Matt Dagworthy
23 years of seeing what businesses could be, and building it. From showroom floor to boardroom. Now: fractional CRO and AI-paired builder for ambitious SMEs.
Every business I work with has more commercial capacity than the numbers show. My job is finding where it sits, making it visible, and helping you build on it. Not a slide deck. Not a recommendation. Something you can use on Monday morning.
How I learned to see it
Sectors, contexts, scale
Twenty-three years of commercial leadership across premium interiors, manufacturing, financial services and safety-critical construction products. B2C environments, from inside sales to those where every sale happens face-to-face and brand experience is everything. B2B, B2G, and specification sales where relationships compound over months and deal sizes run from £15k to £2.5m. Every context might be different, but the commercial patterns underneath are largely the same.
Teams and what I built
I’ve led teams from five to a hundred people, field-based, showroom-based, multi-site and remote. Direct sales management through to regional and national. Board responsibility for training and marketing alongside the commercial lead. I’ve rebuilt the hiring frameworks, the performance systems, the management cadence and the teams.
When the floor disappeared
A showroom-based sales model converted to fully remote, almost overnight, when Covid closed every door, so that the numbers held. Separately, a major product recall across a niche safety-critical sector, managing the commercial, operational and reputational dimensions at the same time. Both situations taught something no period of growth teaches: what a commercial function is actually made of when the conditions stop being kind. In both cases, the teams came with me.
The sharpest test
I co-delivered a PE-backed MBO, leading the commercial function through the process and securing an exit for the shareholders. What that teaches about a business, where value actually sits, how an acquirer reads a commercial function, what makes a business structurally sound rather than cosmetically impressive, you cannot learn any other way.
Trusted by
Why I build
When AI tools matured enough to make real software development accessible, I saw a commercial opportunity most people missed. The chance to close the gap between “here's what you should build” and “here it is, deployed and working.”
So I learned by building. Not by reading articles or attending webinars. I took a real commercial problem and built a real solution. Then another. Then another. In 16 calendar days, starting from nothing beyond static HTML experience, I shipped three production applications across three different industries.
I'm not a developer. I don't pretend to be. What I can do is see a complete solution. Understand the commercial need, design the answer, and systematically build it using AI as my method. The skill isn't coding. It's seeing.
The capstone proof: I built Be AI Irreplaceable, a full business intelligence platform with 15 specialist knowledge modules, multi-model AI pipeline, and context compounding engine. 46,415 lines of code, 361 files, 99 API routes. That's the complexity I navigate daily. When I assess your business for AI opportunity, I'm not guessing.
lines of production code shipped
What people say
“Incredibly clear thinking and consistent. He is a real people person who successfully motivates his team and keeps them engaged through often challenging times.”
Sales Director
Manufacturing
“What stood out most to me was his ability to balance strategic vision with practical execution. He always demonstrated a deep understanding of the commercial landscape, making decisions that were both insightful and impactful.”
National Sales Manager
SDS
“Matt's exceptional ability to gather, process, analyse and interpret data to inform strategic decisions, coupled with his assertive and eloquent communication skills, has consistently driven outstanding results.”
Senior Talent Leader
Luxury Retail
“Matt is an insightful sales strategist who quickly gets to grip with the challenges and opportunities for a sales and commercial team. He communicates clearly and with passion and inspires the best from the people that work with him.”
Managing Director
SDS
What drives the work
Most SMEs are sitting on more commercial capacity than they realise. Not because they lack ambition. They wouldn't have built what they've built without it. They haven't had the right structural clarity or the right tools to release it. The gap between knowing the business should be bigger and actually getting it there is where I work.
I find it frustrating that most consulting is simply a sales funnel for training engagements. Training layered onto constrained foundations will not stick. But if you can see the answer, you can build it. If you can fix the process, fix it. If you can create the tool, create it. That builder instinct, making things, not just talking about them, is what drives everything I do.
Commercial and technical work has to land with the people who drive it. I've spent years as an Enneagram student, now iEQ9 accredited, because I've always been drawn to understanding what drives people: where the real energy sits, and what's underneath the surface. I'm a husband, a father, a son, a brother and a friend. I recognise that everyone I work with carries an equally full set of roles into every decision they make. Keeping that in view is what makes the commercial work land the way it does.
The business journey is almost always personal. Holding that, genuinely, is what I think makes the difference between an engagement that produces a document and one the business actually moves on.
Let’s have a conversation.
No pitch. No proposal. Just a clear-eyed look at where your business is and where it could be.