# Method library — Convios

> 93 evidenced methods for scaling B2B companies, sorted by bottleneck. Each entry states purpose, approach, limits, metric and its verified sources.

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## Methods (93)

- [The Three Positioning Strategies](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/3-positioning-strategies.md): April Dunford identifies three basic strategies for market entry: head-to-head in an existing market, big fish in a small pond (dominating a sub-segment), or creating a new game (your own category). The choice determines competition, messaging, and resource requirements. (source: Blue Ocean Strategy)
- [5-Component Positioning](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/5-component-positioning.md): April Dunford's positioning method: a product's value only becomes visible in the right frame of comparison. Five sequential components lead from the buyer's real competitive alternatives to a deliberately chosen market category. (source: The Categorical Imperative: Securities Analysts and the Legitimacy Discount)
- ["Context: Moat or Wall?" Test](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/context-moat-or-wall-test.md): A test question for AI and context foundations: does every company build this foundation, making it table stakes in an arms race, a wall or is it proprietary, compounding, and switching-cost-heavy, i.e., a genuine moat? A counter to the claim that your AI foundation is automatically your decisive edge. (source: The Red Queen in Organizational Evolution)
- [Brand as Repeated Pairing](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/brand-as-repeated-pairing.md): Brand building as a mechanism: a brand emerges through the repeated pairing of the still-unknown (you, your offer) with something familiar the audience values. One central content pillar has to stand first, everything else is seasoning around it. (source: Evaluative conditioning in humans: a meta-analysis)
- [Minimizing Need-to-Believes](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/need-to-believes.md): Every belief a buyer must adopt before purchasing lowers conversion. The goal is an offer and a message that require zero to one leaps of faith, the rest is cleared away through evidence, structure, or honest admission. (source: Choice under Conflict: The Dynamics of Deferred Decision)
- [PFI Framework: Who Profits from the Innovation?](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/pfi-raster.md): A framework by David Teece (1986). Three variables decide who captures the profit from an innovation: how defensible it is against imitation, the market phase, and control over the assets additionally required to commercialize it. Where protection is weak, the profit moves to the owner of the specialized complementary assets. From that follows a decision between owning and contracting. (source: Teece, David J.: Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy, Research Policy 15(6), 285-305, 1986)
- [Regulatory Density Test](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/regulatory-density-test.md): A test question for regulation-driven business models: is the market regulated specifically in your favor or equally for all competitors? An obligation that hits everyone alike creates demand, but not a defensible position. (source: The Theory of Economic Regulation)
- [Resonating Focus / Value Word Equation](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/resonating-focus.md): A method from Anderson, Narus and van Rossum (HBR 2006): a value proposition is not asserted, it is calculated against the customer's next best alternative. Of all the differences, one or two survive, the ones worth most to the target customer. Each is written as a value word equation in the customer's own operating figures and backed with the customer's data. (source: Anderson, Narus & van Rossum: Customer Value Propositions in Business Markets, Harvard Business Review 84(3), März 2006, S. 91-99)
- [Insight-Led Sales Pitch](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/insight-led-sales-pitch.md): Pitch structure by April Dunford: the sales conversation opens with your own market insight rather than a problem or a feature. Any competitor can claim a problem, your view of the market is yours alone. (source: The End of Solution Sales)
- [Strategic Narrative (Old Game / New Game)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/strategic-narrative.md): Narrative structure by Andy Raskin: the strongest sales story is not a product pitch but a market shift, with winners and losers, a desirable end state (the "promised land"), and product capabilities as the tools to get there. (source: Beyond Forecasting: Creating New Strategic Narratives)
- [Tipping Test (Winner-Take-All Conditions)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/tipping-test.md): A model by Eisenmann, Parker and Van Alstyne (Harvard Business Review, 2006): a networked market ends up served by a single platform only when three conditions hold together. High multihoming costs on at least one side, strong positive cross-side effects on exactly that side, and no pronounced demand for special features. If one condition is missing, racing for dominance is the wrong bet. (source: Eisenmann, Parker, Van Alstyne: Strategies for Two-Sided Markets, Harvard Business Review 84(10), Oktober 2006, S. 92-101)
- [Trim & Stack De-Commoditization](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/trim-and-stack.md): A method against commoditization: list every micro-problem along the customer journey, score each solution by customer value and your own marginal cost and keep only what delivers high value at low marginal cost. The result is an offer that escapes direct price comparison. (source: Marketing Success Through Differentiation—of Anything)
- [The Value Equation](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/value-equation.md): Value as a formula: (dream outcome × perceived likelihood of achievement) divided by (time delay × customer effort and sacrifice). The defensible position sits in the denominator, delivering faster and with less effort is operationally hard and therefore copy-resistant. (source: Consumer Perceptions of Price, Quality, and Value: A Means-End Model and Synthesis of Evidence)
