How a fast-growing software company turned disconnected departments into two revenue engines
Rooted Rocket rebuilt how work moved from Marketing and Sales through Implementation, Customer Service, Finance, product feedback, and leadership. New customer acquisition and ARR from new customers grew roughly 20% to 30%+ month over month, while existing-customer upsells added approximately 35% to ARR.
The company is anonymized to protect its identity. The results are real.
20% to 30%+ MoM
New customer acquisition and ARR from new customers
~35% added to ARR
Existing-customer upsells
Nearly doubled
Sales close rate
±30% → ±3%
Forecast accuracy, maintained for at least 18 months
Growth was masking a company that no longer agreed with itself.
A growing B2B software company sold four connected products, each available independently. Customers paid for onboarding, then month-to-month subscriptions. Sales was growing quickly.
Leadership saw churn. Departments blamed one another. Finance distrusted the forecast, and teams disagreed about which customers were active, onboarded, paying, or ready for support.
Rapid sales hid the weakness between functions, where definitions, ownership, handoffs, software, and accountability had grown apart.
See the business before and after.
Choose a function to see the condition Rooted Rocket found, the connections that mattered, and the result.
Sales, before Rooted Rocket
The operating flow connected Marketing, Sales, Implementation, the company’s software product, Customer Service, expansion, and Sales again. Finance, Development, and Executive Leadership governed key stages.
One organization, two lifecycle functions
The company’s software productThe customer-facing product customers paid to use
Retention and relationship
Expansion signal
Sale
Manual billing and setup
Implementation handoff
Forecast uncertainty
Implementation and Customer Service reported to the same director. They are shown separately because they owned different stages of the customer lifecycle.
Sales carried the sale into onboarding.
Every new customer created about an hour of billing, duplicate entry, scheduling, account setup, and verbal transfer.
Overlapping HubSpot fields and Google Sheets repeated information.
Sales created the Stripe customer, booked the welcome meeting, and configured the customer account.
Activity standards, pipeline hygiene, targeting, and forecast inputs were unreliable.
Business consequence: selling time fell while trust, handoff quality, and forecast accuracy weakened.
Sales returned to selling on verified data.
Rooted Rocket standardized HubSpot, reused information, verified activity, and connected targeting, coaching, pipeline discipline, hiring, and forecasting.
Stale opportunities moved automatically to closed/lost unless management approved a valid exception.
Gong supported precise coaching and account context.
Role-level and individual conversion measures replaced generic activity.
Selected result: close rate nearly doubled, and forecast accuracy improved from about ±30% to about ±3% for at least 18 months.
Implementation began with a manual, incomplete handoff.
Sales selected an employee, booked meetings, configured the customer account, and sent forms customers did not always complete.
A missed welcome meeting might receive one email, then stall.
Training could count even when the customer did not use the product.
First monthly billing waited for a subjective completion decision.
Business consequence: ownership disappeared between people and tools, delaying activation and billing.
The company’s software product
Implementation owned setup, activation, and exceptions.
Rooted Rocket created a round-robin Calendly system using dedicated onboarding blocks, moved appropriate setup out of Sales, reused information, and made incomplete onboarding visible.
Missed meetings triggered a defined follow-up cadence.
Onboarding required about 10 meaningful product interactions after training.
First monthly billing moved to two weeks after signup.
Selected result: activation became measurable and billing became predictable.
Leadership had little reliable visibility into calls, emails, meetings, missed meetings, capacity, or individual output. Proactive contact after onboarding was rare.
Existing customers sometimes called the Sales line for support.
Payment and customer status could disagree.
Cold expansion calls often uncovered support or training needs instead.
Business consequence: retention, service, collections, and expansion all weakened together.
The company’s software product
Customer Service owned the ongoing relationship.
Formal processes, KPIs, contact expectations, data-informed calling windows, check-ins, education, payment follow-up, and expansion signals made the work visible.
Individual, department, and executive exceptions could be reviewed.
Quarterly calls and education created ongoing customer value.
Feedback and behavior gave Sales relevant expansion context.
Selected result: churn decreased dramatically, retention improved materially, and Customer Service turnover improved.
The company’s software product
The books tied, but operating inputs did not.
First monthly billing was subjective, Sales forecasting was not trusted, customer cancellations did not reliably reach Finance, and accounts receivable was too large.
Customer operational status could conflict with payment reality.
Hiring and labor costs were difficult to forecast.
Subscription overcharges created recovery work.
Business consequence: Finance could close the books but could not reliably see what came next.
Payment and customer status followed one lifecycle.
Access could pause after approximately 15 unpaid days.
Customers had about 30 days to resolve payment before returning could require onboarding again.
QBO became the auditable source for important reporting.
Selected result: accounts receivable significantly reduced and financial planning improved.
Useful product evidence stayed scattered.
Development built and maintained the company’s software product, but roadmap pressure arrived through opinions while customer and prospect evidence remained in conversations.
Repeated requests were difficult to distinguish from existing capabilities.
Competitive mentions lacked structure.
High-intent purchase abandonment could disappear.
Business consequence: evidence was weak even though the company had already collected it.
The company’s software product
Development received structured evidence and kept control.
Rooted Rocket connected Gong evidence into a usable report and created a hybrid purchase-recovery path using Microsoft Clarity context and Slack signals.
Repeated requests and misunderstood existing capabilities became visible.
Sales could follow up while abandoned purchase intent remained high.
Development retained engineering operations and roadmap authority.
Rooted Rocket identified the need, recommended NPS, and designed how it fit the lifecycle. The company’s Development department built and deployed the survey inside the company’s software product.
