The 8 root causes of stagnant growth

My co-founder Nopadon has mentored hundreds of teams who have hit plateaus – and he’s spotted a handful of root causes behind myriad symptoms.

He fed transcripts of these sessions into Claude, and found 8 root-cause blockers – different ones depending on your stage and business model. Scroll to the section that's relevant for you👇

1. Early-stage B2B

1. Vague Target Customer: You have an idea of who’d buy your product, but can't narrow it down to a particular job title, type, stage of company, or use case that makes certain prospects desperate for it.

   
   

2. Stakeholders: You've identified the primary “champion” in the org, but haven’t mapped out the stakeholders who can veto the purchase, or how to overcome their objections.

   
   

3. Generic playbooks: Rushing to implement off-the-shelf B2B tactics, like cold outbound or a webinar funnel, without adapting to their audience’s hot buttons or buyer behaviors.
   

2. Post-PMF B2B

1. Language/Market Fit: As your team grows, they lose track of who’s buying the product and why, or how to get stakeholder buy-in. For example, what exact words would the champion use to justify this purchase to the CFO?

   
   

   Your founder or top salesperson might know intuitively, and in the early stages, that’s enough. But to grow, you need to codify this information so it can be used to generate leads at scale and onboard new salespeople.

   
   

2. Non-financial blockers: Failing to recognise or address the non-financial barriers that make the product hard to buy or adopt. E.g., it may require integration resources, stakeholder sign-off, rollout plans and staff retraining, data migration, infosec and compliance approvals…
   

3. B2C (any stage)

1. Oversimplified approach to conversion: Removing friction (e.g. form fields) isn’t the same as discovering and addressing the real conversion blockers, which often stem from confusion about the product or use cases, specific buyer doubts or worries, or a lack of urgency.

   
   

2. Conflating activation and retention: If someone tries your product once and never returns, it means they never hit the “aha moment” to appreciate your product's value. That’s a serious problem, but it’s not churn. You don't fix it with win-back tactics, you need better onboarding.

   
   

3. Merging customer outcomes: You're selling one product, but different customers are buying it for two or three different reasons. Each outcome requires its own messaging and targeting, and sometimes a different channel. You may discover that some use cases convert or retain better than others, which affects the product roadmap.
   

The deeper pattern

As I drafted this post, I noticed these 8 problems stem from a single root cause – a gap in our knowledge. These gaps are hard to spot because our brains paper over them with assumptions, giving us a false sense of certainty. That’s why Nopadon’s diagnostic conversations work – he asks questions that reveal your blind spots.

If you’ve hit a plateau and you’re not sure why, book a 15-minute call with Nopadon. He’ll ask a few questions to find the root cause. If it makes sense to work together, our next cohort starts May 5th. If not, I’m sure it will still be a good use of your time.

I hope this helps!