- [The 95:5 Rule](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/95-5-rule.md): A finding by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (John Dawes): only about 5 percent of a B2B market is in-market at any given time. Marketing aimed only at those 5 percent competes with everyone for the same small pool, the other 95 percent need mental availability for the day they enter the market. (source: Advertising effectiveness and the 95-5 rule: most B2B buyers are not in the market right now, John Dawes)
- [The Core Four](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/core-four.md): There are only four ways to turn attention into leads: warm outreach (1:1, they know you), cold outreach (1:1, they do not), content (1:many, warm), and paid ads (1:many, cold). Every campaign is a combination of these four, the grid makes channel audits complete. (source: Bryce Ryan, Neal C. Gross: The Diffusion of Hybrid Seed Corn in Two Iowa Communities, Rural Sociology 8(1), 1943, 15–24; erweiterte Fassung als Acceptance and Diffusion of Hybrid Corn Seed in Two Iowa Communities, Research Bulletin 372, Iowa State College, 1950)
- [70/20/10 Creative Reskinning](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/creative-reskinning.md): Ad creatives that demonstrably work are not replaced but industrially multiplied: 70 percent close variants of the winner, 20 percent adjacent variations, 10 percent genuinely new attempts. Most teams do the exact opposite. (source: Managing Your Innovation Portfolio, Bansi Nagji & Geoff Tuff, Harvard Business Review)
- [Demand Creation vs. Demand Capture](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/demand-creation-vs-capture.md): Chris Walker's distinction: most B2B companies merely capture existing demand (paid search, forms) and call it demand gen. Real demand is created earlier, in podcasts, communities, and peer conversations that no attribution software sees. (source: Oliver J. Rutz, Randolph E. Bucklin: From Generic to Branded: A Model of Spillover in Paid Search Advertising, Journal of Marketing Research 48(1), 2011, S. 87-102)
- [Dual Distribution Diagnostic (Direct and Partner Channels)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/dual-distribution-diagnose.md): Treats running direct sales and partner sales in the same market as a measurable conflict risk rather than an org-chart question. The more often and the more consequentially both channels touch the same account, the less the parallel setup holds. Where it is meant to stay, three levers dampen the in-house competition. (source: Sa Vinhas, Anderson: How Potential Conflict Drives Channel Structure: Concurrent (Direct and Indirect) Channels, Journal of Marketing Research 42(4), 507-515)
- [Geo Experiment / Matched-Market Incrementality Test](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/geo-experiment-inkrementalitaet.md): A procedure by Jon Vaver and Jim Koehler (Google Research): the market is split into non-overlapping regions that are randomly assigned to test and control. Only the test group's budget changes. The difference between the two groups is the channel's causal contribution, and how precisely it can be measured is calculable before the test starts. (source: Vaver & Koehler: Measuring Ad Effectiveness Using Geo Experiments, Google Inc., 2011)
- [The 3.5:1 Give-to-Ask Ratio](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/give-to-ask-ratio.md): A rule of thumb for content cadence: for every offer ("ask"), publish roughly three and a half pieces that deliver pure value ("give"). Ask too often and you lose the permission to ask, never ask and you waste the attention you built. (source: Managing the content of LinkedIn posts: Influence on B2B customer engagement and sales?, Mora Cortez, Johnston & Ghosh Dastidar, Journal of Business Research 155)
- [GTM Stack Signal Routing](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/gtm-stack-signal-routing.md): Instead of many disconnected point tools, one orchestrated stack: buying signals flow into a central context engine, and lead scoring decides which workflow fires. The principle is signal density over volume, more replies from less outreach. (source: Marvin A. Jolson: Qualifying sales leads: The tight and loose approaches, Industrial Marketing Management 17(3), 1988, S. 189–196)
- [Inbound-Led Warm Outbound (95/5 Map)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/inbound-led-warm-outbound.md): A wiring template connecting demand creation and outbound: content attracts the 95 percent of not-yet-in-market buyers, every interaction generates a signal, the active 5 percent come inbound and warm outbound starts from the signal instead of a cold list. (source: Advertising effectiveness and the 95-5 rule: most B2B buyers are not in the market right now, John Dawes)
- [Lead Magnet Logic](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/lead-magnet-logic.md): An effective lead magnet is the complete solution to one narrowly defined problem, which, once solved, reveals the next, paid problem. Half-solutions destroy trust; genuine mini-solutions build it. (source: The Effects of Free Sample Promotions on Incremental Brand Sales, Kapil Bawa & Robert Shoemaker, Marketing Science 23(3), 345–363)
- [Demand Typology (Five Types)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/demand-typology.md): A diagnostic grid that classifies demand not binarily (created vs. captured) but into five types: created, captured, regulation-forced, product-as-engine (PLG), and B2B2C dual system. Each type carries different consequences for defensibility and the right go-to-market motion. (source: Philip Kotler: The Major Tasks of Marketing Management, Journal of Marketing 37(4), 1973, S. 42–49)
