Startups often struggle to grow efficiently in the complex B2B tech landscape. Limited resources, lengthy sales cycles, and evolving buyer behaviors make scaling a challenge. Growth advisors offer a solution by providing hands-on expertise to avoid costly mistakes and accelerate progress. Here’s what you need to know:
- What They Do: Growth advisors bridge the gap between consultants and full-time hires, offering strategic guidance without the expense of a full-time CMO.
- Why They’re Valuable: They help startups save time, reduce risk, and focus on strategies that deliver measurable results.
- Key Benefits: Faster market entry, clear KPIs, better decision-making, and avoiding common pitfalls like targeting the wrong audience or scaling prematurely.
The article outlines advice from five top advisors, each specializing in areas like go-to-market strategies, demand generation, SaaS scaling, and product-led growth. Their insights boil down to 10 actionable rules for sustainable growth, including documenting experiments, focusing on repeatable systems, and using data to drive decisions.
Whether you’re struggling with product-market fit or scaling challenges, engaging the right growth advisor can be a game-changer for your startup.
Leveraging growth advisors, mastering SEO, and honing your craft | Luc Levesque (Shopify, Meta)
What Growth Advisors Do for B2B Tech Companies
Growth advisors occupy a unique space in the B2B tech world. They’re not like traditional consultants who hand over a report and vanish, nor are they full-time hires that come with salaries, benefits, and office needs. Instead, they act as strategic partners, offering expert guidance without the long-term overhead.
B2B tech companies often face intricate sales cycles and deal with multiple decision-makers. Growth advisors are well-versed in these complexities and help businesses navigate them effectively. Let’s take a closer look at how growth advisors differ from consultants and CMOs.
Growth Advisor vs Consultant vs CMO
These roles may seem similar on the surface, but they serve very different purposes. Consultants typically focus on specific projects with defined timelines. Once their work is done, they leave.
Full-time CMOs, on the other hand, provide ongoing leadership but come at a steep cost. For early-stage startups, hiring an experienced CMO can mean spending over $200,000 annually, not to mention equity and benefits. For companies still testing their product-market fit, this is often an expense they can’t afford.
Growth advisors fill the gap between these two extremes. They offer high-level strategic input on a part-time basis, working closely with founders for extended periods – often six months to a year or more. They provide hands-on support without requiring a full-time commitment, making senior-level expertise accessible while keeping costs manageable.
What sets growth advisors apart is their integration into the team. They join weekly strategy meetings, actively monitor campaign performance, and adjust tactics in response to real-time market feedback. This collaborative and flexible approach makes them invaluable for startups.
How Startups Benefit from Growth Advisors
Growth advisors bring extensive industry experience that internal teams often lack. They can quickly pinpoint whether growth challenges stem from issues like messaging, channel strategy, or product-market alignment.
They also help startups move faster. By steering clear of common mistakes and focusing on strategies with the highest potential for success, advisors accelerate market entry. This speed is critical when startups face tight funding runways or fast-moving competitors.
Another key advantage is their ability to eliminate guesswork. Growth advisors establish clear measurement frameworks from the start. They set up attribution tracking, define meaningful KPIs, and create reporting systems that highlight what’s truly driving growth – not just what looks good on a dashboard.
Risk reduction is another major benefit, though it’s often overlooked. Growth advisors help companies avoid costly missteps, such as targeting the wrong market segment, building unnecessary features, or scaling marketing channels that don’t deliver sustainable returns. In many cases, the money saved on these missteps more than covers the advisor’s fees.
Additionally, growth advisors understand the technical side of growth. They know how to leverage product usage data, when to implement product-led growth strategies, and how to balance feature development with marketing efforts to maximize impact.
These benefits form the foundation for the strategies discussed later in this playbook. By addressing both strategic and tactical needs, growth advisors play a pivotal role in helping startups scale effectively.
Expert Advice from Top Startup Advisors
When it comes to scaling B2B tech startups, top growth advisors bring actionable strategies that deliver results. Each advisor mentioned here has a proven track record of helping companies grow. While their methods vary, the success stories they’ve created speak volumes.
Tyler Beesley: Building Go-to-Market Systems for Startups
Tyler Beesley focuses on helping early-stage B2B tech startups establish scalable go-to-market systems. His philosophy? Build strong, repeatable processes rather than relying on one-off tactics. This ensures startups can thrive even with small teams and limited resources.
