Blog
No fluff. Grounded in the same 25+ methodologies that power Cursus.
A revenue plan built down from the board number looks fine cell by cell and fails in total. Build it up from last year's actual funnel conversion, capacity and ramp, then take the gap to the board as a decision, not an apology.
A rep closes a deal with terms that create two years of cleanup for finance and CS. A deal desk exists to prevent that without slowing the deal down. When you need one, what it should govern, and how to keep it from becoming a bottleneck.
The board deck that looks great until someone asks the one question you did not prep for. Board reporting is not a status update. It is a credibility exercise. How to build a report that holds up when the questions get hard.
Partners look like free pipeline. They are not free, and they are not simple. When a channel motion is worth the complexity, when to wait, and how to build one that produces revenue instead of overhead.
You inspect new business pipeline every week. Renewals get a spreadsheet glance the month before they close. Then a big one slips and your NRR craters. How to forecast and inspect renewals like the revenue they actually are.
Before you buy AI for your revenue team, find out whether you are ready for it. AI amplifies whatever it is pointed at, including your problems. A five-dimension audit to run before you spend a dollar.
Every tool in your stack now has an AI feature bolted on, and each one wants its own data. AI does not fix the data-silo problem. It makes it worse. How to architect a revenue stack where AI has clean data to stand on.
Coaching does not scale. Your best manager can only inspect so many deals, and quality drops as the team grows. AI can prepare the coaching for every deal. It cannot deliver it. How to use AI to democratize what to look at without outsourcing what to do about it.
AI will not fix your forecast accuracy by itself. It improves your inputs and your inspection. The forecast is still a number a human commits and answers for. How to use AI without outsourcing the judgment.
AI SDRs will not replace your outbound team, and the vendors selling that promise will cost you your domain reputation. Where AI actually helps pipeline generation, and how to deploy it without torching your brand.
Every vendor wants to sell you AI for revenue. Most of it is noise. A practical test for deciding what to automate, what to augment, and what to keep entirely human.
AI products break the per-seat model because they carry real marginal cost. How to choose between cost-plus, consumption, and outcome-based pricing without giving away your gross margin.
Who to hire first, second, and third on your revenue team. The sequencing, profiles, ramp expectations, and quota-setting approach that avoids the most expensive mistake in GTM: hiring ahead of your motion.
CRM, engagement, intelligence, analytics. How to architect your revenue tech stack so data flows instead of getting trapped in tool-specific silos that kill your forecasting accuracy.
Your pricing model shapes your GTM motion, your comp plan, and your unit economics. How to choose between usage-based, per-seat, and hybrid models, and the deal desk rules that keep margin intact.
Weekly pipeline reviews, monthly business reviews, quarterly planning. The exact meeting cadence that keeps a revenue org aligned without drowning in status updates.
The handoff from sales to CS is where revenue expansion either starts or dies. How to design onboarding by segment, measure time-to-value, and spot churn risk signals before month 3.
Before you blame the reps, check the system. Sequencing strategy, ICP targeting, response SLAs, and the 4 metrics that diagnose whether your outbound problem is people or process.
Most dashboards show what already happened. Here are the 7 leading indicators that tell you what will happen to revenue 90 days from now, and how to build the dashboard that surfaces them.
Account scoring, segment coverage, and rebalance triggers. The territory design principles that keep your reps productive instead of fighting over account assignments.
Why net revenue retention separates companies that scale from those that stall. How to build the expansion motion, measure health scoring, and hit 120%+ NRR.
MEDDICC vs SPICED vs BANT: which discovery methodology fits your deal complexity, and how to implement it without your AEs treating it like a checkbox exercise.
When to hire ahead of revenue vs. when you are burning cash on a broken motion. The signals: quota attainment distribution, ramp time predictability, pipeline independence from founders, magic number above 0.7, and what happens when you scale before GTM fit.
Why most B2B SaaS ICPs are wallpaper, the Dunford framework that makes them operational, ICP tiering for territory and SDR prioritization, and using win-loss data to refresh quarterly.
The gap between customers wanting your product and being able to acquire them repeatably at viable economics. How to diagnose GTM fit: repeatable sales motion, CAC payback, unit economics that survive a comp plan, and the startup-to-scaleup transition most companies fumble.
The diagnostic version of PMF, not the Twitter version. The leading indicator that matters, the metrics that lie, retention cohorts that tell the truth, and why most B2B SaaS companies claim product-market fit 12 months before they have it.
How to design a comp plan that drives the behavior you want: OTE-to-quota ratios, pay mix by role, accelerator tiers, clawback policy, and the most common mistakes that blow up your CAC payback.
A system for your first 90 days that goes beyond the usual advice. How to assess what you inherited, design what needs to change, and build a revenue operating plan your board can actually track.
What a revenue operating system actually is, why spreadsheets and tribal knowledge do not qualify, and the step-by-step process for building one. Covers ICP, sales motion, comp, forecasting, and operating rhythm for B2B SaaS.
What pipeline coverage ratio actually means, how to calculate it against left-to-get instead of full quota, benchmarks by quarter timing, the four health signals underneath the ratio, and the weekly cadence that keeps it honest.
Every revenue decision is connected. The 17 components of a complete revenue system: from strategy and ICP through pricing, territory, compensation, forecasting, and board reporting. How they depend on each other and why the order matters.