- [Predictable Revenue / Cold Calling 2.0](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/predictable-revenue.md): Aaron Ross's outbound system: pipeline becomes predictable through role specialization. SDRs for qualification, AEs for closing, AMs for existing accounts and through short referral emails to the target contact's superiors instead of raw cold calling. (source: Match Your Sales Force Structure to Your Business Life Cycle, Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha & Sally E. Lorimer, Harvard Business Review)
- [Warm Outreach Engine](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/warm-outreach-engine.md): Systematized warm outreach for first customers or an outbound start: build three contact lists, work them in high, constant cadence with personalization and instead of selling, first acknowledge, compliment, and ask for referrals. (source: Do Referral Programs Increase Profits?, Philipp Schmitt, Bernd Skiera & Christophe Van den Bulte, GfK Marketing Intelligence Review 5(1))
- [3A Closing (Acknowledge, Associate, Ask)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/3a-closing.md): A quiet, question-based closing technique: acknowledge what was said, associate the question with the behavior of successful customers, then ask a counter-question instead of arguing. Whoever asks the questions leads the conversation. (source: Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson, Gino: It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113(3), 2017)
- [Four Forces of Progress (Jobs to be Done)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/four-forces-of-progress.md): Every buying decision is a tug of war between four forces: the push of the unsatisfying situation and the pull of the new solution drive the switch, the habit of the present and the anxiety of the new block it. (source: Christensen, Hall, Dillon, Duncan: Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done, Harvard Business Review, September 2016)
- [Leading AI Agents as Team Members](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/ai-agents-as-team-members.md): AI agents are led like junior hires, not deployed like magic: with an agent charter (role, mandate, KPI), quality gates before execution, and human sign-off at the decision, the guardrails are the accelerator, not the brake. (source: Thomas B. Sheridan, William L. Verplank: Human and Computer Control of Undersea Teleoperators. Technical Report, MIT Man-Machine Systems Laboratory für das Office of Naval Research, 1978, 340 S. (DTIC ADA057655))
- [Bowtie Funnel / Revenue Architecture](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/bowtie-funnel.md): A Winning by Design model (Jacco van der Kooij): with recurring revenue, the funnel does not end at the close. It mirrors. Acquisition on the left; onboarding, adoption, and expansion on the right as an equally instrumented half. The economic lever sits to the right of the knot. (source: Gupta, Lehmann, Stuart: Valuing Customers, Journal of Marketing Research 41(1), 2004)
- [Funnel Math Instead of Close Rate](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/funnel-math.md): Close rate is an outcome, not a steering lever. What you manage is the full conversion chain, booking, show, offer, close and the bottleneck often sits at the show rate, not at closing. (source: Cespedes, Marsh: Find the Right Metrics for Your Sales Team, Harvard Business Review, August 2017)
- [Lead Scoring: Best Leads to Best Closers](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/lead-scoring-and-routing.md): Leads are scored and routed deliberately: the most promising contacts go to the strongest closers, the weakest to new hires as training material. Visibly high top-performer earnings additionally act as a talent magnet. (source: González-Flores, Rubiano-Moreno, Sosa-Gómez: The relevance of lead prioritization: a B2B lead scoring model based on machine learning, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 2025)
- [MEDDIC / MEDDPICC](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/meddpicc.md): A qualification checklist for complex enterprise deals: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Paper Process, Identified Pain, Champion, Competition. The guiding question is not "How do I close this?" but "Does this deal even belong in the forecast?". (source: Toman, Adamson, Gomez: The New Sales Imperative, Harvard Business Review, März/April 2017)
- [Obstacles Before Price, Objections After Price](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/obstacles-before-price.md): The same resistance carries little force before the price is named and a lot afterwards. So known hurdles, budget, decision-makers, timing, are defused proactively before the price hits the table. (source: Banas, Rains: A Meta-Analysis of Research on Inoculation Theory, Communication Monographs 77(3), 2010)
- [Pay Mix and Quota Design](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/pay-mix-quota-design.md): A sales compensation plan consists of two decisions that are justified separately. First, the ratio of base salary to variable pay per role, derived from the effectiveness of the salesperson's own effort, the uncertainty they cannot control, and the attractiveness of their outside option. Second, the differentiation between individuals, which runs solely through the quota, while the commission rate stays the same for the whole role. (source: Mantrala, Sinha & Zoltners: Structuring a Multiproduct Sales Quota-Bonus Plan for a Heterogeneous Sales Force: A Practical Model-Based Approach, Marketing Science 13(2), 121-144)
- [Sales Acceleration Formula](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/sales-acceleration-formula.md): Mark Roberge's approach of treating sales scaling as an engineering discipline, its best-known component is empirical hiring scoring on coachability, curiosity, prior success, intelligence, and work ethic. (source: Verbeke, Dietz, Verwaal: Drivers of sales performance, a contemporary meta-analysis, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 39, 2011)