The Beesley Go-to-Market Framework includes three key steps:
- Define Your Revenue Architecture: Map out the customer journey from the first interaction to closing the deal. Highlight decision-makers, key touchpoints, and potential friction points. A straightforward flowchart can help visualize how prospects move through your funnel.
- Build Your Messaging Foundation: Craft three core messages that address your ideal customer’s pain points at different stages of their journey. Test these messages across channels to ensure they resonate.
- Focus on Two Channels: Instead of spreading your efforts thin, concentrate on two channels where your target audience is most active. Mastering these will give you better attribution and faster results.
Next, Araks Nalbandyan shares her expertise in demand generation for startups with lean teams.
Araks Nalbandyan: Demand Generation for Lean Marketing Teams
Araks Nalbandyan helps B2B tech startups generate a steady pipeline, even with limited resources. Her approach emphasizes quality over quantity, ensuring that every lead has high potential.
The Nalbandyan Demand Generation System focuses on three steps:
- Develop an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Scorecard: Create a simple scoring system based on factors like company size, industry, technology stack, and buying signals. This ensures that sales and marketing teams can consistently identify high-value prospects.
- Produce Targeted Content: Instead of chasing broad visibility, create content that naturally attracts qualified leads. Examples include technical guides, ROI calculators, and case studies.
- Use Progressive Profiling: Collect key data from prospects over time during interactions. This gradual approach streamlines the qualification process.
Following this, Lillian Pierson explains how data can be a game-changer for scalable growth.
Lillian Pierson: Scaling Growth with Data-Driven Strategies
Lillian Pierson, founder of Data-Mania, specializes in creating scalable growth systems powered by data. She stresses the importance of integrating measurement into every growth initiative from the outset, enabling teams to make informed decisions.
The Pierson Scalable Growth Framework includes these steps:
- Define a Growth Metrics Hierarchy: Identify primary metrics tied to revenue, along with secondary and tertiary indicators that provide predictive insights. Documenting these relationships ensures team activities align with business goals.
- Set Up Effective Attribution Systems: Implement tracking that follows prospects through every stage of the funnel, not just the first or last touchpoint. Use clear tracking parameters and establish feedback loops between marketing and sales.
- Create Optimization Loops: Regularly review performance data to identify bottlenecks and implement improvements. Each change should be backed by clear hypotheses and measurable success criteria.
Matt Thomas then shares his approach to overcoming common scaling challenges in SaaS businesses.
Matt Thomas: Tackling SaaS Scaling Challenges
Matt Thomas works with B2B SaaS companies that have achieved product-market fit but face hurdles when scaling. He believes that many challenges stem from systems that work well at smaller scales but falter under higher demand.
The Thomas SaaS Scaling Diagnostic involves three steps:
- Audit Growth Infrastructure: Review systems across acquisition, activation, and retention to identify manual processes or data silos that hinder scalability.
- Pinpoint Growth Constraints: Determine whether the primary bottleneck is in customer acquisition, product adoption, or revenue expansion. Cohort analysis and funnel metrics can help identify where growth slows down.
- Implement Scalable Solutions: Address constraints with solutions designed for growth. This might involve automating customer success processes, refining lead scoring, or restructuring your sales approach to handle higher volumes.
Finally, Elena Verna highlights how product-led growth can drive sustainable expansion.
Elena Verna: Driving Growth with Product-Led Strategies
Elena Verna, whose experience includes roles at SurveyMonkey, Miro, and Amplitude, champions product-led growth (PLG) for B2B companies. She emphasizes that PLG is becoming the go-to strategy for engaging users and driving sustainable growth.
Her PLG strategy is built on three pillars:
- Design for User Value Discovery: Ensure your product experience leads users to quickly understand and achieve its core value. Guide them to that critical "aha moment" with minimal reliance on sales teams.
- Adopt Usage-Based Expansion: Create upgrade paths that are tied to how users interact with your product. As adoption grows, the product’s value should naturally increase.
- Incorporate Viral Mechanisms: Build features into your product that encourage sharing and collaboration, fueling organic growth without relying on generic sharing buttons.
Each of these experts provides a roadmap tailored to the unique challenges of scaling B2B tech startups, offering tools and strategies to help businesses grow effectively.
What All Top Advisors Agree On
Top startup advisors may have different specialties and approaches, but they all share certain key philosophies when it comes to driving sustainable B2B growth. Their experience, spanning from early validation stages to scaling success, highlights a set of core principles that serve as the foundation for their strategies. These principles shape the advisor-specific tactics outlined below.
