Revenue Transformation Isn’t a Tech Project. It’s a Business Reckoning.

I’ve had the privilege of spending a lot of time with Meredith Schmidt, EVP of Revenue Cloud at Salesforce—and a Thunder Advisor—talking about what actually separates companies that win with revenue transformation from those that stall out.

Across industries, sizes, and maturity levels, she’s noticed a strikingly consistent pattern.

The companies that get exceptional results don’t treat revenue transformation as a technology problem.

They treat it as a business transformation opportunity.

That distinction sounds subtle. It’s not.

Revenue Touches Everything (Whether You Admit It or Not)

When companies implement Agentforce Revenue—or any modern revenue platform—they often start with a narrow goal:

“We need to get quotes out faster.”

That’s fine. But it’s also wildly insufficient.

Revenue systems sit at the center of how money flows through your business. The moment you touch them, you’re implicitly touching:

• Your go-to-market strategy
  
  
• What you sell—and how you package it
  
  
• How you price, discount, and monetize
  
  
• How sales hands off to finance
  
  
• Where manual work is quietly draining margin and momentum
  
  

In other words, revenue transformation forces you to confront decisions you may have been avoiding for years.

The companies that succeed lean into that discomfort.
The companies that fail try to configure their way around it.

Technology Doesn’t Fix Broken Business Models

From Meredith’s perspective—and I couldn’t agree more—the most successful companies use revenue transformation as a forcing function.

They ask hard questions like:

• Why do we sell this way?
  
  
• Why does this handoff exist?
  
  
• Why does this require three approvals and a spreadsheet?
  
  

They don’t just automate the mess. They clean it up.

The companies that struggle, on the other hand, focus almost entirely on the technology:

• More fields
  
  
• More rules
  
  
• More configuration
  
  

Then they’re shocked when nothing really changes.

Same process. Same friction. Just running on a more expensive platform.

Choose a Partner Who Cares About Outcomes, Not Just Objects

One of the most valuable pieces of advice Meredith shared had nothing to do with Salesforce—and everything to do with partners.

If your partner:

• Isn’t talking about business outcomes and customer impact
  
  
• Can’t clearly explain what’s worked for other companies
  
  
• Is obsessed with configuration but vague about results
  
  

Run.

Revenue transformation isn’t about standing up software. It’s about reshaping how your business operates.

Your partner should be just as fluent in:

• Revenue models
  
  
• GTM strategy
  
  
• Monetization tradeoffs
  
  

…as they are in data models and automation.

At Thunder, we believe your revenue transformation partner should be as obsessed with your business model as they are with your data model. ⚡

Because if you get the business right, the technology finally has something worth scaling.