The B2B SaaS Growth Operating System: A 90-Day GTM Framework (With Templates)
Most GTM advice is either too vague to execute ("build a community!") or designed for companies with 50-person marketing teams and seven-figure budgets. I call this Ikea Marketing: tactics that work for giants but will drain your runway before you see a single paying customer.
If you're a technical founder, you're probably stuck in one of two traps: building features to fix what's actually a distribution problem, or blindly testing tactics you read on some VC's Twitter thread while your runway shrinks.
You don't need a CMO. You need a system.
This is the Growth Operating System I run with Seed to Series A startups. 90 days, three phases, real frameworks you can execute tomorrow.
What is a Growth Operating System?
A Growth Operating System is a structured, 90-day framework for early-stage startups to validate distribution channels, refine positioning, and build repeatable pipeline without a full marketing team. It prioritizes profitability and customer movement over vanity metrics.
Phase 1: Days 1–30. Audit & Narrative
Goal: Stop the bleeding.
Before you touch a single channel, you need to know if your story lands. Most startups skip this, spend €10k on ads, and wonder why nothing converts. According to CB Insights, 14% of startups fail because of poor marketing. But the real number is higher because "no market need" (35%) is often a positioning problem in disguise.
1. The 5-Second Positioning Audit
Open your homepage in an incognito window. Set a timer for 5 seconds. Close it. Write down what you remember.
Now ask three people outside your company to do the same. Not friends, not investors, strangers who match your ICP. If they can't pass this checklist, stop spending money on traffic immediately:
- Who is this for? Can they name the role or company type?
- What is the problem? Not your feature, the pain they feel.
- What is the outcome? "Cut cloud costs by 40%" not "AI-powered optimization."
- Why now? Is there urgency, or can they do this next quarter?
The data behind this: Unbounce analyzed 74 million visits across 64,000 landing pages and found that pages with clear, specific value propositions convert 2-3x higher than those with vague or feature-focused messaging. You're not just losing conversions. You're paying full price for traffic that was never going to buy.
Common failures I see:
- Headlines that describe what you are ("AI-powered analytics platform") instead of what you do for them ("Know which customers will churn 30 days before they leave").
- No specificity on outcomes ("save time" vs. "save 12 hours per week on reporting").
- Buried or missing social proof with case studies and logos below the fold where 50% of visitors never scroll.
2. The ICP Sharpening Exercise
"B2B SaaS companies" is not an ICP. Neither is "marketing teams" or "Series A startups." You need four layers of resolution:
| Layer | Definition | Good Example | Bad Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firmographics | Company size, stage, industry, tech stack, geography | "Series A fintech in Europe using Stripe and Segment" | "Financial services companies" |
| Role | The person with budget AND pain | "The person who gets blamed when churn spikes above 5%" | "VP of Customer Success" |
| Trigger Events | Why would they buy TODAY vs. next quarter? | New funding round, failed audit, competitor breach, missed board targets, new CTO with mandate to fix | "They want to grow" |
| Disqualifiers | Who should you actively reject? | <€1M ARR, bootstrapped with no funding plans, enterprise with 18-month procurement | "Anyone who can pay" |
Why trigger events matter more than demographics: A 2023 analysis by Gong found that deals initiated within 30 days of a trigger event (funding, leadership change, or public initiative) close at 2.3x the rate of cold outreach with no trigger. Your ICP isn't just who could buy. It's who is ready to buy right now.
The trigger event stack for B2B SaaS:
- Funding announcement. Series A/B means they need to show growth.
- Leadership change. New CMO/CRO means new budget, new priorities.
- Hiring surge. 5+ GTM roles open means they're scaling and need tools.
- Competitor mentioned. They evaluated or churned from an alternative.
- Compliance deadline. GDPR, SOC2, industry regulation.
- Public commitment. CEO quoted on initiative that requires your solution.
Build alerts for these. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Crunchbase alerts, Google Alerts on "[competitor] alternative," and job board monitoring.
3. Build the Narrative Stack
You need three versions of your story. They serve different purposes and have different structures.
The Customer Narrative (2 minutes, for sales calls):
Structure: Situation → Problem → Failed alternatives → Your approach → Outcome with proof
This must be concrete. Not "companies struggle with churn" but "Your CS team is spending 15 hours a week manually reviewing accounts for churn risk, and they're still missing 40% of the customers who leave."
