Test the growth plan before you staff it

If your growth plan depends on customers buying something the team has never sold them, that's worth testing before you staff it.

Picture the plan for the next few years. Every line has a number on it: so much from cross-selling the second product into the installed base, so much from a new product line, so much from a segment the company hasn't sold to, so much through a new partner. A sales team hired this year is meant to deliver it, and the hiring plan is on your leadership team's agenda.

Before the first of those hires starts, I'd want to know which parts of the plan customers have already shown they'll act on, and which are still assumptions.

The problem

That matters more now than it did a decade ago, especially if your company was recently acquired by an outside investor. A typical 2015 buyout needed just 5% a year of EBITDA growth to return 2.5x over five years, by Bain's illustrative math. A similar deal today needs closer to 10% to 12%, a shift Bain sums up as "12 is the new 5." In Bain's 2015 deal, debt covers about half the purchase price and the multiple climbs from 10.0x to 12.5x. In its deal today, debt covers about 36% and the multiple climbs only from 14.0x to 15.0x. With less debt and less multiple expansion, more of the return has to come from the business. Bain's 5% and 10% to 12% are modeled EBITDA growth figures for an illustrative US deal, not observed averages and not revenue, and Bain says the assumptions will vary.

Higher entry multiples over the last decade have pushed managers toward operational improvement, McKinsey notes, and funds and their investors are watching more closely whether operators can grow revenue and margins.

Plans often fall short. Of the more than 100 US PE fund investors, operating partners and portfolio company executives Alvarez & Marsal surveyed in March 2025, 72% said they realized less than 75% of the value their plans estimated, as did 83% of mid-cap respondents, from funds of $500 million to $5 billion. The survey doesn't measure why. In the same survey, the share who said they primarily focus on revenue growth rose to 38%, from 22% in 2024. It's self-reported, so I'd read it as direction rather than a census.

When more of the return has to come from growth, the parts of the plan that need customers to do something new carry more weight: a new segment, a cross-sell, a new product line, a partner route. Putting Bain's and A&M's findings together this way is my read, not either firm's.

Those parts of the plan are go-to-market assumptions. Customers answer them only once someone runs them, often through a route the company hasn't run before, and whoever runs them may not have written them: a new CRO, a sales leader promoted into the job, a team hired for the plan.

Then there's timing. For deals exited since 2019, the biggest margin gains came in the final year of the hold period and the one before it, McKinsey reports. It reads that as value creation that's often back-loaded and argues for earlier, sustained execution. Funds traditionally start plans in the first 100 days and expect execution by year two or sooner, per A&M. A team hired against an untested assumption can use much of that window finding out whether it holds. If the results miss, it's hard to tell whether the assumption, the route or the hire was the problem.

What's possible

A few weeks early in the hold period, with the team you have, can put the one or two assumptions that carry the most weight in front of the customers they depend on, and record what those customers do. The result isn't a forecast. It's evidence, one assumption at a time, that your leadership team can act on at the first plan review: which to staff now, which need a different route, and which need more time before the budget goes in.

Six steps

1. Write each growth assumption as something a customer has to do. Which customers, reached how, buying what, by when. "Cross-sell the second product" becomes: existing customers of a named type buy it, through their account manager, within the first year. "Open a new segment" becomes: operations leaders at companies of a named size and type buy, reached through a named route, at a named deal size. Put an owner's name next to each. If an assumption can't be written as something a customer could do, it may not be a sales question at all, and it belongs with whoever owns it.

2. Check each against what customers bought last year. The record I laid out for an inherited customer base works here: last year's deals, where each one came from, and where the founder or a predecessor stepped in. If customers already buy the way an assumption says they will, it extends something the business does. If nobody has, or every example ran through the founder, it's untested.

3. Pick the one or two the return depends on most and the evidence supports least. Among those, start with the one that has hiring or budget landing against it soonest.

4. Test those with the team you have, where it has the capacity. For a cross-sell or a new product line, have account managers take the offer to a few suitable accounts and see whether those conversations reach a proposal. For a new segment, hold a handful of conversations first, with people there who recently bought something similar: what triggered the search, what else they considered, and how they made the case internally. Then try a route in: partner introductions, a referral from an existing customer, or focused outreach. For a partner route, pick a partner you already work with, agree on a short list of named accounts, and see whether the introductions happen.

5. Agree what counts before the results arrive. With your leadership team, write down what would justify the hire, what would change the plan, and what early results can and can't confirm: a proposal request isn't revenue, and a quiet segment isn't a verdict. Record commercial progress for each assumption separately: a meeting with the budget holder, a proposal request, an introduction made. Keep the objections and the reasons people said no.

6. Bring it to the first plan review. Follow the opportunities through to revenue and check whether the results repeat. Put hires and budget behind the assumptions customers act on once the evidence is strong enough for the size of the bet, and keep the rest labeled as assumptions.

What good looks like

At the review, you can say something like this: "We offered the scheduling product from the business we acquired to twenty of our existing customers. Eleven took a demo, six asked for a quote, and two have started paid pilots, all run by our own account managers. The new product line drew interest but no budget: the buyers who liked it said it belongs in next year's plan."

That supports staffing the cross-sell now, around the account managers who ran it, and holding the hire for the new product line until a buyer puts it in a budget. The plan's revenue lines haven't moved yet. What's moved is which ones have customers behind them.

Watch-outs

Waiting for the P&L to answer. By the time a missed assumption shows up in the numbers, the hires against it are often already made. Commercial progress shows up sooner, and it's evidence your leadership team can use.

Testing every assumption at once. Spread across the whole plan, the same few people give each one too little effort to read. One or two, then the next.

Letting one person carry the test. If the founder or former owner opens every door, the result mixes the assumption with the person. Their introductions can be part of a good handover, so count those deals, and record what the team did after the introduction.

Reading silence as a verdict. A quiet test leaves an assumption unproven, not disproven. Before you write it off, check the list, the route, and whether the asks actually went out.

Takeaway

When more of the return has to come from the business, the parts of the plan that need customers to do something new are go-to-market assumptions until customers act on them. Test the one or two that carry the most, early in the hold period and with the team you have, before the hires and budget go in. Customers will answer these assumptions either way. The earlier you ask, the more of the hold period is left to act on the answer.

That's the kind of work I do at Congruity: put a specific go-to-market assumption in front of the customers it depends on, record what happens, and say plainly what the results can and can't establish.