At RD Summit 2024, Renata Centurión from Winning by Design shared her expertise on transforming companies into “recurring revenue factories.” With a focus on sustainable growth, she highlighted the importance of aligning marketing, sales, and customer success (CS) to build a solid and successful business. In this article, we explore the main points from the talk “How to Transform Your Business into a Recurring Revenue Factory,” the challenges of growth, and the steps for planned, data-driven expansion.

Growing with purpose: “Don’t try to grow at any cost”

For Renata, “Growing fast doesn’t mean growing at any cost.” Her advice was straightforward: growth without planning, especially without a focus on retention, is like trying to fill a leaky bucket. Real impact comes from a balanced approach that considers the customer at every stage of the journey, ensuring that they remain satisfied and engaged. Renata highlighted the importance of well-defined standards for each phase of the customer journey, emphasizing that true growth is growth that retains customers, not just attracts new ones.

The Role of Discounting: Understanding the Value Proposition

One of Renata’s tips that caught our attention was about using discounts. According to her, “Discounts are the biggest mistake you can make with a customer,” as they usually reveal a misalignment in the value proposition. Instead of reducing prices, it is essential to focus on demonstrating the value of the product or service to the customer, ensuring that they understand what they are getting in return. To assess whether the strategy is aligned with the business objectives, Renata recommends using data to guide decisions. Data allows you to identify adjustment points and monitor the impact of actions, strengthening customer loyalty.

Structuring expansion: growth in stages

Renata explained that sustainable expansion should be done in stages. She suggested that it is only appropriate to expand the audience when the business has reached an advanced and structured stage (point 7) in its journey. Using an inspiring metaphor, Renata compared the process to Dick Fosbury’s high jump, who innovated by trying a technique that had never been used before. Thus, companies also need to develop a unique and adapted strategy to grow successfully.

Impact and Value: The Promise of Solid Growth

For Renata, impact is the fulfillment of the promise of value. This means that each phase of the growth journey must be managed carefully so that growth is sustained. In a well-structured model, the customer perceives the value delivered and remains engaged, reducing churn and increasing Lifetime Value (LTV).

The concept of Revenue Architecture: a guide to scalability

Renata introduced the concept of Revenue Architecture, a model from Winning by Design, as an essential framework for creating a “revenue factory.” This model helps companies plan and scale efficiently, adapting their Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy as they grow. The focus is on identifying and solving GTM issues before they become bottlenecks, driving proactive growth.

To do this, Renata suggests:

1. Identify the first signs of friction: As your business grows, it’s critical to spot internal inefficiencies and adjust your strategy before expansion hurts performance.
2. Review GTM at the right time: Changes to your GTM strategy take time, so it’s important to review it before growth causes a mismatch between supply and demand.
3. Adopt data-driven processes: Using real data to adjust and standardize processes is key to scalability. This allows GTM to evolve with the business, ensuring safer and more assertive decisions.

GTM as a central point for scale-ups

As companies move from startups to scale-ups, the importance of a well-structured GTM strategy becomes paramount. Renata explained that without a robust GTM plan, companies can fall into a reactive rut, where they spend more time fixing problems than growing in a healthy way. Therefore, a focused, data-driven GTM can be the difference between scalable success and long-term failure.

Conclusion: Creating a Business with Purpose and Retention

Renata Centurión’s talk at RD Summit 2024 left a clear message for entrepreneurs and managers: healthy growth comes from a model that prioritizes retention, impact, and value. By structuring growth in phases and adopting a well-planned GTM approach, companies can transform growth into a sustainable, recurring revenue factory.