By Philip Lay, Senior Advisor, The Chasm Group LLC
“The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.”
– Albert Einstein
“The problem is not the problem, the problem is the way we see the problem.”
– Saji Ijiyemi, Don’t Die Sitting
In my work with CEOs and their teams in B2B SaaS scaleups as well as mid-sized and larger companies I am constantly surprised by how many of their sales teams are closing small deals of $50k or so in ARR with enterprise-level organizations instead of developing much larger opportunities. One consequence of this apparent lack of ambition is a much slower growth rate for the company, and another is that it can take twice as long to build a profitable revenue engine. In fact, I believe this is partly why B2B SaaS companies tend to take a decade or more to build a profitable revenue stream.