The Investor Narrative (3 minutes, for pitches):
Structure: Market size → Why now (timing/tech shift) → Your insight → Traction proof → The ask
Investors don't care about features. They care about market timing and whether you've found signal. The "why now" is where most founders fail. You need a forcing function (regulatory change, tech breakthrough, behavior shift) that explains why this couldn't have been built 5 years ago.
The Content Narrative (ongoing POV):
This is your unique stance on the market. Not thought leadership fluff. An actual position that some people will disagree with.
"Distribution is the new moat" = stance. "Marketing is important for startups" = nothing. "Cold email is dead" = stance (even if wrong). "Startups should focus on growth" = nothing.
Your content narrative should make 20% of readers disagree. If everyone nods along, you're not saying anything.
4. The Kill List
List every marketing activity you're currently doing or considering: SEO, paid ads, LinkedIn, content, events, partnerships, Product Hunt, cold email, communities, podcasts, webinars, Twitter/X.
Score each on two dimensions (1-5 scale):
| Activity | Leverage (Potential pipeline in 6mo) | Drain (Founder time + cost) | Score (L - D) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold email | 4 | 2 | +2 ✓ |
| Podcast guesting | 2 | 4 | -2 ✗ |
| SEO/Content | 4 | 3 | +1 ✓ |
| LinkedIn organic | 3 | 2 | +1 ✓ |
| Paid ads | 3 | 4 | -1 ✗ |
| Conference speaking | 2 | 5 | -3 ✗ |
The rule: Anything that scores 0 or below gets killed. Not paused. Killed. Remove it from your roadmap entirely.
The goal: Enter Phase 2 with 2-3 channels maximum.
Why this matters: Startups that focus on 1-2 acquisition channels before Series A grow 2-3x faster than those spreading across 5+ channels (First Round Capital data). Focus isn't just efficient. It's how you find signal fast enough to survive.
5. Tracking Setup (Non-Negotiable)
Install these before Day 30 ends or you're flying blind.
Attribution (self-reported): Add "How did you hear about us?" to your demo/signup form with specific options plus an open field. Self-reported attribution is more accurate than software attribution for B2B because the buyer journey is nonlinear. Someone might see your LinkedIn post, Google you a week later, and click a retargeting ad. Software would credit the ad, but the LinkedIn post did the work.
Activation cohorts: Weekly table showing what % of signups complete the core value action by Week 2. If you don't know your activation metric, it's probably "completed setup + did the thing once." For Slack it was 2,000 messages. For Dropbox it was 1 file in folder. For Zoom it was hosted 1 meeting. What's yours?
Pipeline source tagging: Every deal in your CRM gets tagged with original source at creation. Not "HubSpot" or "Inbound" but the actual channel: "Cold email - CTO list," "LinkedIn DM - funding trigger," "Content - SEO pricing page." You need to know which specific motion generated the deal.
Download the 90-Day GTM Toolkit
Get the complete set of templates, checklists, and frameworks mentioned in this article.
Phase 2: Days 31–60. The Experimentation Engine
Goal: Get signal or die trying.
You picked 2-3 channels. Now run structured experiments. Not "try some stuff and see what happens."
Each experiment runs exactly 2 weeks. No extensions. If you can't get signal in 2 weeks, either the channel is wrong, the execution is wrong, or the audience is wrong. Either way, you need to change something.
The Experiment Card Template
Copy this. Fill it out before you spend a dollar or an hour.
### EXPERIMENT CARD: [Channel + Audience]
**HYPOTHESIS**
"If we [specific action], then [specific metric] will [specific change],
because [rationale based on what you know about the audience]."
**INPUTS (What we control)**
- Volume: [# of emails, ads, posts, calls]
- Spend: [€ or founder hours]
- Duration: 2 weeks
**OUTPUTS (What we measure)**
- Primary metric: [The number that determines success]
- Secondary metrics: [Supporting data points]
**SAMPLE SIZE**
- Minimum for significance: [Usually 100+ for email, 1000+ for ads]
**KILL CRITERIA**
- If [metric] < [threshold] by Day 14, we kill it.
- No extensions. No "let's give it one more week."Example: LinkedIn Outbound to CTOs
- Hypothesis: If we send personalized connection requests to CTOs at Series A SaaS companies who raised in the last 60 days, 15% will accept and 5% of acceptances will book a demo, because funding announcements create urgency for infrastructure decisions.
