90 Day Channel Cull: Every Founder's Growth Audit Playbook

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Read time: 3 minutes.

Welcome to the 212th edition of The Growth Elements Newsletter. Every Monday and sometimes on Thursday, I write an essay on growth metrics & experiments and business case studies.

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Every founder at $500K to $5M ARR I speak to is running too many channels. They were added during early experimentation. They were never pruned when results faded. The team is busy across 7 channels and the pipeline depends on 2 of them.

[1] Why You Have Too Many Channels

• Each channel got added because of one early win. Nobody removed any when the win faded.

• More channels feel like more shots on goal. They are actually more distractions.

• Lean teams running 6 to 8 channels execute none of them well.

• Channel sprawl is the operator-founder version of feature sprawl.

[2] The Cull In Three Steps

• Pull every closed deal from the last 90 days. Use closed-won, not pipeline opportunities.

• Trace each one back to the channel that produced the first touch lead.

• Group deals by channel and look at each one as a percentage of total closed pipeline.

• You will almost always find that 1 or 2 channels produced 70% to 80% of the revenue.

[3] What To Cut And What To Keep

• Any channel that produced zero closed deals in 90 days gets cut immediately. Stop posting, stop spending, stop staffing it.

• Any channel that produced fewer than 3 closed deals goes on a 30 day countdown to prove itself or get cut.

• Reinvest the saved budget and team hours into the top 1 or 2 channels.

• One of the SaaS, I know, reduced their channel mix from 7 to 3 last quarter and inbound pipeline doubled in 60 days.

Final Words

[1] Block 90 minutes this week. Pull your closed-won pipeline by source for the last 90 days.

[2] Cut every channel with zero closed deals. No defending it. No saving it for later.

[3] Reinvest 100% of the saved time and budget into your top 1 or 2 channels for the next 90 days.

That's it for today's article! I hope you found this essay insightful.

Wishing you a productive week ahead!

I always appreciate you reading.

Thanks,
Chintankumar Maisuria