Agentic Commercial Model
Fessal Rahman on the commercial operating model transformation every business deploying agentic AI needs — and almost none have made.
Take the Assessment Read the Series"Every enterprise is racing to deploy AI. Almost none have asked what happens to their commercial model when it works."
— Fessal Rahman, The Agentic Commercial ModelThe Framework
A structured operating model for businesses whose customers — and competitors — are deploying AI agents at scale. Three interconnected problems that existing commercial frameworks were not built to solve.
Seat-based pricing assumes a human on the other side of every transaction. Agents don't have seats. The unit of value has changed; the unit of price hasn't.
Incentive structures built for expansion ARR and seat growth misfire when the customer's buying unit shifts to outcomes and consumption. Sales teams optimise for the wrong thing.
Net Revenue Retention is a lagging indicator. It tells you where you were. In an agentic economy, by the time NRR signals a problem, the structural shift underneath it is already irreversible.
The Series
Published on Medium. Each piece stands alone; together they form the complete framework.
Agentic Commercial Model · I
Why seat-based pricing breaks the moment AI agents become the buyer, the user, and the decision-maker simultaneously.
Read on Medium →Agentic Commercial Model · II
Sales incentive structures were designed for a world where humans expanded licences. That world is ending.
Read on Medium →Agentic Commercial Model · III
Net Revenue Retention tells you where you were. In the agentic economy, by the time it signals a problem, the shift underneath it is already irreversible.
Read on Medium →About
Fessal Rahman is the originator of the Agentic Commercial Model framework — a structured approach to commercial operating model transformation for businesses deploying agentic AI.
He is Group Commercial Director at The Access Group (Hg Capital), leading commercial operations across a portfolio of 20+ software businesses with over $1B in ARR. He is also the founder of FR Advisory, which advises PE- and VC-backed SaaS companies on agentic AI monetisation, pricing architecture, and commercial model transformation.
His career spans McKinsey, Bain, Cloudinary (VP Monetisation), Emarsys, Exasol, and Virgin Media O2 — 20 years of operator experience across enterprise software, strategy consulting, and portfolio commercial leadership.
His thesis: the commercial operating models that built SaaS were not designed for a world where AI agents are the buyer, the user, and the decision-maker. Most businesses haven't noticed yet. The ones that do, and act, will define the next decade of B2B.