Agentic Commercial Model
Fessal Rahman on the commercial operating model transformation every business deploying agentic AI needs — and almost none have made.
Get the Book 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, Dead Model WalkingThe 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 Books
Two books, available on Amazon in ebook, paperback, and hardcover.
About the Book
Why Agentic AI Breaks the Business of Software, and the Model That Wins
Every major business is racing to deploy AI. Almost none of them have asked what happens to their commercial model when it works. The pricing models, compensation plans, and revenue metrics that built SaaS were designed for a world where humans were the buyers, the users, and the expanders. AI agents are replacing all three.
Dead Model Walking makes the case that most commercial leaders are not transforming their model — they are relabelling it. Salesforce changed Agentforce pricing three times in eighteen months. Zendesk charges per resolution on top of per-seat fees, not instead of them. The comp plan guidance published in 2026 still has no line item for agent-driven revenue. And the data moat argument at the end is the part most leaders won't say out loud: first-mover advantage in the agentic era is now close to permanent.
Book Two
How Agentic AI Builds Around Business Leaders Who Won't Adapt
The sequel to Dead Model Walking. Where the first book killed the commercial model, this one is about the people still defending it. It reimagines Charles Handy's Gods of Management as Greek archetypes, Cronus, Zeus, Sisyphus, Narcissus, and Midas, none of whom survive the agentic era, because each defends something fixed, and agentic AI builds around fixed things rather than confronting them.
The central argument: the leaders who will not adapt are not fired. They are built around. Still in the building, still on the org chart, no longer load-bearing. Grounded in named, real-world cases, from Intel to Salesforce to Broadcom's acquisition of VMware.
The Series
Nine pieces published on Medium and Substack. Each stands alone; together they form the complete framework.
Agentic Commercial Model · Issue 01
The opening argument. Why the gap between AI deployment and commercial architecture is the defining business problem of the agentic era.
Read on Medium →Agentic Commercial Model · Issue 02
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 · Issue 03
Sales incentive structures were designed for a world where humans expanded licences. That world is ending. Here is what replaces it.
Read on Medium →Agentic Commercial Model · Issue 04
Net Revenue Retention tells you where you were. In the agentic economy, by the time it signals a problem, the structural shift underneath it is already irreversible.
Read on Medium →Agentic Commercial Model · Issue 05
The go-to-market motion built for human buyers is collapsing under the weight of agentic AI. What the replacement looks like.
Read on Medium →Agentic Commercial Model · Special Edition
Every customer you onboard today is training your model on exactly how they work. That calibration doesn't transfer. Most vendors haven't understood what they're actually building.
Read on Medium →The Half-Pivot
The post-mortem always blames execution. It is almost never execution. There was no commercial model to execute in the first place.
Read on Medium →The One-Way Door
When AI agents become the workload, the buyer, and the decision-maker, the commercial model that survives looks nothing like the one that got you here.
Read on Medium →Contrarian Take
The freed capacity has a value, and it is not the salary you just saved. Here is the question almost nobody is asking.
Read on Medium →The Ebooks
Three short, focused ebooks from the Agentic Commercial Model series. Each one takes a single argument further than the articles do, with diagnostics, contrast models, and action plans built for commercial leaders who need to move. PDF and ePub, readable on any device.
Ebook 01
Why agentic failures get blamed on execution when the model was never built
The post-mortem always blames execution. It almost never is. Includes a five-question binary diagnostic, an Old World versus Agentic Commercial Model contrast, and a five-step 30-day plan.
Get the Ebook →Ebook 02
Why first-mover advantage in agentic SaaS is now permanent
Switching costs used to be logistical. Now they are epistemological. Three named company case studies, six architectural decisions, and the argument that your total obtainable market is contracting in real time.
Get the Ebook →Ebook 03
Monetisation, GTM, enablement, comp, and the metrics that actually matter
The working document for CCOs and CROs running a transformation. Seven parts covering the full commercial rebuild, ending with a 90-day implementation sequence and the board conversation that has to happen on day one.
Get the Ebook →About
Fessal Rahman is the originator of the Agentic Commercial Model framework and author of Dead Model Walking — a structured approach to commercial operating model transformation for businesses deploying agentic AI.
He is Group Executive 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, 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.