Removing the Bottom 50% to 10X Revenue Growth
You don’t need more clients. You need better-fit ones. Saying no to the wrong deals created space for the right ones. Segmenting by value gave the team clarity, confidence, and results.
The Challenge
The company had a high volume of small, one-off projects that drained resources but produced minimal revenue. These projects made up nearly 50% of sales activity over two years but contributed less than 5% of total revenue. The sales team lacked a clear framework to identify or redirect non-ideal clients, resulting in diluted focus and inconsistent deal quality.
The Solution
Partnering with the Sales Manager, I led a deep analysis of two years of sales data. We began by classifying every client as either within our Target Market (TM) or not. Then we segmented the non-TM group into repeat or one-off clients, and bucketed all projects by revenue tier: small, medium, and large.
Once segmented, we had clarity:
- TM clients and medium/large non-TM accounts were worth keeping
- The remaining 50 percent (non-TM, small, one-off deals) represented less than 5 percent of revenue but consumed a disproportionate amount of operational effort
We made the strategic decision to eliminate that low-value segment entirely.
This involved:
- Updating sales training to focus on qualification and upsell paths
- Creating scripts and workflows to confidently say “no” or redirect low-fit leads to other agencies
- Removing those deal types from marketing funnels and CRM stages
- Tracking pipeline quality weekly to confirm the shift was holding
By the end of Q1, the low-fit segment was fully removed from the pipeline.
The Impact
- Maintained overall deal volume
- Increased average revenue per deal
- Beat prior year’s sales numbers for six consecutive months
- Refocused the team on high-fit, high-yield work
- Improved client satisfaction and internal alignment
The move proved that focus is more powerful than volume, and that growth can come from doing less, better.