Building Growth Systems

Ask most teams what their growth strategy is and you get a list: LinkedIn ads, a webinar series, an SEO push, outbound. That is not a strategy. It is an inventory.

A system is different in one specific way. It states what it turns into what, and at what rate. Everything else follows from that.

Start at the end

Write down the revenue number and work backwards through the arithmetic until you hit something you can buy. Revenue, average deal, deals needed, opportunities, qualified leads, raw leads. Six numbers.

Two things happen when you do this honestly. The first is that the plan usually turns out to be impossible at the current conversion rates, which is useful to know in January rather than October. The second is that you find out which rate matters most.

The plan is usually impossible at current conversion rates. Better to find that out in January.

Find the binding constraint

In every funnel one number is doing the damage. Not four — one. Doubling lead volume when the sales team already cannot work the leads it has produces nothing except a worse cost per opportunity.

The binding constraint is rarely the one people want it to be. It is usually further down the funnel than the marketing team's remit, which is exactly why it stays unfixed. I have seen more revenue unlocked by a follow-up rule than by a budget increase.

Then instrument it

A system you cannot see is a hypothesis. Before adding spend, I want each of those six numbers visible weekly, from one source, with an owner.

• 01One source of truth. If marketing and sales quote different numbers, every meeting becomes a debate about the numbers rather than a decision.
• 02Weekly, not monthly. A monthly cadence means a bad change runs for four weeks before anyone notices.
• 03An owner per rate. Not per channel — per conversion rate. Channels have owners already; the handoffs between them do not, which is where things leak.

Only then, spend

Paid media is an accelerator. It makes whatever the system already does happen faster, including the parts that lose money. Pointing budget at a funnel with a broken handoff buys you a more expensive version of the same problem.

This is why I look at the business economics before touching a campaign. Not out of thoroughness — because the campaign is often not where the answer is.