TPx Filed for Chapter 11 With $1.1 Billion in Debt. The Debt Was Not the Real Problem.

Your company does not go bankrupt when it runs out of money.

It goes bankrupt when it runs out of ways to generate enough of it.

TPx Communications just filed for Chapter 11 with more than $1.1 billion in debt.

Most people will blame the debt.

I will not.

Debt is usually the symptom. The disease starts much earlier.

Buried in the restructuring announcement was a sentence every CEO should read twice:

Revenue growth was not sufficient to generate the cash flow needed to support the business.

Read that again.

Not "the product failed."

Not "customers disappeared."

Revenue did not grow fast enough.

This is why I tell founders not to rush to hire a VP of Sales

If your ICP is wrong, a VP of Sales will not fix it.

If your positioning is weak, they will not fix it.

If marketing attracts the wrong prospects, they will not fix it.

If your pricing, sales process, handoffs, forecasting or customer retention are broken, they will not fix those either.

They will simply manage a broken system.

A VP of Sales manages the engine. A Fractional CRO builds it.

That is the difference between a VP of Sales and a Fractional CRO.

A VP of Sales manages the revenue engine.

A Fractional CRO builds, diagnoses and repairs it.

Before I hire a single salesperson, I want to know:

• Why do customers actually buy?
• Where is revenue leaking?
• Which channels deserve more investment?
• What is quietly stopping the business from scaling?

Only then do we build the team.

I have watched companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring salespeople when the real problem had nothing to do with salespeople.

If your pipeline looks healthy but revenue is not growing, do not assume your team needs to work harder.

There is a good chance your revenue engine needs rebuilding.

That is exactly what I do.