Predictable Revenue Growth

Build a production line you can measure

Design is about defining how a production line works before you try to improve its performance.

This section walks through the Design steps in the right sequence.

Identify the growth plan for the next 18 to 24 months

Every production line exists to support a growth plan.

Before designing anything, you need clarity on where the business is going and what revenue needs to look like at the end of the period.

Start by defining the target, then break it into the three growth components:

• Acquisition: revenue from new customers
• Retention: revenue you keep from existing customers
• Expansion: revenue you grow from existing customers

Then model the growth pattern for each component. Keep it practical:

• What is the baseline today
• What needs to be true to hit the target
• What is the biggest constraint right now

This is not about perfect forecasting. It is about building a plan you can engineer.

Your growth plan becomes the constraint that guides every design decision that follows.

Structure the business into an end to end sales motion

Once the growth plan is clear, the next step is to decide how revenue will flow through the business.

An end to end sales motion combines marketing, sales, and customer success into a single production line.

The key design decision here is choosing the right motion structure based on:

• ACV (average contract value)
• Customers per year (how many deals you need to close annually)

Those two numbers shape how the production line must work in practice. They influence:

• How much you can spend to acquire a customer
• How much human effort can be involved
• How standardised the motion needs to be
• What must be automated

Then define the motion clearly:

• How demand enters the system
• How demand becomes a qualified opportunity
• How opportunities become customers
• How customers realise value and stay

The goal is not to document every activity.

The goal is to define a clear flow that can be measured and improved.

Establish the growth formula for the sales motion

Predictable growth requires simple math and a clean data model.

The growth formula explains how revenue is produced inside the production line.

To make it measurable, define the data structure for the motion using three types of metrics:

• Volume: How much enters each stage in a time period
• Conversion: The rate at which volume moves from one stage to the next
• Time: How long volume takes to move through stages

Then build the formulas that matter:

• Acquisition formula: how new revenue is created from new demand
• Retention and expansion formula: how revenue is kept and grown after the sale

Once the formulas are visible, run the operational checks that make the system real:

1. Compare inputs vs throughput:
   1. Inputs are what you put into the system
   2. Throughput is what the system can process successfully
   3. If inputs rise but throughput does not, the motion is constrained.
      

2. Assess scalability: Can this motion handle more volume without breaking quality or speed.
3. Assess sustainability: Can this motion run without costs, effort, or complexity growing faster than revenue.

This formula does not need to be perfect. It needs to be visible and usable.

When the formula is clear, you can see:

• Which inputs matter most
• Which conversions are bottlenecks
• Where time is slowing the system
• Which improvements will create the biggest impact

Establish the customer impact journey

The customer impact journey is the end to end path a customer moves through to achieve the outcome they want.

It starts before the sale.

It continues through the sale.

It becomes durable when impact is delivered and sustained after the sale.

This matters because customers do not buy your internal steps. They buy a better future.

So your end to end sales motion should be designed around the impact journey, not around internal activities.

The customer impact journey should cut across:

• Acquisition: what must be true for the customer to understand value and commit
• Retention: what must happen for the customer to adopt, realise value, and keep paying
• Expansion: what must happen for the customer to deepen outcomes and buy more

This journey makes your production line measurable across the entire lifecycle. 

It also makes handoffs between marketing, sales, and customer success clear and testable.

This journey should cover:

• The customer’s starting situation and desired outcome
• The proof points and commitments required before a deal moves forward
• The first meaningful value after onboarding
• Adoption and usage milestones
• Ongoing success signals
• Retention triggers and risks
• Expansion triggers and conditions

Designing this journey reduces churn by ensuring expectations set during acquisition match what is delivered after the sale.

Identify Moments That Matter

Not every step in the production line has equal impact.

Moments That Matter are the specific points where execution quality has a disproportionate effect on outcomes.

These moments usually show up where:

• The customer makes a decision or loses confidence
• The process slows down or becomes inconsistent
• A handoff creates friction
• Quality drops and retention risk increases

The goal is to identify a short list of Moments That Matter that you will deliberately improve over time.

As you identify them, tie each moment to the data structure you already defined:

• Is this a volume problem
• A conversion problem
• Or a time problem

That framing makes it easier to prioritise and improve.

Once these moments are clear, you are ready to operate the production line.

That is where optimisation begins.