How to Diagnose Your Organization’s Real Growth Problem

Nobody Agrees on What’s Actually Broken

A few months ago, I was on a call with a VP of Marketing at a cybersecurity company.

Sharp woman. Been around the block.

We were talking about what she believed was the biggest challenge her team was facing.

She tells me, “Dani, our biggest issue is awareness. People don’t know who we are.”

I’ve heard that line hundreds of times. So I ask her a simple question:

“How do you know it’s awareness? What do your buyers actually say when they don’t move forward?”

And boom - radio silence.

She didn’t know. Because they never asked.

Instead, they were spending $300K a quarter on brand campaigns - sponsored content, paid placements, boosted posts - because someone in a board meeting guessed that awareness was the problem.

And no one challenged it.

Why? Because it’s safer to fix problems that are visible.

Lead gen. MQL-to-SQL conversion. Attribution dashboards.

They feel measurable. Controllable. Comforting.

But that comfort? That’s a false sense of certainty.

And that’s when the slow bleed begins.

Your Team Is Solving in Parallel, Not Together

Let me ask you something:

When’s the last time your entire GTM org sat down - product, sales, marketing, leadership - and had a real, honest conversation about what your biggest growth constraint is?

Not your OKRs. Not your revenue target.

The thing that, if left unaddressed, will make everything else fall apart.

Now ask yourself: could your CMO, VP Sales, Head of Product, and CEO all answer that question the same way without prepping ahead of time?

If not? You’re misaligned.

Full stop.

Everyone thinks they’re aligned.

I’ve been there. I’ve led those meetings. I’ve looked my CEO in the eye and said, “We’re on the same page.”

And then turned around and realized we were optimizing for entirely different problems.

I was sending leads. Sales was begging for qualified deals. Product was building features no one asked for. Leadership was chasing a North Star nobody could define.

We weren’t solving a GTM problem.

We were solving five different problems - in parallel - hoping it would add up to growth.

You’re Optimizing the Wrong Numbers

So what do most teams do next?

They run to the dashboard.

They obsess over the pipeline. CAC. Win rate. Web traffic. MQLs. Closed-won rates.

You know them. You live and die by them. You probably have a 60-slide board deck full of them.

You’ve probably spent weeks going back and forth on the numbers and how to make them better.

The problem is:

Lagging indicators don’t tell you what to fix.

They tell you where the blood is pooling.

And every time I see a company go into panic mode over numbers like these, I ask the same question:

What problem are you actually solving?

A while ago, a Series B cyber startup came to me. They were in full freak-out mode. Win rates had tanked. The CEO was livid. Everyone had a different solution:

• Sales wanted new objection-handling scripts.

• Marketing wanted to redo the website.

• The CEO wanted a brand refresh.

I asked them one thing:

“Before you change anything, let me talk to your buyers.”

I spoke with 12 lost deals. And what I heard?

It wasn’t about objection handling. Or the pitch. Or the website.

It was about trust.

The language in their materials was so full of jargon and technical assumptions, their buyers felt stupid. Inadequate. Confused.

These were senior IT leaders.

But no one had ever told them that. Because no one had ever asked.

They thought their problem was close rates.

The real problem was clarity. Emotional connection. Trust.

The Symptoms Are Loud. The Cause Is Silent.

Let’s talk about what I call the “triggers.”

The moments that should set off alarms in your brain.

Trigger 1: What used to work stops working

Your campaigns stall. Your paid spend tanks. You say things like, “That’s weird, this used to perform well.”
So you tweak. You spend more. You relaunch.
But it still flops.
Because the market has moved on - and your buyer evolved, but you didn’t.

Trigger 2: You’re making decisions using phrases like “we think”

“We think CISOs care about consolidation.”
“We assume they understand what XDR means.”
If your GTM motion is built on assumptions, it’s built on sand.

Trigger 3: You’re expanding into a new market

New ICP? New product? New vertical? You better be talking to buyers.
Because that old messaging playbook won’t work here.
New segment = new psychology.

Trigger 4: Cross-functional chaos

Sales is side-eyeing marketing.
Product is building in a vacuum.
Everyone’s pointing fingers, but no one agrees on what the real problem is.
That’s not a people problem. That’s a truth problem.

Trigger 5: You’re avoiding your buyers

You don’t schedule interviews.
You ghost your own research.
You’re scared to hear the truth.
And trust me - I get it. I was that marketer too.
But you can’t solve what you refuse to look at.

Here’s What To Do Instead

Let me walk you through the exact 4-step process I use with every client to go from “we’re not growing” to “holy shit, we finally get it.”

1. Diagnose

Sit down with your GTM leaders. Ask the hard question:

“If we had to double revenue in 6 months or die, what’s standing in our way?”

Document every answer. No debate. Just listen.

That chaos? That’s your hypothesis set. That’s your signal.

2. Validate

Now go outside the building.

Talk to 5–10 buyers. Wins. Losses. Ghosts.
Ask real questions:

• “What gave you pause?”

• “Where did we lose you?”

• “What made this feel like a nice-to-have?”

Don’t pitch. Don’t defend. Just listen.

This is where the magic happens.

You’ll either confirm your assumptions or obliterate them.

3. Align

Bring the buyer’s voice into the room.

• Play the audio clips.

• Share the quotes.

• Map the gaps between what you thought and what they said.

Yes, it’s uncomfortable. It’ll challenge strategies, campaigns, roadmaps.

But it’ll also liberate your team.

Because now you have a shared source of truth.

4. Act

Now - and only now - you can build.

Rewrite the messaging.
Rebuild the pitch.
Reframe the roadmap.

All grounded in actual buyer urgency, not opinions.

Suddenly, marketing stops spinning.

Sales starts closing.

Product starts solving.

And leadership? They stop telling you what to do - and start trusting you.

The Truth Is the Growth Lever You’ve Been Ignoring

If you take away nothing else from this article, take this:

You are likely solving the wrong problem.

And every quarter you keep solving the wrong problem is a quarter your competitor pulls ahead.

So if you feel like:

• Your campaigns are stalling

• Your team is burned out

• Your deals are slow or dying

• Your brand isn’t landing

• Your strategy meetings feel like deja vu

Stop.

Pick up the phone.

Call 5 buyers.

Ask what you’ve been too afraid to hear.

Because the real work isn’t in your funnel.

The real work is in your foundation.

And you can’t build revenue on a story your buyer doesn’t believe.

So be brave enough to ask the hard questions.

Be vulnerable enough to let the answers change you.

Be bold enough to solve the problem that actually matters.

And if you want help doing that?

You know where to find me.

Until next time,
Dani