- [Sales Capacity Model (Productivity, Not Quota)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/sales-capacity-model.md): A model by Dave Kellogg (Kellblog): how much new business a sales organisation can carry is calculated from the bottom up. Productivity, meaning what a fully ramped seller historically delivers, is kept strictly separate from quota, meaning what you assign. Hiring cohorts, a ramp curve and attrition produce fully ramped rep equivalents; capacity, over-assignment and pipeline requirement follow from those. (source: Sinha, Zoltners: Sales-Force Decision Models, Insights from 25 Years of Implementation, Interfaces 31(3 Supplement), S. 8-44, 2001)
- [Sales Learning Curve (Sales Yield Gate)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/sales-learning-curve.md): A model by Mark Leslie and Charles A. Holloway (Stanford GSB, HBR 2006): building a sales force is a learning curve, not a capacity question. The measure is sales yield, the contribution margin of a salesperson against that person's fully loaded cost. While yield per head is negative, the team stays small and works out product, target customer and message. Only then do you buy capacity. (source: Mark Leslie, Charles A. Holloway: The Sales Learning Curve, Harvard Business Review, Juli/August 2006)
- [Sales Onboarding Machine (CLOSER)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/sales-onboarding-machine.md): A structured 14-day ramp for new sales reps: listen through a library of good calls, learn a question-based script (the CLOSER structure), daily roleplay, then a half schedule with daily manager review. (source: Taylor, Russ-Eft, Chan: A Meta-Analytic Review of Behavior Modeling Training, Journal of Applied Psychology 90(4), 2005)
- [The SPICED Framework](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/spiced-framework.md): A discovery and qualification model by Winning by Design: Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical Event, Decision. The causal chain from pain through quantified impact to a genuine urgency anchor, as a shared language for all customer-facing functions. (source: Frederick E. Webster, Jr. & Yoram Wind: A General Model for Understanding Organizational Buying Behavior, Journal of Marketing 36(2), 1972, S. 12–19)
- [The Five Animals: ACV-to-GTM Model](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/five-ways-acv-model.md): Christoph Janz's grid: there are five ARPA corridors to $100 million ARR, from tens of thousands of micro customers ("flies") to roughly a thousand large accounts ("elephants"). The ACV level dictates channel, sales motion, and org design. (source: Valarie A. Zeithaml, Roland T. Rust, Katherine N. Lemon: The Customer Pyramid, Creating and Serving Profitable Customers, California Management Review 43(4), 2001, S. 118–142)
- [Annual Renewal Fee](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/annual-renewal-fee.md): An annual renewal fee on top of the recurring price, due only from month 13: it leaves the advertised entry price untouched, protecting front-end conversion, while drawing additional margin from loyal existing customers. (source: Shrouded Attributes, Consumer Myopia, and Information Suppression in Competitive Markets)
- [Guarantees as Risk Reversal (4 Types)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/guarantees-risk-reversal.md): You sell against inaction and risk, not against competitors: a guarantee shifts risk from the first-time buyer to the vendor, who knows their delivery a hundred times over. Four types, unconditional, conditional, anti-guarantee, performance-linked, can be used precisely and in combination. (source: Signaling Quality with a Money-Back Guarantee: The Role of Transaction Costs)
- [Good-Better-Best Pricing](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/good-better-best.md): A three-tier price architecture in which customers self-select into the right package. The middle tier acts as the anchor, the top tier creates a built-in upgrade path, expansion is part of the architecture, not a negotiation. (source: Versioning Information Goods)
- [Monetization as the Third Growth Lever](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/monetization-as-third-lever.md): Growth has three levers, acquisition, retention, monetization. Patrick Campbell's research shows improvements in monetization and retention move the bottom line considerably more than equal improvements in acquisition, yet most budgets are lopsided toward acquisition. (source: Managing Price, Gaining Profit)
- [Pricing Authority Grid (Delegating Price Discretion)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/price-authority-delegation.md): Sets, per customer segment, how much price discretion sales holds without asking. Four testable criteria decide it: the seller's information advantage over the customer, how observable the seller's effort is, market uncertainty in the segment, and the risk profile of the role. The result is a price band per segment, with named approval levels above it. (source: Frenzen, Hansen, Krafft, Mantrala & Schmidt: Delegation of pricing authority to the sales force: An agency-theoretic perspective of its determinants and impact on performance, International Journal of Research in Marketing 27(1), 58-68, 2010)
- [Spread / Take-Rate Economics](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/spread-take-rate-economics.md): For lenders and embedded-finance models, SaaS margin logic does not apply: economics reads as an interest spread, net interest margin, meaning interest income after funding cost, minus the loss rate and monetization as a take rate rather than a subscription. (source: Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Harry Huizinga: Determinants of Commercial Bank Interest Margins and Profitability: Some International Evidence, The World Bank Economic Review 13(2), 1999, 379–408)
- [Value Metric Pricing](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/value-metric-pricing.md): Price is tied to a unit that scales with customer value, users, volume, transactions, outcomes. That creates expansion by design: as the customer grows, revenue grows with them. (source: Ward S. Bowman, Jr.: Tying Arrangements and the Leverage Problem, The Yale Law Journal 67(1), 1957, S. 19–36 (Abschnitt "Single Product Discrimination, A Counting Device", S. 23–24))
