Client Overview
- SaaS vertical: Workplace analytics & productivity insights platform
- Stage: Post-PMF, pre-Series A ($1.2M ARR at project start)
- Geography: North America with early traction in UK/AU markets
- Product complexity: Product-led with underbuilt sales assist motion
Role & Duration
Growth System Designer | 4-month engagement (with fractional RevOps advisory through Series A planning)
The challenge
The product was sticky. The metrics were not.
This founder-led PLG company had early viral traction — low churn, high NPS, decent MRR growth. But when they tried to scale into mid-market, the cracks showed:
- In-app conversions stalled at <3%
- CAC ballooned due to inefficient paid acquisition and no routing of leads by deal size
- Their SDRs were treating $49/month users and $20K/year ICPs the same
- The sales cycle (what little existed) was unstructured, reactive, and dependent on founder demos
Marketing was spending. Product was iterating. But revenue wasn’t compounding.
They didn’t need more users. They needed more leverage from the right ones.
Strategic & operational approach
We set a goal: turn the product’s usage data into a real GTM system — one that could differentiate small self-serve users from high-value buying signals.
Identify monetization friction
My first step was a Product-to-Revenue Mapping Audit. It showed:
- 78% of enterprise signups never got sales-assisted follow-up
- Sales team had no visibility into power users inside key accounts
- Activation emails treated all users the same, regardless of ICP, usage behavior, or deal potential
- Demo requests came from noise, not signal
This was a classic PLG-to-SLG transition problem. But instead of hiring more AEs or buying expensive enrichment tools, we attacked it at the system layer.
Architect the buying path
I re-engineered the lead qualification process using a behavior-based framework:
- Usage-based intent scoring across five key product actions
- Firmographic filters layered on top using Clearbit + CRM enrichment
- A new “Sales Assist Track” that intercepted high-potential PLG users mid-journey — via in-app nudges, personalized outreach, and industry-specific onboarding flows
We also built an internal “Revenue Radar” — a dashboard that lit up high-potential accounts before they requested anything. This flipped the team from reactive to proactive, and allowed them to pre-close opportunities before competitors even engaged.
Tighten the acquisition flywheel
Rather than cut paid ads (which were underperforming), I rebuilt them around conversion-ready offer layers tied to mid-market objections:
Security reviews, multi-seat deployment concerns, and compliance anxieties.
Then I implemented lightweight lead capture workflows that reduced form fields by 50%, tripled conversion rate from ad to sales call, and automatically tiered the lead in CRM based on ICP score and activation potential.
Everything ran through a centralized revenue playbook built to scale with the team — not add more manual ops.
Results & business impact
Within a single quarter:
- CAC dropped by 42%, thanks to cleaner routing, better qualification, and less wasted SDR time
- Mid-market conversion rate doubled from 6% to 12.5%
- $480K in expansion pipeline created from previously ignored free users
- Product-to-Sales handoff time decreased from 9 days → 1.6 days
- 20% increase in paid seat expansion from enterprise accounts
- Zero new headcount added — just better signal, sharper systems, and a clean ICP fit
Even more: This system formed the backbone of their Series A pitch deck, driving a GTM narrative that investors could see — and fund.
Why partnering with me was the growth multiplier
This wasn’t about buying more tools or hiring faster. It was about seeing the system clearly — and rebuilding it for what it was meant to do: drive high-quality revenue.
I don’t do surface-level strategy or marketing theater. I integrate real, operational systems inside your team’s world:
- Where PLG starts to plateau
- Where leads are growing, but the pipeline isn’t
- Where the sales team is flying blind
- Where you know revenue is inside the product, but no one’s pulled the thread
That’s my zone.
If you’re scaling past $1M ARR and your product is working — but revenue isn’t compounding fast enough — I build the GTM system that unlocks that next layer.
Not growth theater. Just outcomes.
Let’s build something that sells itself — and scales with precision.