Core Principles for B2B Growth
At the heart of B2B growth lies data-driven decision-making. Top advisors rely on clear KPIs, track critical metrics, and use analytics to back every move. This ensures that every tactic is grounded in measurable results.
Another cornerstone is building scalable systems. Instead of constantly reinventing the wheel, advisors recommend creating structures that grow with demand. This approach reduces inefficiencies and prepares startups for long-term success.
A well-defined ideal customer profile (ICP) is non-negotiable. By understanding exactly who their product is designed for, startups can focus their marketing, sales, and product development efforts on the right audience. This targeted approach not only maximizes ROI but also minimizes wasted time and resources.
Advisors also advocate for balancing short-term wins with long-term scalability. While quick wins are important for building momentum, they should fit within a framework that supports sustainable growth. Documenting experiments and creating repeatable processes is key – summed up perfectly by the mantra: "build for repeatability, not heroics."
How Each Advisor Approaches Growth
While these principles remain universal, each advisor brings their own unique perspective to the table:
| Advisor | Primary Focus | Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Tyler Beesley | Go-to-market systems | Uses rapid iterations and pivots guided by measurable outcomes. |
| Araks Nalbandyan | Demand generation for lean teams | Develops scalable frameworks centered on the ICP for efficient growth. |
| Lillian Pierson | Data-driven growth systems | Prioritizes analytics and automation to drive decisions and streamline growth. |
| Matt Thomas | SaaS scaling | Strikes a balance between short-term revenue goals and long-term infrastructure. |
| Elena Verna | Product-led growth | Focuses on precise customer targeting and repeatable onboarding experiences. |
Together, these advisors emphasize strategies that are measurable, scalable, and ICP-focused. Whether it’s refining go-to-market plans, generating demand, or leveraging product-led growth, their collective insights provide a clear pathway for B2B tech startups to thrive. Up next, we’ll break these insights into ten actionable rules you can apply to your own growth strategy.
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The Ultimate Growth Advisors Guide: 10 Rules for Scaling
Top startup advisors have condensed years of experience into ten practical rules for achieving sustainable B2B growth. These principles are designed to work across industries and growth stages, offering a blend of expert insights and actionable steps that can be implemented right away.
Rule 1: Document Everything You Test
Keep a record of every experiment, campaign, and strategy – along with their metrics and outcomes. This creates a valuable archive of lessons learned, helping you avoid repeating mistakes and identifying what works. Over time, these records turn individual insights into a collective knowledge base for your organization.
Rule 2: Build for Repeatability, Not One-Off Stunts
Growth that lasts comes from systems, not quick fixes. Instead of relying on one-time marketing stunts or individual efforts, focus on creating repeatable processes that can be executed by any team member. This ensures growth continues as your team scales and evolves.
Rule 3: Know Your ICP Inside and Out
Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) should be the foundation of your strategies. When you deeply understand your ICP, every dollar spent on growth becomes more effective, driving better results with less guesswork.
Rule 4: Start with Data, End with Data
Data should guide every decision you make. Define clear KPIs before launching any initiative, and use analytics to measure progress and refine your approach. This eliminates guesswork and ensures your resources are directed toward strategies that deliver real results.
Rule 5: Scale What Works, Kill What Doesn’t
Once you’ve identified strategies that work, double down on them. At the same time, be quick to drop tactics that don’t deliver. This focused approach helps you maximize ROI and avoid spreading resources too thin across ineffective initiatives.
Rule 6: Optimize for Learning Speed
In the early stages of growth, learning quickly is more important than achieving big wins. Design experiments to generate insights fast, even if the immediate results are small. These quick learnings allow you to adapt and improve faster.
Rule 7: Balance Quick Wins with Long-Term Systems
Short-term wins are great for building momentum, but they should fit into a bigger, long-term strategy. Every quick victory should either validate or contribute to the systems that will drive sustainable growth over time.
Rule 8: Automate Routine Tasks, Personalize Key Interactions
Figure out which tasks can be automated without sacrificing effectiveness and which require a personal touch. For example, email sequences and lead scoring can often be automated, while high-value conversations with prospects or strategic partnerships usually need a human connection.
Rule 9: Measure Leading Indicators, Not Just Results
Don’t only focus on metrics that reflect past performance. Instead, track leading indicators like trial-to-paid conversion rates, user engagement, and pipeline velocity. These metrics help you spot trends and make adjustments before issues impact your bottom line.
