Scaling your business is more chaotic than ever. The good news is that there is a repeatable formula for efficient, predictable growth.
According to Peter Ikladious, Co-Founder of Unlocking Growth and a pioneer in enterprise-scale product-led growth, that formula exists. On a recent episode of The Go-to-Market Podcast with host Amy Osmond Cook, Co-Founder and CMO of Fullcast, he revealed his blueprint for turning chaos into a predictable system.
This formula starts with a framework called customer journey optimization. This approach treats the entire customer journey as a game of Snakes and Ladders.
The mission for RevOps is simple: remove the “snakes,” which are friction points that cause drop-off, and build more “ladders,” which are accelerators that speed up progress toward becoming a high-value customer.
Shifting From Departmental Silos To A Unified Growth Engine
A unified RevOps foundation is the prerequisite for efficient growth, eliminating the operational chaos caused by siloed teams and conflicting data. Before you can optimize the customer journey, you must first build a solid, unified foundation. The biggest obstacle to efficient growth is not a lack of tools or budget; it’s the friction caused by misaligned teams, conflicting data, and departmental silos.
Why “Growth At All Costs” Fails
The old playbook of siloed departments pursuing independent goals guarantees inefficiency. When Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success operate in isolation, they create a disjointed and frustrating experience for the customer.
Peter witnessed this firsthand at a large FinTech company where meetings would derail before they even began. “They couldn’t even agree on what an MQL was,” he recalled. “I had 300… and you had 274. Which number do we agree on?”
This operational chaos is the root cause of inefficient growth. Arguing over numbers is a symptom of a deeper problem: a lack of a shared system and a unified view of the customer. Instead of collaborating, teams compete, and the customer journey becomes riddled with friction.
The solution requires breaking down silos and adopting a collaborative, customer-centric model. When orchestrated correctly, this unified approach becomes a secret weapon for growth, driving operational efficiency and revenue.
Establishing Your Single Source Of Truth
Many leaders believe their data and technology are the primary bottlenecks, but Peter argues this is a misconception. “The technology is a solved problem,” he stated. “Anyone who says, ‘Oh, we’ve got data problems,’ that’s a solved problem that has been for over a decade.” Modern, off-the-shelf tools can bridge systems, automate processes, and stitch data together.
The real challenge is changing the organizational mindset to agree on a single source of truth. Establishing one unified number that all teams trust is the bedrock for all optimization, automation, and forecasting.
It eliminates arguments over whose spreadsheet is correct and aligns everyone toward a common goal. Companies like Degreed have successfully unified their tech stack, consolidating tools into a single platform to create this essential source of truth. See how Degreed orchestrates its RevOps engine.
Orchestrating The Plays For Efficient Growth
Revenue Operations is the central architect that designs and orchestrates the entire go-to-market engine. It is not just a support function that manages the tech stack. RevOps ensures seamless execution and collaboration across all revenue-generating teams.
Peter describes RevOps as the game master for the Snakes and Ladders board. “RevOps [is] this orchestration function to say, okay, we need a ladder at step four, at step seven, at step 12.” As organizations evolve from sales-centric cultures, they must rely more on revenue operations to build the systems that enable predictable, efficient growth.
Mastering The “Snakes And Ladders” Of Customer Growth
Visualizing the customer journey as a game of Snakes and Ladders provides a clear playbook for removing friction and accelerating growth. With a unified foundation in place, you can begin applying Peter’s core framework: visualizing your customer journey as a game of Snakes and Ladders. This analogy demystifies the process of scaling and provides a clear playbook for optimization.
Mapping The Board: How To Visualize Your Customer Journey As A Game
Customer journey optimization systematically identifies and addresses points of friction while creating accelerators that propel customers forward.
- Snakes are the friction points, conversion barriers, and drop-offs that cause prospects to fall back or abandon the journey altogether. They represent inefficiency and lost revenue.
- Ladders are the optimizations, automations, and targeted interventions that help customers bypass the snakes. They are the strategic plays that accelerate progress toward conversion and retention.
By mapping every step of the journey, you can align your GTM org on an end-to-end framework that clarifies where the problems lie and what it will take to fix them.
Finding The “Snakes”: Where Your Customers Are Dropping Off
According to Peter, “snakes” tend to cluster in three primary areas of the customer journey:
- Top of Funnel: This is where the biggest snakes live. Mismatched audience targeting, confusing messaging, poor website conversion rates, and ineffective SEO or paid media campaigns all cause massive drop-off before a prospect even engages.
