Happy Triple Threat Thursday.
Here’s one Signal to notice, one thing to Spark growth and one Shift to consider.
This week’s theme: Complexity compounds faster than revenue.
Most growth plans start with addition.
New services. New segments. New hires. New tools.
Very few start with subtraction.
In most companies, every addition adds friction somewhere. Another exception. Another approval. Another pricing edge case. Another handoff.
Revenue can grow while speed quietly declines.
That's how companies accumulate instead of scale.
📡 Signal — What’s Changing
Companies are adding faster than they're cutting
Look at the last 24 months.
How many offers were added? How many customer types expanded? How many internal steps increased?
Now ask something harder.
Has your average sales cycle shortened or lengthened? Has margin variance tightened or widened? Has decision speed improved or slowed?
Every new option increases coordination cost. Every exception adds cognitive load.
Growth doesn't stall because companies stop adding. It stalls because they never remove.
If complexity is rising faster than velocity, you're not scaling. You're accumulating drag.
⚡ Spark — What to Try This Week
The 2% Drag Test
Pick anything added in the last two years. A service. A pricing model. A segment. An approval step.
Now ask:
Does this increase average deal time?
Does this increase margin variance?
Does this require more internal coordination?
Would revenue materially drop if we stopped doing it?
If it adds friction without meaningful lift, it's not growth. It's weight.
Block 30 minutes this week and work through it honestly. Once you have your answers, pick one thing to remove this quarter. Not optimize. Actually remove it. One SKU. One exception path. One low-margin service. One extra approval layer.
When the system has less drag, growth accelerates on its own.
What you don't cut quietly taxes everything else.
🔄 Shift — How to Rethink It
The default belief is that growth requires expansion.
In practice, scale breaks because companies don't subtract fast enough.
Addition feels ambitious. Removal feels risky.
But velocity builds. Accumulation doesn't.
The companies that keep moving are ruthless about what they eliminate. Not because they love simplicity. Because they protect speed.
Scale fails from unchecked accumulation, not lack of ambition.
📚 Worth A Look
🔗 The sales cycle in 2025–2026 is noticeably longer
A recent piece highlights how modern sales cycles have stretched because buying committees include more people and decisions take longer, creating friction and delaying closes, exactly the kind of slowdown we’re seeing in B2B deals.
🔗 Sales cycle stages and why structure matters
This guide explains how well-defined sales processes help reduce delays in complex deals, which reinforces that friction in the mid-stages is often about process, not pipeline.
🔗 Stop leaking revenue: uncovering internal friction that kills deals
Shows how internal misalignment, such as slow proposal follow-ups and mixed messages between teams, chips away at buyer confidence and slows deals, directly tying into what we’re calling drift.
📈 TL;DR
If you're adding faster than you're removing, complexity will outpace revenue.
📈 One Question
What have you added in the last two years that you would not add again today?
Thanks for reading Triple Threat. See you next Thursday with another Signal, Spark, and Shift.
— Alexandria Ohlinger
p.s. If this helped you think sharper or move faster, share it with someone who builds the way you do. And if you want more practical insight between issues, connect with me on LinkedIn.