Why your growth team can’t fix a broken product: a structured framework to diagnose SaaS growth problems in 2026

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Read time: 3 minutes.

Welcome to the 192nd edition of The Growth Elements Newsletter. Every Monday and sometimes on Thursday, I write an essay on growth metrics & experiments and business case studies.

Today’s piece is for 8,000+ founders, operators, and leaders from businesses such as Shopify, Google, Hubspot, Zoho, Freshworks, Servcorp, Zomato, Postman, Razorpay and Zoom.

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First things first - define the problem in business terms, for example:

• ARR growth stalled

• CAC payback > 18 months

• NRR stuck at 95%

• Logo churn > 10%

Translate it into one primary target: eg: “Reduce CAC payback from 18 to 12 months” or “Move NRR from 95% to 115%.”

[1] Use a simple 4‑lever growth tree

Break the problem into four levers:

1. Acquisition:

   • Do we get enough qualified visitors/opportunities? (Volume, ICP fit, cost.)

2. Activation:

   • Do new users reach the first meaningful value quickly? (Onboarding, time‑to‑value, first win.)​

3. Monetisation:

   • Do we capture value effectively? (Pricing, packaging, discounting, deal structure.)

4. Retention/Expansion:

   • Do customers stay and grow? (Logo churn, NRR, expansion paths.)

Pick one lever as the primary bottleneck based on data, not vibes.

[2] Diagnose each lever with 2-3 hard metrics

Examples:

1. Acquisition:

   • Cost per SQO, win‑rate by segment, share of pipeline from true ICP.

2. Activation:

   • % of signups reaching “aha” in X days, onboarding completion, early churn.​

3. Monetisation:

   • Median ACV by ICP, discount rate, % revenue on lowest tier.

4. Retention/Expansion:

   • NRR by cohort/segment, logo churn, % customers expanding in 12 months.

If metrics are weak but traffic is fine, you have a product/positioning issue, not a performance marketing problem.

[3] Decide: product fix vs growth fix

1. Product/positioning problem indicators:

   • Low activation despite decent traffic.

   • Poor retention across segments.

   • Buyers are confused about “what it does” or compare you to the wrong category.​

2. Growth/marketing problem indicators:

   • Strong activation and retention in a narrow segment, but not enough of those people seeing you.

   • High win‑rate when you’re in the deal, low pipeline volume.

Growth cannot save: weak core value prop, unclear job‑to‑be‑done, or no real pain.

[4] What not to do (the “tactics that never work” bucket)

• Scaling ad spend when activation and retention are broken.​

• Adding more channels when you don’t have one channel + one ICP working.

• Spinning up “growth experiments” without a clear problem statement and success metric.

Final learnings

• Treat growth like a consulting problem: define the business issue, decompose it into levers, identify the bottleneck, then select interventions.

• A great growth team amplifies a working product; it cannot compensate for a product no one truly needs or understands.​

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