Rule 10: Iterate Based on Customer Feedback, Not Assumptions
Let your customers guide your growth strategies. Regularly collect feedback through interviews, usage data, and surveys to ensure your efforts align with real market needs. Avoid relying on internal assumptions about what should work.
How to Use Growth Advisors for Your Startup
Growth advisors can be an invaluable asset for startups looking to scale effectively. Instead of spending months – or even years – figuring out growth strategies through trial and error, you can tap into the expertise of seasoned professionals. These advisors bring proven frameworks and insights, helping you sidestep costly mistakes and fast-track your progress.
To get the most out of a growth advisor, start by aligning their expertise with your current challenges. For instance, if your startup is struggling with a go-to-market strategy, someone like Tyler Beesley, known for his systematic approach, could be a perfect fit. On the other hand, if you’re ready to scale data-driven systems, Lillian Pierson’s engineering-focused methodology might provide the foundation you need for sustainable growth.
Timing is another critical factor. The most successful startups engage advisors proactively – before major problems arise. Waiting until you’ve burned through your marketing budget or hit a roadblock can limit the advisor’s ability to make a meaningful impact. Bringing them in early allows you to build strong systems from the ground up, avoiding the need for costly fixes later.
When selecting an advisor, think about your specific growth bottlenecks. If you’re struggling to achieve product-market fit, Elena Verna’s expertise in product-led growth could open up new opportunities. For SaaS companies facing scaling challenges, Matt Thomas offers frameworks tailored to the unique hurdles of growing software businesses. By choosing an advisor whose skills align with your needs, you can create a customized strategy suited to your market and business model.
Advisors offer different engagement models to fit various budgets and goals. Some provide one-time strategy sessions packed with actionable insights, while others offer ongoing fractional leadership to guide implementation over time. Startups on tighter budgets might benefit from focused sessions that deliver immediate results, while those with more resources may prefer long-term partnerships for deeper, sustained support. Take the time to evaluate which model and advisor best align with your company’s stage and working style.
Partnering with the right growth advisor can dramatically speed up your startup’s success, shaving months – or even years – off your growth timeline. By integrating advisor-driven strategies into your business, you’ll set yourself up for smarter, faster scaling.
Explore the featured advisors to kickstart your growth journey today.
FAQs
How is a growth advisor different from a consultant or a full-time CMO?
A growth advisor offers strategic and ongoing advice designed to help businesses scale, often stepping in on a part-time or flexible basis. This makes them a more budget-friendly option compared to hiring a full-time Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), who typically commands a higher salary and is heavily involved in daily operations.
What sets growth advisors apart from traditional consultants is their focus. While consultants often tackle short-term, project-specific goals, growth advisors concentrate on long-term strategies. They guide startups in avoiding expensive missteps and provide a roadmap for steady, systematic growth. It’s a practical way to achieve sustainable progress without the financial burden of a full-time executive.
What common mistakes do growth advisors help B2B tech startups avoid, and how do they ensure success?
Growth advisors play a crucial role in helping B2B tech startups steer clear of major missteps, such as misaligned go-to-market strategies, vague ideal customer profiles (ICP), and dependence on efforts that can’t scale. They do this by introducing data-backed frameworks that encourage startups to focus on repeatable, scalable processes rather than chasing isolated wins.
By working closely with founders, these advisors emphasize the importance of defining a clear ICP and adopting structured growth strategies. This approach helps startups avoid costly trial-and-error mistakes, paving the way for steady progress. Their guidance not only speeds up growth but also reduces the risks tied to unproven methods.
How can startups choose the right growth advisor for their unique needs and stage of development?
Finding the Right Growth Advisor
Startups looking to grow need to start by identifying their current challenges and the stage of growth they’re in. For early-stage companies, it’s smart to seek advisors who have hands-on experience with finding product-market fit, building initial teams, and crafting go-to-market strategies. On the flip side, growth-stage startups should look for advisors skilled in scaling operations, offering industry-specific expertise, or leveraging data-driven insights to guide decisions.
It’s also crucial to match the advisor’s background with your specific goals. Look for someone who has a track record of success in situations similar to yours. Beyond experience, the relationship matters – a strong, collaborative dynamic is essential. Your advisor should not only align with your leadership style but also be an active participant in key decisions. Ultimately, prioritize finding someone who’s the right fit for your startup’s unique needs over simply focusing on their credentials.
