Create a business growth plan for [BUSINESS AND OFFER]. We serve [TARGET CUSTOMER], and our current performance is [CURRENT BASELINES]. Our goal over [TIMEFRAME] is [GROWTH GOAL]. The resources and constraints are [RESOURCES AND CONSTRAINTS], and the relevant market, competitor, or customer evidence is [MARKET EVIDENCE]. Treat growth as a set of choices across acquisition, activation, retention, pricing, expansion, partnerships, and product distribution. Do not assume that more traffic is the answer. Do not invent market size, competitor prices, customer research, conversion rates, testimonials, or revenue projections. Produce: 1. A growth diagnosis that maps the customer journey from awareness to repeat purchase or expansion. Identify the most likely bottleneck, the evidence for it, and what remains unknown.
2. Three to five growth bets, each with target segment, customer problem, offer or message, channel, funnel step affected, required asset or capability, expected mechanism, cost range if supportable, and principal risk. 3. A prioritization table using impact, confidence, effort, time to learning, and strategic fit. Explain scores and keep weak-evidence bets visible rather than overstating them. 4. A 90-day plan organized into two-week cycles. For each experiment, give a hypothesis, audience, treatment, comparison or baseline, primary metric, guardrail metric, sample or exposure target where feasible, owner role, and decision rule. 5. A unit-economics section showing the formulas for conversion, customer acquisition cost, gross margin, payback, retention, and lifetime value. Use my numbers only; otherwise mark fields “data needed.” 6. A recommended operating cadence: weekly experiment review, monthly channel and cohort review, and the decisions each meeting should make. Before answering, check that the growth goal can be traced to funnel and economic inputs, and flag any recommendation that depends on missing evidence, untested demand, or capacity we do not have. Ask up to three clarifying questions only if a required input is missing.
Fill in
| Placeholder | What to enter | Example |
|---|---|---|
| [BUSINESS AND OFFER] | Describe the business, its main offer, price model, and current sales motion. | A $149/month scheduling and invoicing SaaS for independent home-cleaning businesses; self-serve trial with optional onboarding call |
| [TARGET CUSTOMER] | Describe the highest-priority customer segment, buying situation, and decision maker. | Owners of 3–15 person residential cleaning companies in the United States who still manage jobs through text messages and spreadsheets |
| [CURRENT BASELINES] | Provide current funnel, revenue, retention, sales-cycle, channel, and margin data you have. | 1,200 monthly site visitors, 7.5% trial start rate, 18% trial-to-paid rate, $520 CAC from paid search, 4.2% monthly logo churn, $149 average monthly revenue |
| [TIMEFRAME] | Enter the planning window for the growth goal. | 90 days |
| [GROWTH GOAL] | State one measurable goal with its starting point and desired outcome. | Increase new paid accounts from 18 to 32 per month without raising blended CAC above $600 |
| [RESOURCES AND CONSTRAINTS] | List available people, budget, product capacity, sales capacity, legal limits, and deadlines. | One growth marketer, one part-time designer, $12,000 monthly paid-media budget, two engineers available for one small onboarding improvement |
| [MARKET EVIDENCE] | Provide customer interviews, win-loss notes, competitor observations, research, and known market changes. | Eight customer interviews say dispatch changes and late payments are the biggest pain; lost deals often cite a competitor’s phone onboarding; no current referral program |
How to use
- Use cohorts and funnel stages in the baselines field so the plan can locate a real bottleneck.
- Keep the plan’s hypotheses tied to one target segment instead of mixing every potential buyer in the same test.
- Confirm that every experiment has an owner, a decision date, and a guardrail before allocating spend or engineering time.
- Follow up with: “Turn the top two experiments into briefs with audience lists, asset requirements, tracking events, and launch criteria.”
Variations
Retention plan
Use this when growth is limited by churn, repeat purchase, or weak activation.
Create a 90-day retention plan for [BUSINESS] serving [CUSTOMER SEGMENT]. Current retention data is [RETENTION DATA], customer feedback is [CUSTOMER EVIDENCE], and available resources are [RESOURCES]. Diagnose whether churn is concentrated by cohort, plan, acquisition source, product behavior, or customer type. Propose three retention bets with a behavior hypothesis, intervention, owner, metric, guardrail, and measurement window. Include a cohort-analysis checklist and a customer-contact plan that does not fabricate reasons for churn. Check that each intervention targets a documented or clearly labeled unknown cause.
Pricing growth
Use this when assessing packaging, price changes, or monetization expansion.
Assess pricing and packaging opportunities for [OFFER] sold to [TARGET CUSTOMER]. Current plans, pricing, costs, and conversion data are [CURRENT PRICING DATA]. Customer value evidence and objections are [CUSTOMER EVIDENCE], while constraints are [CONSTRAINTS]. Propose three pricing or packaging options, explaining target segment, value metric, migration impact, expected upside mechanism, risks, and validation method. Include a transparent revenue model using supplied numbers only. Do not invent willingness-to-pay data. Check that no option creates a promise the product cannot fulfill.
New-market entry
Use this before pursuing a new customer segment, geography, or vertical.
Evaluate entry into [NEW MARKET] for [BUSINESS AND OFFER]. Our current core market is [CURRENT MARKET], evidence about the new market is [EVIDENCE], and entry constraints are [CONSTRAINTS]. Produce a market-entry thesis, customer and buyer differences, required product or operational changes, channel options, partner possibilities, risks, and a low-cost validation sequence. Give clear criteria for proceed, pause, or reject. Do not state market size or demand as fact without a cited source. Check that the validation test can be run within the stated constraints.
Tips
- Start with the limiting stage in the journey; spending on acquisition while activation or retention is failing usually worsens unit economics.
- Separate channel performance by customer segment and cohort, because a low overall conversion rate can hide one profitable segment and one costly one.
- Use guardrails alongside a primary growth metric, such as refund rate, sales-cycle length, support load, gross margin, or retention.
- End experiments on a decision rule, not a calendar date alone; decide in advance what evidence warrants expansion, revision, or stopping.
FAQ
Can AI create a business growth strategy from limited data?
Yes, if it labels assumptions and turns gaps into validation work. It should not present guessed demand or conversion as a forecast.
What metrics should a growth plan include?
Use the metrics that connect acquisition through retention and economics: conversion by stage, CAC, gross margin, payback, cohort retention, and expansion where relevant.
Should growth plans focus on more customers or existing customers?
The bottleneck decides. If activation, retention, or expansion is weak, improving those areas may produce better growth than adding top-of-funnel volume.