- Inputs: 200 connection requests over 2 weeks (20/day), 10 founder hours.
- Outputs: Accept rate, reply rate, demos booked.
- Sample size: 200 minimum.
- Kill criteria: If accept rate <10% OR demos <2, we kill it.
Channel Benchmarks: Are You Failing?
Don't scale until you hit these. If you're below them, fix the creative/message first.
Cold Email:
| Metric | Minimum Benchmark | Good | Excellent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 40% | 50% | 60%+ |
| Reply rate | 3% | 5% | 8%+ |
| Positive reply rate | 1% | 2% | 4%+ |
| Demos from 100 emails | 1 | 2-3 | 5+ |
If open rate is low: subject line problem. If opens are high but replies are low: body copy or offer problem. If replies are high but positive replies are low: targeting or relevance problem.
Cold email deliverability note: In 2024, Google and Yahoo implemented stricter sending requirements. If you're sending from a domain without proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup, or if you're sending more than 50 cold emails/day from a new domain, you're probably hitting spam. Warm your domain for 2-3 weeks before running experiments. Use tools like Lemwarm or Mailreach.
LinkedIn Outbound:
| Metric | Minimum | Good | Excellent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connection accept rate | 20% | 30% | 40%+ |
| Reply rate (to first message) | 10% | 20% | 30%+ |
| Demo conversion (from replies) | 10% | 20% | 30%+ |
LinkedIn algorithm note: Personalization in the connection request matters more than the follow-up. Reference their content, company news, or a mutual connection. "I'd love to connect" converts at <10%. "Saw your post about [X], we're working on something related" converts at 25%+.
Content/SEO:
You won't rank in 2 weeks. That's not what you're testing.
| Metric | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
| Social engagement on distribution | Does the content resonate with humans? If zero engagement when you post it, SEO traffic won't convert either. |
| Time on page (>2 min) | Are people actually reading? |
| Scroll depth (>50%) | Is the content holding attention? |
| Backlinks/shares | Is it reference-worthy? |
SEO reality check: The average time to rank on page 1 for a competitive B2B keyword is 6-12 months (Ahrefs data). If SEO is one of your channels, the Phase 2 test is about content quality and resonance, not rankings. Use organic social distribution as a proxy. If humans don't engage, algorithms won't either.
Paid Ads:
| Metric | Kill Threshold | Continue Threshold |
|---|---|---|
| CTR (search) | <2% | >3% |
| CTR (social/display) | <0.5% | >1% |
| Landing page conversion | <2% | >5% |
| CAC vs. ACV | >50% of ACV | <30% of ACV |
Paid ads warning: Most Seed-stage startups shouldn't run paid ads. The math rarely works until you have (a) a proven conversion rate from organic traffic, (b) enough data to target precisely, and (c) budget to sustain 3+ months of testing. If you have <€5k/month for ads, put it into cold outbound instead.
The Weekly Experiment Log
Every Friday, answer these questions in writing:
- What experiment did we run?
- What were the exact numbers vs. benchmarks?
- Did we hit or miss kill criteria?
- What did we learn about message/audience/channel?
- What's the experiment for next week?
After 4 weeks, you'll have a decision log worth more than any consultant's deck.
Channel-Specific Playbooks
Cold Email (2-Week Sprint):
Week 1:
- Day 1-2: Build list of 100 contacts matching ICP + trigger event.
- Day 3-4: Write 2 versions of cold email (different angles, same offer).
- Day 5-7: Send 50 emails per version, stagger over 3 days.
- Track: Opens, replies, positive replies.
Week 2:
- Day 8: Analyze Week 1 data. Which version performed?
- Day 9-14: Send winning version to 100 new contacts, OR test new angle if both failed.
- Track: Demos booked, reply quality.
LinkedIn Outbound (2-Week Sprint):
Week 1:
- Day 1-2: Build list of 100 prospects with recent trigger events.
- Day 3-7: Send 20 connection requests/day with personalized notes.
- Track: Accept rate by personalization type.
Week 2:
- Day 8-10: First message to all who accepted.
- Day 11-14: Follow-up sequence to non-responders (max 2 follow-ups).
- Track: Reply rate, demo bookings.
