In partnership with
Happy Valentine’s Day Moaters,
A few weeks ago, Marcos told me a story. He'd met Jacco van der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design, in an elevator at a conference. That brief conversation led Marcos to pick up Jacco's book Revenue Architecture over the winter holidays. He came back with one takeaway: we needed to tie Pricing I/O to one blueprint.
I jumped all over it knowing the importance to align a company under one methodology.
That night, I found Jacco's YouTube videos. Picture a Dutch former triathlete teaching B2B revenue models with EDM music drops and hand-drawn diagrams. Couldn't stop watching.
His core argument resonated: most companies build their company’s operations in pieces. A marketing process here. A sales process there. A CS handoff somewhere else. Each team builds what they need, but nobody connects the rooms. But then you zoom out and realize your company designed something like this:
What happens when you don’t have a unified organization blueprint
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The Problem With Funnels
Most B2B companies run on a funnel. Leads in the top, deals out the bottom. Marketing tracks one set of metrics. Sales another. Customer success another. Nobody's working from the same map.
Per my last issue, When we pulled our 2025 data, 75% of our closed deals came from referrals and existing clients, and our private equity partners.
You might think: "So just add referrals to your pipeline." But there's no stage for "client gets amazing results, tells their network, warm intro shows up." Referrals aren't a pipeline source you optimize with lead scoring. They're the output of delivering impact on the other side of the deal.
The funnel treats "closed won" as the finish line. For us, it turned out to be closer to the starting line.
Introducing the Bowtie Model
The bowtie model flips the script. Picture an actual bowtie laid on its side.
Left side is acquisition: Awareness, Educate, Select. Right side is expansion: Activate, Impact, Expand. The "knot" in the middle is the signed deal, and unlike the funnel, it's the midpoint, not the end.
The principle from Jacco that stuck with me: No recurring impact, no recurring revenue.
If your client doesn't achieve the outcome they signed up for, they won't renew, refer, or expand. But when you deliver real impact? Referrals close faster. Those new clients get results and refer others. That's not a funnel. That's a flywheel.
Here's what ours looks like we put together a couple weeks back:
Pricing I/O’s bowtie model - revenue architecture - Page 1
Pricing I/O’s bowtie model - revenue architecture - Page 2
Every activity maps to a stage. Left side: content, lead magnets, website bookings, discovery calls. Right side: project delivery, NPS, ROI documentation, referral asks, expansion outreach. Clear entry and exit points so the team knows when someone moves forward.
What Got Clearer
Three things clicked when we applied this.
We can now see a full picture. Strong satisfaction scores, but no system to convert them into referrals, case studies, or expansion revenue. The right side had energy but no architecture.
The team now has a common language. When someone says "Education stage" or "Selection stage," everyone knows exactly what we're talking about. No more debating MQLs vs. SQLs. One blueprint. One language.
We know where to invest. Instead of pouring everything on the left side, we realized the highest-ROI move was strengthening the right. Build the hallways between the rooms.
What We're Building Now
A real referral system. Incentive clauses in contracts. Intro templates so clients can refer us in 60 seconds. Post-project "impact reviews" at peak satisfaction, the natural moment to ask. Over half our 2025 deals came from referrals with zero process behind them. Imagine what happens when we build one.
Architecting our CRM to match the bowtie. We're actively hiring a growth marketer to own this. Our HubSpot has been in constant flux. We're restructuring it to mirror these stages and integrating it with our website, newsletter, and LinkedIn so every touchpoint maps to a stage.
Doubling down on Education. The "Educate" stage is where we can make the biggest dent. We're building content for every level of buyer awareness: guides for people who don't yet know they have a pricing problem, case studies for those exploring solutions, and blogs that help prospects evaluating options. Content that educates before they ever talk to sales shortens the cycle and improves inbound quality.
Will keep you updated on progress on this.
'Til next time,
Ali
Resources
The Bowtie Model Explained. Jacco's very recent video walkthrough. Great place to start to get an introduction and enough to be really dangerous.
Revenue Architecture the book by Jacco van der Kooij. The book that started it all for us. 250+ diagrams and frameworks built for recurring revenue businesses. Personally, would start with the YouTube video.
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.
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