Growth planning is the strategic process that helps B2B SaaS businesses meet and exceed their revenue goals. It is the bridge between a company's strategic vision and the practical steps needed to make that vision a reality. If you have Product Market Fit (PMF) but are finding it difficult to grow revenue ... read on.
Growth planning is surprisingly easy to master, it's based on your existing the customer journey and will predict exactly what you need to do next to meet and exceed your growth targets.
Let's explore how growth planning works, starting from your business goals and working all the way down to the daily activities that drive growth.
1. Start with Your Goals: How Many Customers Do You Need?
Every growth plan begins with defining your goals. For a B2B SaaS business, this usually means setting a target for revenue, number of customers, or market share. To break down these high-level goals, you first need to determine the number of customers required to achieve them. This step involves:
Understanding Your Strategic Vision: Are you aiming for aggressive growth, steady market penetration, or establishing a niche presence? Your strategic vision will influence the number of customers you need.
Calculating the Customer Requirement: Based on your revenue goals and average deal size, you can calculate the number of customers required. For example, if your target is $1 million in revenue and your average deal size is $10,000, you will need 100 customers.
Pro Tip: Not just any customer, target and win your Ideal Customer, read more here. ?????
2. Measure Conversion Rates Between Stages
Once you know the number of customers needed, the next step is to analyze your sales funnel to understand the conversion rates between each stage of the customer journey. This involves mapping out the sales cycle stages, such as:
Awareness: Potential customers first come to learn about a business problem they are experiencing.
Education: They actively educate themselves on how to solve the problem.
Selection: Prospects create a shortlist of solutions which can solve the business problem.
Qualification: The sales team creates an Opportunity and works with the Prospect to qualify and differentiate.
Decision: The customer makes a purchase or signs a contract.
Understanding the conversion rates between these stages allows you to pinpoint where improvements are needed. For example, if only 5% of Leads move from the Education to Qualification stage, you may need to enhance your content and lead nurturing efforts.
3. From Average Deal Size to Pipeline Requirements
Your average deal size plays a critical role in growth planning. If you understand your average deal size and conversion rates, you can calculate the size of your sales pipeline needed to hit your revenue goals. For instance:
Pipeline Value: If you need 100 customers to achieve your revenue target and your average deal size is $10,000, then your total pipeline value should be at least $1 million.
Number of Opportunities: If your conversion rate from opportunity to closed deal is 20%, you will need 500 opportunities in the pipeline (100 customers needed / 0.2 conversion rate).
4. Work Backward to Leads and Sales Activity
Now that you know the number of opportunities needed, you can work backward to understand how many leads you need at the top of the funnel. This step involves analyzing your lead conversion rate:
Calculate Lead Requirements: If your lead-to-opportunity conversion rate is 40%, you will need 1,250 leads to generate 500 opportunities.
Define Activity Metrics: Once you know the number of leads required, you can set activity metrics for your GTM team. This could include the amount of social media activity, number of calls, emails, demos, and meetings needed to generate the desired number of leads.
5. Recognizing the Need for Increased Lead Volume
In my experience, when I walk clients through this growth planning model, it's like a light has been switched on. They immediately understand what needs to be done today to meet expectations ... usually a dramatic increase in their lead and opportunity volume.
People intuitively understand that achieving long-term goals requires taking specific actions today. By breaking down the sales planning process into measurable steps and clear metrics, it becomes evident where efforts need to be concentrated—often leading to immediate improvement in performance.
Conclusion: Turning Planning into Action
Growth planning for a B2B SaaS business is not just about vision, strategy, product roadmap or even setting targets—it's about understanding every stage of the customer journey, measuring conversion rates, and setting realistic, actionable steps to achieve your goals. Growth planning provides a clear path from where you are today to where you want to be, aligning your GTM team's daily activities with your company's strategic vision.
If this article has resonated, and you wish to take the first step towards accelerating customer acquisition and revenue please get in touch and we will send you a template you can use, no questions asked.
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