- [Virtuous Cycle of Price](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/virtuous-cycle-of-price.md): Price is not just consideration but a mechanism: a higher price increases customer commitment, thereby improves outcomes, and creates margin that can be reinvested into better delivery, instead of anchoring on the market average. (source: Placebo Effects of Marketing Actions: Consumers May Get What They Pay For)
- [Willingness to Pay (Van Westendorp)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/willingness-to-pay.md): A survey method with four price questions, too cheap, a bargain, getting expensive, too expensive. That yields an acceptable price corridor per customer segment. Pricing becomes a data-driven decision instead of gut feel. (source: NSS Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM), Peter H. van Westendorp, ESOMAR-Kongress 1976)
- [Activation as the Retention Lever](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/activation-as-retention-lever.md): A user's first real success moment, the "aha moment", has a causal effect on later retention: those who reach it stay, those who miss it churn. Activation is therefore often the highest growth lever, with median SaaS activation rates of roughly 25 to 30 percent. (source: Oliver, Richard L.: A Cognitive Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions, Journal of Marketing Research 17(4), 1980, 460-469)
- [Churn Cohorting by Tenure](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/churn-cohorting.md): Churn cohorting breaks churn down by customer tenure instead of reading it as a monthly average. The first months are almost always far more churn-prone, which changes the goal: get customers past the critical thresholds. (source: How to Project Customer Retention)
- [Cross-Sell Screening](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/cross-sell-screening.md): A finding by Shah, Kumar, Qu and Chen (Journal of Marketing, 2012): expansion is not good per se. Where an account shows persistently adverse behavioural traits, every additional category makes the result worse, because service and support costs grow faster than the contribution. The rule is therefore to screen before the expansion campaign rather than to expand across the board. (source: Shah, Kumar, Qu & Chen: Unprofitable Cross-Buying: Evidence from Consumer and Business Markets, Journal of Marketing 76(3), 2012, S. 78-95)
- [First-Win Coupling](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/first-win-coupling.md): First-win coupling aligns onboarding and incentives so that customers reach their first tangible success as early and as reliably as possible. The underlying principle: the reason someone buys is not the reason they stay. (source: Albert Bandura: Self-efficacy, Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review 84(2), 1977, S. 191–215)
- [Growth Loops Instead of Funnels (PLG)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/growth-loops.md): The Reforge counter-model (Balfour, Winters, Kwok, Chen) to the linear sales funnel: growth comes from self-reinforcing loops in which one cycle's output feeds the next cycle's input, the product itself becomes the acquisition, retention, and monetization engine. Sales is added later as an expansion layer (PLG to PLS). (source: Frank M. Bass: A New Product Growth for Model Consumer Durables, Management Science 15(5), 1969, S. 215-227)
- [Solution as Four Relational Processes](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/loesung-vier-prozesse.md): A field study by Tuli, Kohli and Bharadwaj (Journal of Marketing, 2007): customers do not describe a solution as a bundle of goods and services but as four joint processes, namely requirements definition, customisation and integration, deployment, and post-deployment support. Suppliers name little beyond the second one. That gap is what this method works on. (source: Tuli, Kohli, Bharadwaj: Rethinking Customer Solutions. From Product Bundles to Relational Processes, Journal of Marketing 71(3), 2007, 1-17)
- [Net Negative Churn (Bootstrapped)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/net-negative-churn.md): David Skok's core lever for capital-efficient growth: when expansion in the base exceeds churn, revenue grows even without new customers and without venture capital. Retention and expansion substitute for expensive acquisition-driven growth. (source: Verhoef, Peter C.: Understanding the Effect of Customer Relationship Management Efforts on Customer Retention and Customer Share Development, Journal of Marketing 67(4), 2003, 30-45)
- [NRR as the Number One Value Driver](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/nrr-as-value-driver.md): Net revenue retention above 100 percent means the existing base grows on its own. At around 120 percent, revenue from existing customers roughly doubles within about five years, without a single new customer. At the same time, high NRR can mask weak new business. (source: Sunil Gupta, Donald R. Lehmann, Jennifer Ames Stuart: Valuing Customers. Journal of Marketing Research 41(1), 2004, S. 7–18)
- [Onboarding with BAMFAM and Baton Pass](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/onboarding-bamfam.md): Onboarding on the BAMFAM principle (Book A Meeting From A Meeting) never leaves a customer without a scheduled next step and measures when first value lands. This lowers churn and lifts upsell at the same time. (source: Leventhal, H., Singer, R., Jones, S.: Effects of fear and specificity of recommendation upon attitudes and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2(1), 1965, S. 20-29)
- [Retention by Subtraction](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/retention-by-subtraction.md): After price, overwhelm is the most common reason customers cancel. Retention by subtraction reduces the scope and complexity of the offering so customers actually capture the core value instead of drowning in it. (source: When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?)
