Not all revenue is created equal
I worked with a manufacturer where 70% of revenue came from one client (a large defense company you’ve heard of).
When the client found that out, they pushed for their orders to not take up more than 50% of the manufacturer's capacity. Basically: "Scale-up, get other customers, reduce your dependency on us.”
I've seen the same lesson play out in data rooms & diligence processes (both in fundraises and M&A).
Buyers don't just ask "how much revenue?" They ask "how good is your revenue?"
That’s why I use a Quality of Earnings (QOE) scorecard to help brands drive high-quality, incremental revenue. My starting targets:
- Recurring revenue: >40%
- Top 3 customers: <30% of revenue
- High(est)-margin offering: >20% of revenue
- Inbound/marketing-sourced: >40% of revenue
- (The benchmarks shift by business type, but the direction doesn’t).
The fastest way to improve the business isn't always growing revenue. It's redistributing it.
Levers I pull on the performance marketing side to improve QOE:
- Liquidate inventory: point ad spend at overstocked SKUs and let best-sellers sell themselves organically. Requires good demand planning upfront to do it right.
- Go direct: build your own demand so you own the customer and the margin vs. channel partners. It’s making vs. buying growth.
- Emphasize subscriptions: with its own landing page & offer, not an upsell afterthought.
- Manage ads at the product level: pipe product margin data into the ad platforms so you optimize on real profit, not blended ROAS.
Growing revenue is one thing, but growing the right kind of revenue - that’s the game I like to play.
(Here’s my LinkedIn post).
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I’ll be sharing my 140+ page Revenue Growth Playbook, page by page, for free.
These are the exact same fundamental strategies I’ve used to help scale revenue 10X for a SaaS brand, 10X for an Ecomm brand & 2X for an agency. Drove $100M+ in net-new revenue.
Follow along on LinkedIn or grab the whole thing.
If you want to work with me or hire me, book a call or shoot a DM my way.
Meet Cody Gutierrez, CMO turned Fractional CMO for Hire:
I help $1M-$100M businesses to scale-up profitably. In the corporate world, I earned 9 promotions in 10 years & scaled revenue 10X for a SaaS brand, 10X for an Ecomm brand & 2X for an agency. Drove $100M+ in net-new revenue for the brands I led. Then, I walked away from my executive job (CMO) at a VC-backed startup to build my own portfolio of companies to grow & invest in. Learn about me here.
Contact Information:
Email: CodyGutierrez2255@gmail.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cody-gutierrez/
Book a call: codygutierrez.com