Content Sprint (2-Week Sprint):
Week 1:
- Day 1-2: Identify 2 high-intent keywords with commercial intent (include "software," "tool," "platform," or "[competitor] alternative").
- Day 3-5: Write and publish 2 pieces (1 per keyword).
- Day 6-7: Distribute on LinkedIn, relevant communities, email list.
Week 2:
- Day 8-14: Monitor engagement, republish/repurpose top performer.
- Track: Time on page, engagement, leads captured.
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Phase 3: Days 61–90. Scale, Pivot, or Kill
Goal: Operationalize the wins.
You have data. Now make decisions. The biggest mistake at this stage is continuing to "experiment" with channels that already gave you signal. If something works, your job is to systematize it so it runs without you.
The Channel Decision Matrix
For each channel you tested, be honest:
| Signal Strength | Volume Potential | Decision | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| High (Beats benchmarks by 1.5x+) | High (Can 10x current volume) | SCALE | Build SOPs, hire or automate execution |
| High | Low (Channel is capped) | MILK | Keep running, don't invest more resources |
| Low (Below benchmarks) | High | PIVOT | Change messaging, audience, or offer and retest |
| Low | Low | KILL | Move on completely, no looking back |
The "copium" check: If you're saying any of these, you're probably wrong.
- "We just need more time." If 200 cold emails got 1% reply rate, 2000 will get roughly the same.
- "The market isn't ready." The market is ready. Your message isn't.
- "Our product is too complex to explain quickly." Then you'll never scale.
- "Word of mouth will kick in eventually." It won't without a trigger.
Building SOPs for Scale
The moment something works, get it out of your head. A channel doesn't scale until a non-founder can run it.
SOP Template:
## [CHANNEL] STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
### Trigger
What kicks off this workflow?
(e.g., "Monday morning" or "New lead enters CRM" or "Funding announcement detected")
### Steps (Exact sequence, no ambiguity)
1. [First action with specific details]
2. [Second action with specific details]
3. [Continue...]
### Templates
[Every email, message, script - version controlled with dates]
### Tools Required
[List exact tools with login info location]
### Time Allocation
- Setup: X hours/week
- Execution: X hours/week
- Reporting: X hours/week
### Benchmarks & Escalation
- Target: [Specific number]
- Acceptable range: [Min-Max]
- Escalate to founder if: [Specific condition]
### Common Issues & Fixes
- [Issue 1]: [Fix]
- [Issue 2]: [Fix]If you can't write this SOP with enough detail that a smart contractor could run it, you don't understand your own process well enough.
The Hire vs. Automate Framework
| Task Frequency | Task Complexity | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| High (Daily/Weekly) | Low (Repeatable, rule-based) | Automate with tools/AI (Zapier, Clay, AI SDR tools) |
| High | High (Requires judgment, creativity) | Hire or go fractional (this is your first marketing hire) |
| Low (Monthly/Quarterly) | High | Founder does it (strategy, investor narrative) |
| Low | Low | Batch or eliminate (don't waste time on low-impact tasks) |
What to automate now (2024/2025):
- Lead enrichment (Clay, Clearbit).
- Email sequencing (Instantly, Apollo).
- LinkedIn connection requests (Expandi, Dripify) but use carefully and follow platform limits.
- Meeting scheduling (Calendly, SavvyCal).
- CRM data entry (Zapier, Make).
- Basic content repurposing (AI tools for reformatting).
What still requires humans:
- Message testing and creative iteration.
- Strategic decisions on positioning.
- High-value relationship building.
- Content that requires original thought.
- Anything involving nuance, humor, or emotional intelligence.
The "Ready to Hire" Checklist
Do not hire a marketer until all boxes are checked:
- At least one channel works with documented, repeatable results
- You have 3+ months of data showing consistent performance (not one good week)
- The SOP is written and tested with a contractor or VA
- You know the exact KPIs and realistic benchmarks for the role
- You have 6+ months of runway (marketing hires take 3-6 months to ramp)
- You can articulate what success looks like at 30/60/90 days
If you can't check all six, keep running founder-led experiments with contractor support.
First marketing hire decision tree:
- If your winning channel is content/SEO: Hire a content marketer who can write.
- If your winning channel is cold outbound: Hire an SDR or use an agency.
