Your buyer will apply the uplift you didn't
The indexation clause is already in your contracts. If you don't apply it before a sale, it becomes your buyer's upside, at their multiple.
Six months before a sale, your retention curve is already written
Retention moves at the speed of your renewal calendar. By the time the adviser is appointed, the curve a buyer reads is already set.
What is operator-led GTM advisory (and when does a software business need it)?
A missed forecast does not always need a new sales leader. Sometimes it needs someone who has run the engine to find what is missing and help your team fix it.
Your ARR is a hypothesis until a buyer rebuilds it
Every buyer's diligence team rebuilds your ARR from the invoices. Where their number and yours don't match, theirs wins.
Take one day out of every stage
Most turnaround plans focus on more pipeline or better win rates. The cheapest lever is speed, and almost nobody measures it properly.
Don't start with sales training
When a software business falls behind plan, the instinct is to train the sales team. Most of the time the problem isn't the sellers. Here's what to do in the first 30 days instead.
Three acquisitions, three meanings of "qualified"
Buy-and-build groups usually start sales integration with the CRM. That's the wrong end. Start with the words.
It's fine not to know who the economic buyer is
Most qualification frameworks fail the same way. Reps learn to fill in the boxes. The deal desk is where you find out which boxes are empty, and what to do about it before Friday.
Before you hire a CRO, write the handover note
Boards spend months choosing a CRO and almost no time on what that person will inherit. Write it down first. If you can't, that's your answer.
Hire RevOps too early and you've bought a £150k CRM administrator
A full-time Head of RevOps is the right answer for a lot of software businesses. Just not at £5m ARR, and not before anyone has decided what they're meant to fix.
Nobody owns the renewal date
Sales closes the deal. Finance sends the invoice. Customer success looks after the customer. Ask who's tracking the renewal date and the uplift clause, and watch everyone look at each other.
The recovery call nobody wants to make
You can find the revenue in your contracts in a few weeks. Getting your account managers to ask for it is the hard part.
Don't send the true-up invoice
When a customer is using more than their contract covers, the instinct is to bill them for it. That's usually the least valuable thing you can do with what you've found.
The CPI clause nobody has used since 2019
Most software contracts let you index prices every year. Most software businesses don't. Here's what that costs over three years, and how to start collecting.
Plan versus engine: why the number is behind
When the number is behind, test the plan against the engine underneath it. The four places the money usually is.
The forecast that moves every week
If the forecast moves every week and nobody measures the miss, nobody learns. The fix is a discipline, not a CRM field.
The three to five per cent you have already earned
Three to five per cent of revenue is typically being consumed but not billed. Where it hides and what it is worth.