The company’s software product
Marketing activity stopped before accountable action.
Marketing and Sales planned separately. Campaigns, events, and customer communication did not consistently create downstream Sales, retention, or expansion activity.
MQL accountability was weak.
Conference activity was difficult to connect to results.
Product-interest behavior did not reliably reach Sales.
Business consequence: activity was visible, but its contribution to the customer lifecycle was not.
Marketing produced useful lifecycle signals.
Rooted Rocket aligned planning with Sales, established MQL accountability, connected event activity to follow-up, and used education to support retention and expansion.
Newsletters and short product videos created customer value.
Engagement with an unowned product indicated interest.
HubSpot, Slack, and dashboards routed relevant context to Sales.
Selected result: Marketing supported more relevant Sales action without becoming the dominant service story.
Rapid Sales growth looked healthier than the company was.
Department reports conflicted. Customer status differed by team, forecasts were unreliable, and churn and nonpayment were masked by continued acquisition.
Leadership lacked shared department KPIs.
Board and investor questions exposed reconciliation gaps.
Hiring, cost, and revenue visibility remained weak.
Business consequence: leaders received more information than financial truth.
Leadership managed exceptions against shared truth.
Department KPIs, drill-down, daily recaps, threshold alerts, hiring triggers, customer status, and revenue visibility connected to QBO-backed financial reporting.
High-level health could be traced to the responsible function.
Leaders saw exceptions instead of reconciling every record.
Operating measures and financial totals told the same story.
Selected result: custom reporting that previously required extensive reconciliation could be produced in minutes.
Acquisition became measurable.
Before, high activity hid weak targeting, unverified work, an inflated pipeline, artificial close dates, generic coaching, and unreliable forecasting.
Once the rebuilt acquisition system was operating, new customer acquisition and ARR from new customers grew roughly 20% to 30%+ month over month.
That moved the company into a hypergrowth period.
~50 → ~120
Targeted calls per dayTeam-wide average. Better targeting and a cleaner workflow increased productive capacity.
Nearly doubled
Sales close rateGranular conversion diagnosis replaced generic coaching.
±30% → ±3%
Forecast accuracyActual performance, timing, account size, holidays, and capacity replaced artificial assumptions. Maintained for at least 18 months.
20% to 30%+ MoM
New customer acquisition and ARR from new customersTargeting, standards, coaching, pipeline discipline, and forecasting created a repeatable acquisition engine.
~25%of eligible existing customers added at least one additional product in the first major expansion cycle
~35% added to ARRthrough existing-customer upsells
Existing customers became a growth channel.
Before, customers could go years without meaningful outreach. When Sales finally asked for another purchase, Gong showed that many customers first needed support, training, or product information.
Rooted Rocket connected Customer Service check-ins, quarterly calls, education, newsletters, short product videos, NPS, HubSpot engagement, Slack alerts, and product-specific interest. The relationship and education system operated for about six months before the first major proactive Sales push.
Approximately 25% of eligible existing customers added at least one additional product during that cycle. Eligible customers generally had been customers for at least approximately six months.
Existing-customer upsells added approximately 35% to ARR.
Growth held because the customer lifecycle held.
Acquisition and expansion depended on one sequence: Implementation, activation, Customer Service, billing, collections, product use, feedback, and financial status.
~60 minutes → ~10 minutes
Post-sale workDuplicate entry was removed or reduced, and setup ownership moved to the appropriate function.
About 10 meaningful interactions
Measurable onboardingTraining alone no longer counted. Product use after training showed whether activation had begun.
Two weeks after signup
First monthly billingA defined date replaced a subjective onboarding trigger.
Decreased dramatically
ChurnOwnership, intervention, customer contact, and measurable activation supported retention.
Customer Service turnoverFormal processes, standards, visibility, and accountability made the function more operable.
Minutes
Executive reportingCustom reporting that previously required extensive reconciliation could be produced in minutes.
Rooted Rocket followed the work, not the org chart.
Before final scope, Rooted Rocket recommended meeting every department leader. After the CEO and leadership group, Rooted Rocket met individual leaders and frontline employees. Some frontline sessions happened without management present. Users demonstrated the work they actually performed.
Rooted Rocket used the software directly and compared leadership reports with real workflows and data. The evidence became current-state maps, future-state maps, timelines, waterfall charts, and phased implementation plans.
Every department received clear processes and KPIs. An accounting expert contributed specialist knowledge behind the scenes. Rooted Rocket retained responsibility for diagnosis, architecture, recommendations, implementation, and client communication.
CEO conversation
All department leaders
Individual leaders
Frontline users
Systems and data review
Current-state mapping
Future-state design
Phased implementation
KPIs and adoption
Technology supported the operating model.
Rooted Rocket worked inside the company’s existing technology environment. The logos identify software involved in the engagement and do not imply endorsement or partnership.
The company’s software product
The customer-facing product customers paid to use. Implementation configured customer accounts, customers created value through usage, Customer Service supported adoption, and the company’s Development department built and maintained it.
Customer and revenue
HubSpotGongCalendly
Communication and content
SlackGoogle WorkspaceCanva
Payments and finance
StripePlaidQuickBooks OnlineBILL Bill.com
Customer and purchase evidence
Microsoft Clarity
Eliminated from this company’s tech stack
Once the underlying onboarding problem was solved, these tools were no longer necessary for this company’s use case, reducing unnecessary software cost.
ArrowsTeachable
Bring the visible problem. Rooted Rocket will find what is actually holding growth back.
The constraint may sit in one workflow, one function, or across the company. The first conversation determines whether Rooted Rocket is the right fit.