- Initial Value & Onboarding: The next major hurdle is guiding a user to their “aha!” moment. A confusing or lengthy onboarding process is a giant snake. Peter gave the example of a workforce management tool that provides no value until a user connects their employee base and payroll system. You must design the journey to demonstrate value quickly, even before full activation.
- Sales & Conversion: Ineffective SDR scripts, misaligned pricing, or a sales process that ignores the value a customer has already demonstrated can kill a deal. This stage requires successful go-to-market (GTM) planning to ensure the human touchpoints align perfectly with the customer’s needs and progress.
Building The “Ladders”: How Automation And A Cohesive GTM Plan Accelerate Growth
“Ladders” are the solutions to the snakes. They are the strategic GTM policies and automations that RevOps designs and implements to create a smoother, faster path for the customer. This is how you move from random acts of marketing and sales to a system of rule-based, automated operations.
Examples of ladders include:
- Automated lead routing that sends a high-value prospect from a Fortune 100 company straight to a senior account executive.
- Targeted email sequences that guide users through complex onboarding steps.
- Data-driven playbooks that equip AEs with the right information at the right time.
The goal is to automate GTM operations for RevOps efficiency and implement clear RevOps execution policies that turn your GTM design into a reality.
Executing And Forecasting With Your Optimized Journey
An optimized journey map allows you to make data-driven decisions on GTM motions and forecast revenue with greater accuracy. This framework isn’t just a theoretical exercise. It provides the blueprint for making critical strategic decisions, choosing the right growth motions, and forecasting revenue with far greater accuracy.
When To Use Product-Led Vs. Sales-Led “Ladders”
The choice between a product-led growth (PLG) and sales-led growth (SLG) model is about selecting the right ladder for the right customer and product. Peter contrasted two examples: an AgTech hardware company whose farmer clientele wants to speak to a person (a clear SLG motion) and a fitness device company that thrives on a self-serve e-commerce model (a classic PLG motion).
Crucially, these models are not mutually exclusive. “Even though you have a self-serve model, you need a sales team,” Peter noted, pointing out that PLG-dominant companies like Asana have 30-40% of their staff in sales. PLG and SLG are simply different types of ladders used at different stages or for different segments. The key is to optimize your GTM strategy for an evolving market based on customer needs.
Using Micro-Funnels To Predict Your Future Revenue
With a unified data foundation and a clearly mapped journey, you can shift from reactive analysis to predictive forecasting. Instead of relying on lagging indicators like closed-won revenue, you can focus on leading indicators: the conversion rates between each stage of the journey.
“Every facet of the journey becomes a funnel… and everything becomes a percentage,” Peter explained. This allows you to model the downstream impact of small improvements. For example, you can accurately forecast how lifting a stage 2 conversion rate from 12% to 14% will affect your quarterly revenue.
This data-driven approach is supported by the latest industry data. The 2025 State of GTM Benchmarks Report shows that a disciplined focus on high-fit accounts is key to predictable growth. This level of modeling replaces disconnected spreadsheets with a single, adaptive system for planning and execution.
How This Applies From Startup To Enterprise
This framework is not just for large enterprises. A five-person startup can and should begin mapping its customer journey. The key is to start small.
“You don’t try and solve everything at once,” Peter advised. Identify the single biggest “snake” in your journey and build one “ladder” to fix it.
This iterative approach enables continuous improvement and optimization. Large organizations have used this mindset to slash planning time and enable rapid in-year adjustments, just as you can see how Udemy slashed GTM planning time with Fullcast. By moving away from a rigid annual plan to a model of continuous GTM planning, any company can build a scalable, repeatable, and efficient engine for growth.
Final Thoughts
The era of “growth at all costs” is over, but this signals a shift toward a smarter formula, not an end to scaling. Reframing your customer journey as a game of Snakes and Ladders gives you a clear GTM blueprint to trade operational chaos for predictability. Orchestrated by a strategic RevOps function, this approach empowers you to pinpoint the exact friction points holding you back and build the automated accelerators that propel customers forward.
This is a practical, iterative process, not just a theory. Whether you are a startup or an enterprise, the path to efficient growth begins with a single, focused action. What is the biggest snake in your customer journey today? Find it, build your first ladder, and start transforming your growth from a game of chance into a repeatable, scalable formula.