- If your winning channel is paid ads: Go agency or fractional first, too specialized for a generalist.
- If you have multiple working channels: Hire a marketing generalist who can manage contractors.
The Dashboard: 5 Metrics That Actually Matter
Forget your analytics dashboard with 47 charts. These five numbers tell you whether you're surviving and growing. Check them weekly.
1. CAC Payback Period
Formula: CAC ÷ (Monthly Revenue per Customer × Gross Margin)
Example: If CAC = €1,200, MRR = €200, Gross Margin = 80%: €1,200 ÷ (€200 × 0.8) = €1,200 ÷ €160 = 7.5 months
Targets:
- SMB (self-serve): <6 months
- SMB (sales-assisted): <12 months
- Mid-market: <18 months
- Enterprise: <24 months
Why it matters: If payback is longer than your runway, you will die before the math works. A 2023 OpenView report found that top-quartile SaaS companies have CAC payback under 12 months. Bottom quartile is 24+ months. Most of those don't make it to Series B.
2. Activation Rate
Formula: (Users who hit value milestone ÷ Total Signups) × 100
Define "activation" as real value delivered, not account creation:
- Slack: 2,000 messages sent.
- Dropbox: 1 file synced to folder.
- Zoom: Hosted 1 meeting with 2+ participants.
- HubSpot: 1 contact added + 1 email sent.
Targets:
- <25%: Onboarding is broken. Fix before scaling acquisition.
- 25-40%: Acceptable, room for improvement.
- 40-60%: Good.
- 60%+: Excellent (rare).
Why it matters: Tomasz Tunguz analyzed 500+ SaaS companies and found that activation rate is the strongest predictor of long-term retention. A leaky bucket doesn't need more water. It needs fewer holes.
3. Burn Multiplier
Formula: Net Burn ÷ Net New ARR
Example: If you burned €150k and added €60k ARR: €150k ÷ €60k = 2.5x burn multiple
Targets:
- <1x: You're printing money (rare at early stage).
- 1-1.5x: Excellent efficiency.
- 1.5-2x: Good.
- 2-3x: Acceptable for early stage, improve by Series A.
- >3x: Problem. You're burning too much for the growth you're getting.
Why it matters: David Sacks popularized this metric in 2022 when the market shifted. Investors use burn multiple to judge capital efficiency. Companies with >3x burn multiple struggle to raise in any market except the frothiest.
4. Pipeline Velocity
Formula: (# Qualified Opportunities × Average Deal Size × Win Rate) ÷ Sales Cycle Length in Days
Example: 20 opportunities × €10k ACV × 25% win rate ÷ 60 days = €833/day
Track monthly. If velocity is flat while you're "doing more marketing," your efforts aren't translating to revenue. Common causes:
- Top of funnel is growing but lead quality is dropping.
- Sales cycle is lengthening (deal complexity, wrong ICP).
- Win rate is falling (competitive pressure, pricing).
5. Runway Remaining
Formula: Cash in Bank ÷ Monthly Net Burn
Check monthly. Every marketing decision should be filtered through this number.
Rules of thumb:
- <6 months runway: Cut experiments, focus only on proven channels, start fundraising.
- 6-12 months: Run focused experiments, prepare for fundraising.
- 12-18 months: Ideal window for structured experimentation.
- 18+ months: You have room to test bigger bets.
The 90-Day GTM Tracker
Week 1-4 (Audit & Narrative):
- 5-second positioning test completed with 3+ strangers
- ICP defined across all 4 layers with trigger events identified
- Kill list completed, channels reduced to 2-3
- Narrative stack written (customer, investor, content)
- Tracking setup live (attribution, activation, pipeline source)
Week 5-8 (Experimentation Sprint 1):
- Experiment cards completed for each channel
- Week 1 experiments run with data collected
- Week 2 iterations based on data
- Weekly experiment log updated
- Benchmark comparison documented
Week 9-12 (Scale or Kill):
- Channel decision matrix completed
- SOPs written for winning channels
- Hire vs. automate decisions made
- Dashboard set up with 5 key metrics
- 90-day retrospective completed
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About Judie Alvarez
Judie Alvarez is a fractional CMO who builds GTM operating systems for Seed to Series A startups. She's helped companies hit first €1M ARR milestones, build repeatable distribution engines, and avoid the channel-hopping chaos that kills early-stage growth.
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