Scaled a B2B SaaS from $1.1M to $7M ARR in 30 months

This is going to be a long one but hope you can learn something from this

Most SaaS founders think scaling means hiring more salespeople. That's exactly backwards, you optimize the engine before you hit the gas.

I just wrapped a 30-month engagement with a project management SaaS targeting construction and engineering firms. They were stuck at $1.2M ARR with inconsistent sales, marketing, and 10% annual churn. Classic plateau symptoms, by the time we finished, they'd hit $7M ARR

Here's how we did it, step by step.

The founders assumed they needed more reps to scale. But in reality they had a vague ICP, their free trial was a feature dump, and their sales process was basically hop on calls and see what happens. You can't scale chaos, we spent the first 6 months fixing the foundation before adding any headcount. I interviewed their best customers, analyzed product usage data, and discovered their sweet spot was mid-sized engineering firms with 50-250 employees dealing with version control nightmares. Once we had this clarity, we redesigned their trial to hit an aha moment in 10 minutes, created Product-Qualified Lead triggers based on usage, and built content around high-intent keywords their ICP actually searched for.

Then we built the growth engine. Month 7-18 was about structure and process. We split the sales team into specialized roles – SDRs for prospecting, AEs for closing, CSMs for expansion. Sounds obvious but most companies try to make one person do everything. We implemented a data-driven sales process with clear stages, daily standups, and weekly pipeline reviews. The game-changer was focusing on net revenue retention. We created health scores for every customer, gave CSMs playbooks for at-risk accounts, and launched proactive upselling. Our NRR went from 80% to 110%. That means existing customers became worth more over time, making our acquisition costs sustainable and fueling compound growth.

Phase 3 was hitting the accelerator. Months 19-30 were about scaling what worked. We created hiring playbooks so every new rep could contribute quickly. We tested international expansion with a small team before committing fully. Most SaaS companies fail because they try to scale before they have a system worth scaling.