Most Operators Are Solving Problem Three While Problem One Is Still Broken

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Welcome to the 210th 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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You are running outbound. Testing paid ads. Hired an agency last month. The pipeline is still not moving.

The problem is rarely the tactic. It is almost always the order you put them in.

[1] What the sequencing trap looks like

One of the B2B startup I know spent $18,000 a month on paid acquisition. Leads were coming in. Barely any converted. The instinct was to blame the ads. But the ads were working.

Over two months, 412 inquiries came in. Three to four converted to sales. The ads did their job.

The sales process after the click did not. This is the sequencing trap. You build the funnel from the top down instead of from the conversion point up.

[2] The most common missequencing mistakes

• Running paid ads before proving the sales process with organic leads first

• Adding outbound volume before the ICP is sharp enough to personalise at scale

• Buying AI tools before the workflow they are meant to improve is documented

• Scaling a channel before one deal source is repeatable and understood

In every case, operators are adding acceleration to a broken sequence and wondering why results do not improve.

[3] How to audit your own sequence

Work backwards from your last five closed deals.

• How did they come in?

• What happened between the first touch and the close?

• Where did the drop-offs sit?

The answer is almost never at the top of the funnel. Most drop-offs happen between inquiry and first meeting, or between first meeting and proposal.

Fixing sequence means fixing those gaps before buying more top-of-funnel volume.

[4] The discipline that separates operators from optimisers

Optimisers add tactics. Operators sequence them.

Research from B2B SaaS benchmarks shows companies that establish a repeatable sales process before scaling paid acquisition see up to 3x better conversion rates from the same spend.

The SaaS companies growing predictably right now are not running more experiments. They are running fewer, in the right order.

Final Words

[1] Map your last five deals end to end. Find the biggest drop-off point. Fix that before adding any new top-of-funnel spend.

[2] If you are running ads and not converting, pause them for two weeks. Run the same volume through organic or direct outreach and watch where leads fall out.

[3] Before your next agency engagement or growth hire, write down the exact sequence from first touch to closed deal. If you cannot write it clearly, they cannot execute it.

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