Breaking Through Growth Plateaus

Podcast Insights with Tom Voaden

In my recent podcast with Tom Voaden, VP of Commercial at BR-DGE, we discussed a critical challenge facing payments and fintech companies today: overcoming growth plateaus in an intensely competitive market.

Many companies instinctively double down on new logo sales as a way to push through stagnation. This makes sense on the surface—winning new customers is essential for credibility, momentum, and growth. However, in my experience, new logo sales alone don’t solve the problem of plateauing growth. In fact, a sole focus on acquisition can mask deeper challenges related to utilisation, activation, and long-term engagement.

The Price-Driven Trap in New Logo Sales

A major contributor to growth plateaus in fintech is the buyer perception of product standardisation, which drives commoditisation. With offerings seen as nearly identical, buyers often focus solely on price, creating a relentless race to the bottom.

But while securing new logos may feel like progress, the reality is that most fintech pricing models are usage-based. Simply closing the deal doesn’t guarantee meaningful revenue; the real opportunity lies in activating customers, driving platform engagement, ensuring feature utilisation, and retaining them over the long term. Focusing solely on acquiring new customers often means leaving untapped value within the existing base.

The Critical Role of Utilisation

Breaking through growth plateaus requires more than acquiring new customers—it demands ensuring they fully engage with and extract value from your platform. Activation, upselling, retention, and feature utilisation are where the real growth happens.

Low utilisation can sometimes point to weak product-market fit (PMF). Low utilisation often raises the question: does your solution truly solve your customers’ problems? Validating and comparing PMF across segments is key to answering this.

For example, is Segment A getting more value out of the product than Segment B? If so, why? This type of analysis can reveal opportunities to focus on segments where your product delivers the greatest impact and adjust your approach for those that are underperforming.

Demonstrating measurable value is critical. Even promising segments may struggle to see the product’s impact if the value is difficult to quantify. For example, in payment orchestration, value often correlates with transaction volume. A customer with low transaction volume but high average transaction values (ATVs) may find it difficult to see meaningful value because the savings or efficiency improvements are small on a per-transaction basis. However, as volume increases, the cumulative impact becomes much more significant and easier to demonstrate.

This underscores the importance of aligning your product with the right segments—not just those that superficially appear to be a fit, but those where the value is tangible and scalable. It also highlights the need to communicate the conditions under which your solution delivers the greatest benefit, helping both you and your customers assess and maximise its impact.

However, in my experience, low utilisation isn’t always about PMF. It can also stem from growing pains, particularly when companies move upmarket from targeting SMEs to mid-market and enterprise customers. As you go upmarket, the challenges associated with driving adoption and utilisation increase dramatically, requiring a shift in strategy and execution.

Adapting to the Enterprise Sales Environment

Moving into the enterprise market introduces a level of complexity that many companies underestimate. Unlike smaller customers, enterprise clients involve multiple decision-makers, more complex workflows, and longer sales cycles.

In an enterprise sale, you’re no longer selling to just one person—you’re engaging with a complex team that often includes finance, IT, operations, and senior leadership. Each of these stakeholders plays a critical role in the decision-making process and needs to clearly understand the value your solution brings to their specific concerns. This engagement must begin during the sales process, ensuring all relevant parties are informed, aligned, and invested.

Without early engagement across stakeholders, adoption becomes an uphill battle, often leading to low utilisation and churn. Buyer fatigue, particularly in industries like payments and fintech, exacerbates this issue. In my experience, stakeholders across large organisations are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of SaaS and technology solutions pitched to them.

It can foster skepticism, reducing stakeholders’ willingness to fully commit to onboarding, implementation, or engagement—even if the product solves their problems. They may push back on training, delay integrations, or fail to explore advanced features—all of which can undermine the perceived value of the solution.

To resolve this, you need to prioritise proactive education and engagement with every stakeholder involved. Start by demonstrating clear and immediate value during onboarding. This could involve showcasing quick wins tailored to each stakeholder’s role—for example, how finance teams will see cost efficiencies, how IT teams benefit from seamless integrations, or how operations can streamline processes.

Additionally, combating buyer fatigue requires simplifying the customer’s journey. Avoid overwhelming them with too much information or complexity during onboarding. Provide tailored resources, such as role-specific guides, focused training sessions, or quick-start modules, to help each team member engage with the solution in a way that feels manageable and relevant.

Proactive and continuous engagement from customer success teams is also essential. Monitoring utilisation metrics can help identify areas where stakeholders are disengaged, allowing you to step in with personalised support. Regular check-ins, progress reviews, and showcasing how the platform evolves to meet their needs can reignite interest and encourage deeper adoption.

Ultimately, companies must treat the post-sale phase with as much strategic focus as the initial sales effort. Education, simplicity, and proactive engagement, are essential to ensuring stakeholders not only adopt your solution but also derive meaningful value, leading to sustained utilisation and stronger retention.