01 · FOCUS
Which customers and commercial opportunities deserve our attention?
Use customer and market evidence to choose where the company can win, and where it should stop spending effort.
Resources / The Growth Loop
Seven connected decisions. One learning cycle.
A practical way to understand how a software business finds, wins, keeps and grows customers. This is a framework for asking better questions, not a mandatory seven-step programme.
How I use this in advisory work →The seven-stage Growth Loop
Find the constraint. Improve it. Learn what changes.
Start with the part of your commercial operation that most needs attention. Use evidence from customers and results to decide what to improve, then review the effect. Learning feeds back into your focus and decisions.
↶ Learn feeds back into Focus, and every other stage
02 · POSITION
Why should those customers choose us?
Turn the customer problem and your evidence of value into a proposition buyers can recognise and trust.
03 · FIND
How will the right customers discover and engage with us?
Test practical routes to market, including direct outreach, partners and relevant channels, rather than measuring activity alone.
04 · WIN
Can we turn suitable opportunities into customers consistently?
Improve qualification, buying conversations, proof and commercial decisions without relying on exceptional founder involvement.
05 · DELIVER
Are customers actually receiving the value we promised?
Make adoption, service and measurable customer outcomes part of the commercial model.
06 · EXPAND
Where can we create more value for existing customers?
Identify genuine additional needs and build relationships through delivered value, not automatic upselling.
07 · LEARN
What is the evidence telling us to change?
Review wins, losses, retention and customer outcomes, then feed what you learn back into Focus and the other stages.
Using the framework
The business problem determines the work.
A company may need to revisit customer selection rather than hire more salespeople. Another may have strong demand but weak delivery or retention. The Growth Loop helps reveal those differences without prescribing a fixed sequence.
The free Early-Stage Software Growth Playbook covers five proofs before substantial growth investment and introduces this same loop for the next stage.