- [Save Team with Aligned Compensation](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/save-team.md): A save team is a dedicated, incentivized team for at-risk customers, using escalating outreach and scripted conversations. The save conversation is treated like a sale and compensated accordingly. (source: Eva Ascarza: Retention Futility: Targeting High-Risk Customers Might Be Ineffective, Journal of Marketing Research 55(1), Februar 2018, 80–98)
- [Second-Order Revenue](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/second-order-revenue.md): A customer's true value sits well above their direct payments: referrals, advocacy, and repurchases after job changes generate, per Jason Lemkin, roughly the same revenue again over the years, second-order revenue. (source: How Valuable Is Word of Mouth?)
- [Service Blueprinting](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/service-blueprinting.md): A technique from Bitner, Ostrom and Morgan, building on G. Lynn Shostack: a service is drawn as five stacked rows cut by three horizontal lines. Every crossing of the line of interaction is a moment of truth. The drawing shows what the customer never sees and which internal function each customer step depends on. (source: Bitner, Ostrom & Morgan: Service Blueprinting. A Practical Technique for Service Innovation, California Management Review 50(3), 2008, 66–94)
- [Service Engineering (Five-Phase Development with Resource, Process and Product Model)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/service-engineering.md): A framework from German service research (Fraunhofer IAO): a service is developed like a product, in five phases from idea appraisal to market launch. The design phase produces three separate deliverables, a product model, a process model and a resource model. Anything covered by none of the three is not designed, it is improvised. (source: Meiren & Barth: Service Engineering in Unternehmen umsetzen. Leitfaden für die Entwicklung von Dienstleistungen, Fraunhofer IRB Verlag, Stuttgart 2002 (ISBN 3-8167-6049-x))
- [Service Transition Stages (Product to Service)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/service-transition-stufen.md): A model by Rogelio Oliva and Robert Kallenberg (2003), derived from eleven capital equipment manufacturers: a service business alongside the product grows as a deliberate build-up of capability in stages. First the product-related services you already deliver are consolidated and measured, then the installed base is run as a market of its own, and only after that do contracts carrying customer risk hold up. (source: Oliva, Kallenberg: Managing the transition from products to services, International Journal of Service Industry Management 14(2), 160–172)
- [CAC Payback by Segment and Cash Conversion Score](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/cac-payback-by-segment.md): CAC payback targets depend on segment: under 12 months in SMB, under 18 in mid-market, under 24 in enterprise. The cash conversion score, ARR divided by total capital raised, additionally measures the capital efficiency of the whole company. (source: Gordon, Myron J.: The Payoff Period and the Rate of Profit. The Journal of Business 28(4), 1955, S. 253–260)
- [Cash Flow Trough](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/cash-flow-trough.md): The faster a SaaS business grows, the worse its cash flow looks in the short term, because acquisition costs land before the recurring revenue does. The cash flow trough models this valley before you scale. (source: SaaS Economics · Part 1: The SaaS Cash Flow Trough, David Skok (forEntrepreneurs))
- [Client-Financed Acquisition (30-Day Cash Rule)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/client-financed-acquisition.md): Client-financed acquisition requires that cash collected in the first 30 days covers more than twice the acquisition plus fulfillment cost. Then every customer won finances the next one, without external capital. (source: Use Customer Cash to Finance Your Start-Up, John Mullins, Harvard Business Review)
- [Discovery-Driven Planning / Reverse Income Statement](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/discovery-driven-planning.md): A method by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan for ventures with many unknowns. Instead of planning forward, you compute backward: the required result comes first, from it the revenue needed and the cost allowed. Every unproven number goes onto an assumption list, and the budget is released only up to the next checkpoint. (source: McGrath, MacMillan: Discovery-Driven Planning, Harvard Business Review 73(4), 1995, S. 44-54)
- [Tiered LTV:CAC Targets (3/6/9/12)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/tiered-ltv-cac.md): The blanket 3:1 rule for LTV:CAC only holds when no human sits in the value chain. Each person in the loop raises the required ratio: 3 with none, 6 with one, 9 with two, 12 with three. (source: Marc Nerlove, Kenneth J. Arrow: Optimal Advertising Policy under Dynamic Conditions, Economica 29(114), 1962, S. 129 ff.)
