
📅 Thursday, June 25, 2026 — 2 PM ET
Save your seat →Take the Next Step
You built something strong. This next stage doesn't ask you to work harder — it asks for a different kind of structure underneath the growth.
If you're a commonsku customer
Getting started is simple.
Not a commonsku customer yet?
From sales and production to supplier collaboration and finance, commonsku connects your whole workflow in one place — and surrounds it with partners like Nicole who help you grow.
→ Explore commonsku's partner ecosystem
Questions about getting started with Nicole? Reach out to your CSM or email support@commonsku.com.
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