♖ PEMDAS growth strategy

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Hi Friends,

Remember PEMDAS from middle school math? Get the order of operations wrong and your answer is completely off.

Growth strategy works the same way.

There are so many companies doing the right things at the wrong time.

And if I'm honest, I made the same mistake at Pricing I/O.

The Data Was Clear. My Instincts Weren't.

We closed 2025 with our best Q4 in company history. By most measures, things are working.

But in January, Eric (our sales leader) and I sat down to review every deal from 2025. Not the summary metrics. Every deal. One by one.

Here was the summary.

75% of our new logo revenue came from just two sources: referrals and our website. Note, 100% of our upsells were originally came from referrals and website too.

The data was obvious. Intuitively, we knew this and yet my instinct was to explore new channels. Add outbound. Run creative Linkedin automation. You know, the AI fomo stuff.

It's the classic growth trap. What got you here feels boring. New channels feel like progress.

Meanwhile, we were paying an outbound agency that was technically "growing pipeline." But every hour spent qualifying cold leads was an hour not spent closing a late-stage deal that was already warm.

We let go of our outbound agency in December. Instead of adding new pie slices, I want to focus 2026 making the existing pie larger.

Three Circles, One Flywheel

With limited resources, where do we focus?

I meditated on it. I sketched out a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles. Three goals:

• Drive more website & pipeline opportunities

• Improve our win rates

• Get more referrals

What activities bring the highest leverage to unlock all three goals. It led me to this sketch below.

Circle 1: Inbound — Make it easier for the right buyers to find us. Give them resources to self-educate and built trust with them.

Circle 2: Win Rates — Stop losing deals we should win. Sharper discovery, better ROI storytelling, world-class handoffs. We're kicking off sales training next week, an area I regret not investing in sooner.

Circle 3: Referral Motion — 55% of our deals came from referrals. And shockingly, no one was proactively owning this. I told Marcos: imagine if we actually built a system instead of hoping the referrals continue to come.

And the center of the Venn diagram? Customer proof & education.

It's the fuel that makes all three work.

About half our late-stage deals get punted. The enemy isn't just competition, it’s indecision.

Research from Dixon and McKenna (The JOLT Effect) found 40-60% of B2B deals end in "no decision." Champions sit across from their CFO without ammo. They need ROI numbers. Evidence it worked for someone like them.

Back to PEMDAS

I spent a lot of time in January thinking about our company’s order of operations. Here is what I came up with.

Foundation first. Build the team, define the metrics, connect our pipes: HubSpot, Webflow (website), Beehiiv (company newsletter). You can't scale what is disconnected and you can't measure. In addition, invest in sales training to sharpen our swords.

Proof second. Build an inbound content motion around case studies, ROI stories, guides, battlecards, industry landing pages, shareable assets. The stuff that helps champions sell internally and gives happy clients something to forward.

Then scale. Not before.

We'll see if we got the math right.

Will keep you all updated on progress.

'Til next time,

—Ali

P.S. Wrestling with similar challenges? Hit reply. Would love to compare notes.

About Me: I'm Ali, VP of Growth at Pricing I/O. I write about growth, GTM execution, and sharing real stuff I am doing to hit our numbers this year. Yes, I am still mourning the loss of the Texans. 23 seasons, and still no Super Bowl experience. Appreciate everyone’s condolences.

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