- [LTV:CAC and CAC Payback](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/ltv-cac-payback.md): LTV:CAC measures whether your acquisition is profitable; CAC payback measures how long the invested capital stays tied up. Both must hold at once: a ratio of at least 3, payback under 12 months in SMB up to 24 in enterprise, both calculated on gross margin. (source: Valuing Customers, Gupta, Lehmann & Stuart, Journal of Marketing Research)
- [Magic Number](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/magic-number.md): The magic number measures how much new ARR one unit of sales and marketing spend generates. Above 0.75 the go-to-market machine is considered efficient enough to accelerate; below that, fix the model first. (source: SaaS Metrics: A History of the Magic Number, Scale Venture Partners)
- [Quick Ratio](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/quick-ratio.md): The quick ratio compares new and expansion MRR to churn and contraction. A value of 4 or more is considered the floor for healthy growth; below that, you are filling a leaky bucket. (source: Navigating Unpredictability: Introducing the Resiliency Rubric for SaaS Companies (2023), ICONIQ Growth)
- [Rule of 40 (Toward 60)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/rule-of-40.md): Growth rate plus profit margin should add up to at least 40 percent; in a PE and interest-rate environment the bar shifts toward 60. Profit may be traded against growth, but the sum has to hold. (source: King Fuei Lee: Evaluating Stock Selection in the SaaS Industry, The Effectiveness of the Rule of 40, Applied Finance Letters 13, 2024, S. 168–185)
- [Embodiment and Service Margin Discount](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/embodiment-margin-discount.md): When software sits physically on hardware or humans remain permanently in the delivery loop, margin collapses from software to services or systems-integration levels. The embodiment discount marks down the economics assessment accordingly and nets it against the positioning gain. (source: William J. Baumol: Macroeconomics of Unbalanced Growth: The Anatomy of Urban Crisis, The American Economic Review 57(3), 1967, S. 415-426)
- [Five-Layer Vocabulary as a Checklist](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/five-layer-checklist.md): The five layers of position, demand, monetization, economics and compound serve as a completeness grid: what to think about in a B2B SaaS company so nothing essential gets overlooked. (source: Clarifying Business Models: Origins, Present, and Future of the Concept)
- [AI-GTM Transformation Loop (DSAE)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/ai-gtm-transformation-loop.md): A build order for transforming toward an AI-native GTM function in four phases: decode, shape, amplify, evolve, run as a loop rather than a waterfall. The core framing: AI sales is a product, not a project; it gets versioned, not completed. (source: A Spiral Model of Software Development and Enhancement)
- [AI-GTM Maturity (4 Levels)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/ai-gtm-maturity-levels.md): Four maturity levels of a GTM function's AI adoption: foundation, multi-channel, orchestrated, AI-native. The levels cannot be skipped; the next sensible step is always exactly one level up. (source: Capability Maturity Model for Software, Version 1.1 (CMU/SEI-93-TR-024))
- [Strategic Choice Structuring (What Would Have to Be True?)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/choice-structuring.md): A process from Roger Martin: instead of asking who is right, the team records for each option what would have to be true for that option to win. The condition the group doubts most gets tested first. Disagreement acquires a testing sequence, and options fail cheaply on a condition rather than expensively in execution. (source: Roger L. Martin: Strategic Choice Structuring, Whitepaper, 1997)
- [Data Monetization: Improve, Wrap, Sell](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/data-monetization-improve-wrap-sell.md): A model from the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (Barbara Wixom, Jeanne Ross and colleagues): data turns into money along exactly three paths, by improving internal processes, by wrapping the core offering with analytics features, or by selling an information offering of your own. Every path draws on the same five enterprise capabilities but demands them at different levels of maturity. The last step is the hardest: actually collecting the value created and finding it again in the income statement. (source: Wixom, Someh, Zutavern, Beath: Explanation. A New Enterprise Data Monetization Capability for AI, MIT CISR Working Paper No. 443)
- [DORA AI Capabilities Model (Seven AI Capabilities)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/dora-ai-capabilities.md): A diagnostic model from Google Cloud's DORA research program, published in 2025. Seven organizational capabilities decide whether AI adoption returns anything: a clear and communicated AI stance, a healthy data ecosystem, internal data that AI can reach, strong version control, small batches, user-centric focus, and a quality internal platform. The core claim is amplification: AI magnifies existing strengths and existing dysfunctions alike. (source: DORA AI Capabilities Model (v. 2025.1))
- [DORA Delivery Diagnostic](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/dora-delivery-diagnose.md): Captures a software organisation's delivery capability on a few hard numbers: how long a change takes from version control to production, how often you deploy, how often a deployment forces immediate intervention, and how quickly service is restored afterwards. Throughput and stability are read as a pair, never on their own. Measurement applies per service, not as a comparison between teams. (source: Forsgren, Rothenberger, Humble, Thatcher, Smith: A Taxonomy of Software Delivery Performance Profiles: Investigating the Effects of DevOps Practices, AMCIS 2020)
