Many founders think the path to growth is simply acquiring more customers. But here’s the thing – you don’t always need more opportunities or more customers to drive significant revenue growth. Sometimes, the smartest path to scaling is doing more with less.
Let me put this in perspective: to reach £1 million in revenue, you don’t necessarily need 10 customers at £100K each. What if you could achieve the same result with just four customers at £250K? This approach not only accelerates your growth but makes your business significantly more attractive to investors.
Let me show you how to make this happen.
Start with detailed discovery
I can’t emphasise this enough: increasing contract values starts with doing exceptional discovery (to be honest, most things start with excellent discovery).
Let me share a personal example to highlight this point. The biggest contract I’ve ever sold was a multi-million pound ARR opportunity and it started with one meeting with a finance director.
During our initial conversation, the FD was keen to move forward immediately. But by slowing down and doing proper discovery, I uncovered that they’d just been acquired by a larger company with 36 other locations. By taking the time to get an introduction to the group CFO, what could have been a modest deal transformed into a multi-million pound ARR opportunity. This wasn’t luck – it was the direct result of thorough discovery.
Your prospects might have parent companies, additional departments, or unexplored business pain points that could significantly increase the contract value. But you’ll never know unless you ask the right questions.
The importance of multi-threading
When I speak to founders, I mention multi-threading extensively. Bringing multiple stakeholders into the sales process early can unlock tremendous value. When you engage with different stakeholders, you often uncover new use cases that your initial contact hadn’t considered.
Simply, turning a £50K opportunity into a £150K deal becomes much more achievable when you’ve identified two additional use cases across different departments. Suddenly, your solution becomes more impactful for the entire business, justifying the higher contract value. This isn’t about selling harder – it’s about uncovering more ways your product can deliver value.
Think long-term
Here’s something that surprises many founders: while 12-month contracts might be the norm in SaaS, many larger companies are actually more open to three or even five-year agreements than you might think. Why? Because they’re thinking long-term. They don’t want to implement a tool only to face a price increase or go through another procurement process in 12 months.
From their perspective, it makes more sense to do the upfront work and investment now, knowing they’ll be using the solution for the next three years. This approach doesn’t just increase your Annual Contract Value (ACV) – it boosts your total contract value and makes your business significantly more attractive to VCs who love seeing that guaranteed recurring revenue.
Value, not features
One of the biggest mistakes I see founders make is focusing too much on features rather than value. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “click here, this feature does that” – but there’s no value in that approach. It makes your product transactional and immediately puts downward pressure on price.
Instead, focus on ROI and business impact. When you sell based on value, you can justify a bigger price tag.
This isn’t theory – I recently saw this in action when we placed a head of sales in a business. The founder had put a £70K proposal on the table. That same opportunity is now worth £700K – a 10x increase – simply because the new sales leader came in, multi-threaded properly, did thorough discovery, and sold on value rather than features.
Think about growth opportunities
Once you’ve landed a customer, don’t stop there. Think about cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Have you launched new features? Created new product lines? The key is to deliver clear value throughout the initial agreement period, then leverage that success to expand the relationship.
The impact on your business
The impact on your business can be massive. When you’re doing this well, you’re not just increasing revenue – you’re fundamentally changing your company’s growth trajectory and valuation potential.
The way I look at it is this: SaaS businesses are often valued at 10-12x their ARR if they’re growing quickly. So when you transform a £70K deal into a £700K opportunity, you’re not just adding £630K in revenue – you’re potentially adding £6-7 million to your company’s valuation. That’s the power of focusing on contract value over customer quantity.
Plus, you’re significantly reducing your customer acquisition costs because you’re generating more revenue from fewer customers. Think about it – you would need ten different companies, ten buying processes, and ten sales processes to achieve what you could do with one well-executed larger deal.
You’ll be a success if you avoid these pitfalls
To make this work, avoid these critical mistakes:
- Don’t rush through discovery just because a prospect seems eager to buy
- Never rely on selling to just one stakeholder when you could engage multiple decision-makers
- Stop selling features and start selling value
- Don’t assume the initial opportunity is the full opportunity
Remember, the goal isn’t to simply increase pricing – it’s about uncovering and delivering more value to your customers. When you do this right, larger contract values become a natural outcome rather than a forced effort.
The impact of getting this right can’t be overstated
You’ll scale faster, become more attractive to investors, and build a more sustainable business. But perhaps most importantly, you’ll be delivering more value to your customers.
Author: Matthew Codd
I’m Matthew, I have 15 years of commercial leadership experience, helping VC-backed B2B technology companies scale revenue and transition from founder-led sales.
I use my experience to help early-stage start-ups with GTM expertise, sales best practice, and hiring insights.
I co-founded Cosmic Partners in 2022. We are SaaS sales recruitment specialists for VC backed B2B tech companies.
