Winning by Design (WbD) today released an updated version of its Bowtie Model, a Customer Journey Model and Data Model that extends the traditional marketing and sales funnel to better represent the recurring revenue and recurring impact journey of SaaS customers.

Winning by Design and its partner BenchSights have also updated their Bowtie Benchmarking Tool, available to anyone in the industry. Lastly, Winning by Design has released a new Bowtie Executive Experience Workshop to align executives and GTM Teams around optimizing the recurring impact journey of their clients.

Bowtie Model

Winning by Design’s revised Bowtie Model highlights a deeper understanding of selling and the associated costs. It includes representations of essential components in achieving a profitable business model, and it is augmented to map to various Go To Market motions from No Touch to Dedicated Touch.

WbD developed the Bowtie Model to serve as a common language and data model for recurring revenue businesses. In this latest edition of the Bowtie Model, metrics can be mapped against different Go To Market (GTM) motions including:

• No Touch: GTM where customers are accustomed to accessing products on their own via self service.
• Low Touch: GTM that primarily employs technology for marketing, sales and support, with personal engagement reserved for complex scenarios.
• Medium Touch: GTM that involves a sales development representative (SDR) qualifying a prospect before passing them to an account executive (AE).
• High Touch: GTM where account managers (AMs) manage large accounts, often with support from sales engineers or solution architects.
• Dedicated Touch: GTM with one team focused solely on a single large Fortune 500 account, often managed by an executive who reports directly to the CEO.

Whether you have a single product with multiple GTM motions, or multiple products, each with its own GTM motion, it is essential to recognize that each GTM motion presents a unique offering with its own Bowtie and cost model, almost like a distinct product.

“Winning by Design has always stood for 'architected revenue' and 'growth by design,' and we feel 2024 is the moment for that approach. We call it Revenue Architecture, and over the past year we have quietly certified over 2,000 GTM executives to help recurring revenue businesses achieve sustainable growth. CEOs, CROs, CMOs, VPs of Revenue Operations, VPs of GTM Strategy, VPs Sales, VPs Marketing, and VPs Customer Success have taken our 8-hour course with the accompanying certification exam,” said Jacco van der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design.

“In the wake of the 2022 SaaS crash, CEOs, Go To Market Executives, and investors alike have squarely focused their attention on efficiency and sustainable growth. Retention and expansion of existing customers takes center stage, as this revenue is less 'expensive' than revenue secured by landing new customers. 'Growth at all costs' is out and 'sustainable growth' is in. The Bowtie helps GTM teams better describe the customer journey, especially after the initial sale, and provides a common language and data model to optimize this journey for impact and costs,” said Dominique Levin, CEO of Winning by Design.

Bowtie Benchmarking Tool

Winning by Design and BenchSights have also made enhancements to the Bowtie Benchmarking Tool for SaaS companies, originally released in March 2023. With the tool’s dataset now surpassing 300 companies, new features are now available at https://benchsights.com/wbd/:

• New and Improved UI/UX: Bowtie Benchmark users will now see a completely revamped, intuitive user interface to speed access to the app and get their data synchronized with the benchmarks.
• New Filters: Users can now access more filters on the app, enabling finer-grained access to the benchmarks, including expanded ARR and ARR growth filters to find the right comparables.
• Discounting Benchmarks: Coming very soon are benchmarks for the level of discounting that companies are using to spur sales.
• Investor Dashboards: Venture Capital, Growth Equity and Private Equity investors will have access to a customer dashboard, allowing investors to collaborate on Bowtie Benchmarking with portfolio companies.

Bowtie Executive Experience

In addition to its flagship training and consulting offerings, Winning by Design is now providing Executive Leadership Workshops on the Bowtie Model and Revenue Architecture. The Executive Leadership Workshop teaches exec teams how to achieve sustainable growth by architecting revenue across the GTM team. The Workshop experience teaches the foundational framework of the Bowtie Model, including how the components work together in synchrony to create a seamless GTM motion. Through facilitated discussion and interactive exercises, attendees learn how the impact mindset and a continuous improvement framework with sprints can apply to their business.

The workshop structure includes a pre-attendee insights survey, interactive workshops (either an in-person half-day or remotely delivered two 2-hour sessions), and a post-workshop summary of discussion with tailored recommendations for next steps.