- [Constraint Detection (Five-Layer Scan)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/constraint-detection.md): The five-layer scan examines position, demand, monetization, economics and compound, naming the leading strength and the single limiting constraint. Constraint detection is the blind-test-validated core of the method. (source: Growth Diagnostics (Growth Lab Working Paper 3))
- [Calibrated Evaluation Loop for AI Outputs (Criteria Drift)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/eval-calibration.md): A method from Shreya Shankar and colleagues (UC Berkeley, UIST 2024), ordered for day-to-day operation along Hamel Husain's levels: an automated evaluator for AI outputs is only usable once it has been calibrated against human judgement. The finding behind it is called criteria drift, because people need criteria in order to grade outputs, yet they discover their criteria only while grading. Above the individual checks sits a cost ordering in three levels. (source: Shankar, Zamfirescu-Pereira, Hartmann, Parameswaran, Arawjo: Who Validates the Validators? Aligning LLM-Assisted Evaluation of LLM Outputs with Human Preferences, UIST 2024 (arXiv:2404.12272))
- [Growth Decomposition (Granularity of Growth)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/growth-decomposition.md): A method associated with Viguerie, Smit, and Baghai (McKinsey): a measured growth rate is broken into three contributions, namely the pull of the markets a company already sits in, share gained or lost against competitors, and acquisitions. The arithmetic runs on fine market cells, not at company or division level. (source: Seyfried: Shift-Share Analysis, Business Quest (University of West Georgia), 1996)
- [Growth Endurance](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/growth-endurance.md): A metric from the Bessemer Venture Partners orbit (Mary D'Onofrio): this year's growth rate divided by last year's. Across cloud portfolios that share stays strikingly stable, around 70 percent for privately held companies. It gives a slowdown an expected value for the first time. (source: Scaling to $100 Million, Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP Atlas), Abschnitt Growth Endurance)
- [Randomized Measurement of AI Productivity Gains](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/ki-produktivitaet-rct.md): A study design from METR (Joel Becker, Nate Rush, Elizabeth Barnes, David Rein): instead of asking how much AI delivers, you measure it. Real tasks from your own backlog are estimated up front, then split by coin flip into AI-allowed and AI-disallowed, and the time is recorded. The actual finding is the gap between measured effect and believed effect. (source: Becker, Rush, Barnes, Rein: Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity, arXiv:2507.09089)
- [Net Retention Audit (Cohort NRR)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/netto-retention-audit.md): A diagnostic from Dave Kellogg (Kellblog): a reported net revenue retention figure is checked against the way it was derived. Only the cohort calculation holds up, meaning today's revenue from the same group of customers divided by what that group paid twelve months ago. The common shortcut taken from the ARR bridge measures something else. (source: Lazy NRR is Not NRR. Accept No Imitations or Subtitutes., Kellblog (Dave Kellogg))
- [Operating Model Grid (Standardization and Integration)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/operating-model-raster.md): A grid from Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill and David C. Robertson at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research: before platform, scaling or integration decisions, you settle how much process standardization and how much data integration between units the business actually requires. Two axes yield four operating models: diversification, coordination, replication, unification. (source: Jeanne W. Ross: Forget Strategy: Focus IT on Your Operating Model, MIT CISR Research Briefing Vol. V, No. 3C)
- [Maturity Gate](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/maturity-gate.md): The maturity gate classifies a company before any analysis: stage, business-model mode and scope. Pre-revenue deep tech deliberately falls outside the grid, lenders run in spread mode, and carve-outs without standalone economics are marked not assessable rather than deficient. (source: Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow)
- [RPV Organizational Fit Test (Resources, Processes, Values)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/rpv-organisationsfit.md): A framework by Clayton Christensen and Michael Overdorf: what an organization is able to do sits in three layers, namely its resources, its processes, and its values. Resources are mobile, processes are slow to move, values are the slowest of all, because they carry the margin and size threshold of the established business. The test asks, before a venture starts, which of these layers has to be new, and derives the organizational form from the answer. (source: Clayton M. Christensen, Michael Overdorf: Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change, Harvard Business Review 78(2), März/April 2000)
- [Teardown Diagnostic Sequence](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/teardown-sequence.md): A fixed order for diagnosing a business: sort first, then the KPI chain, then hunt outliers, then determine whether the issue is a model problem or a team and execution problem. (source: Why Strategy Execution Unravels—and What to Do About It)
- [Value Creation Plan (Lever Categories and Execution Rate)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/value-creation-plan.md): A procedure from investment practice, reconstructed by Biesinger, Bircan and Ljungqvist (EBRD) from confidential plans and quarterly reports: the intended value creation is fixed before the start as a limited list of named action items, each item assigned to a lever category and given an owner and a date. The quarterly report then shows the execution status per item instead of the outcome. (source: Biesinger, Bircan, Ljungqvist: Value Creation in Private Equity, EBRD Working Paper No. 242)