You inherited a number. Not a suggestion. A target. Your board expects growth, margin improvement, and a clear story about how you're going to deliver both.
This is pressure, but it’s manageable pressure if you translate it into an operating system you can actually run week to week.
Most revenue leaders in PE-backed companies feel like they’re constantly explaining why they’re not at plan, instead of building toward something predictable. That happens when you’re operating without a clear model of what the business should produce at each stage. You end up in constant reactive mode: did we make the number or not, and if not, whose fault is it.
There’s a better way. It starts with working backward from the target into a mechanical model you can manage.
From Board Target to Weekly Operating System
Take the annual revenue goal you've been given. Don’t negotiate it. Work with it.
Work backward. What pipeline do you need to hit that revenue, given your average deal size and historical win rate? What new logo velocity do you need to hit that pipeline? Which channels and campaigns have to deliver that volume, and at what cost? What does your sales team need to do daily to make this happen?
This isn’t a theoretical exercise. This is the specification for your business. If the math doesn’t work—if you need deal sizes your market won’t support, or win rates that are historically unrealistic, or customer acquisition costs that would make the unit economics terrible—you need to know that now.
The business either can hit the target as-is, or it needs a different target. Those are the two real options. Everything in between is theater.
Once you’ve built that model, it becomes your operating system. Your weekly standup is about whether you’re on pace to hit the inputs that drive the output. Are you generating the right volume of qualified leads? Are deals converting at the pace we said they would? Are we acquiring customers at the cost we modeled?
This is concrete. It’s measurable. It’s the one conversation worth having.
Using What You Already Have to Answer the Right Questions
Before you ask for a bigger budget for a new platform or program, ask yourself four questions, then make marketing and sales ops answer them using the systems you currently have.
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Where do our best customers come from?
Your CRM should tell you this. Not your gut. Not your best salesperson’s opinion. Your data. Look at the deals you’ve closed in the last twelve months. Tag each one by original source: did they come from a paid campaign, organic search, a partner referral, an inbound request, a cold outreach. Look at the cohort you acquired through each channel. Which cohort has the highest retention? Which has the highest expansion or upsell? Which is cheapest to acquire relative to their lifetime value?
You now know where to spend more money. You also know where you’re wasting it -
What does a healthy opportunity look like at different stages?
Not every lead is equal. But most organizations don’t know how to tell them apart. Define what healthy looks like. When an opportunity enters your pipeline, what characteristics does it have? How quickly should a rep be talking to them? When should they have a discovery call, a demo, a proposal? What triggers movement from one stage to the next?
Your CRM should track this. If it doesn’t, you can build it. When you can see that deals with certain characteristics convert at 40 percent and deals without them convert at 5 percent, you have a filter. You spend time on that 40 percent, and either disqualify the 5 percent or put them in a nurture program to come back to later.
This cuts your cycle time. It also cuts the number of deals that sit in limbo for six months because nobody’s actually qualifying them. -
Which programs consistently move deals from one stage to the next?
Most marketing initiatives get measured at the top of the funnel: did we generate leads? But your real question as a revenue leader is whether they influence deals further down. A campaign might generate a hundred leads, but if only two of them ever move to the discovery call stage, you’re not generating value.
Marketing and sales should produce one view, weekly, that shows you every program’s impact across the funnel. Not impressions or clicks. Deal progression. A webinar that brings in fifty leads but moves eight of them to conversation is more valuable than a campaign that brings in five hundred leads and none of them convert.
This forces a real conversation about what’s working. -
What is your true cost (and worth) of customer acquisition by segment and channel?
This is the hardest question, because it requires agreement on what counts. But it’s the most important one. You need to know: if we acquire a customer through direct sales, how much did that cost? What if they came through a partner? What if they bought it through e-commerce? What if they came inbound?
Then break it down further: what does it cost to acquire a customer in vertical A versus vertical B? What does it cost to acquire a $50K contract versus a $500K contract? What does it cost to acquire a customer who stays versus one who churns after a year?
You’ll find that some of your revenue is actually unprofitable at the unit level, even though it’s profitable in aggregate. You’ll find that some channels look mediocre overall but are incredible for specific customer types.
Once you know this, you can make decisions. You can decide to exit a channel because the unit economics don’t work. You can decide to invest more in a high-touch motion because the LTV is so strong. You can decide to change your pricing or your go-to-market motion based on what the data actually says.
This is the conversation your PE sponsors want to have. It’s also the conversation that makes the work feel manageable, because you’re not defending programs based on activity—you’re measuring them based on outcomes.
Managing the Internal Conversation
You’re going to get pressure. The board will ask why you’re not on plan. You’ll have executive meetings where somebody suggests a new growth initiative that sounds good but isn’t connected to any underlying analysis. You’ll have to decide which battles are worth fighting.
Here’s how to make this manageable.
Agree with your sponsors on experiment windows. Don’t say yes to a new channel or a new initiative indefinitely. Say yes for ninety days with agreed-upon success metrics. Then measure what actually happened. This gives you room to try things without committing forever.
Limit concurrent initiatives. Most revenue teams try to do everything at once: new sales motion, new marketing channel, new pricing model, new product launch. That scatters your team and makes it impossible to know what's actually working. Pick the two or three that matter most. Do those well. Once you can see a clear result, consider what’s next.
Establish a weekly operating rhythm. Sales, marketing, and RevOps sit down with the same numbers. You look at what moved this week, what didn’t, what you’re learning. You make one or two specific changes. This prevents the constant whiplash of “the strategy changed again” and replaces it with “we’re learning and optimizing.”
When you get pressure to abandon a strategy or chase a new opportunity, you can point to actual data. You don’t say “I think this is working.” You say “here’s what the pipeline shows.” That’s a different (and more productive and pleasant) kind of conversation.
The Quieter Benefit: Making the Business Easier to Understand
There’s a longer game here. You’re being asked to hit a number this year. But if this company gets sold, the buyer is going to want to understand how you do this.
A future owner doesn’t just want strong financials. They want a commercial system that can survive leadership transitions. They want to see that revenue isn’t dependent on a single relationship or a lucky campaign. They want to see that the way you acquire customers is documented, repeatable, and measurable.
The work you’re doing now—cleaning up your definitions, building a clear operating model, using data to make decisions—that’s the same work that makes due diligence simpler and makes a buyer more confident.
A buyer looks at a company and asks: can I understand how you make money here? Can I trust that it will keep happening? Do I see a system or do I see luck? The companies that answer “yes” to all three command higher valuations.
You’re not just trying to hit the number this year. You’re building a revenue engine that the next owner can run with confidence. The same disciplined approach to measurement and decision-making that gets you through this year also gets you through a seamless transition.
That’s the actual leverage. Not the activity. The system.
