Find your ceiling

What it does

Your ceiling is the MRR where churn takes back everything you add. While your numbers stay where they are, you never pass it, however hard you push. This playbook finds yours in about 45 minutes, from your CRM and your billing tool, and tells you how close you are.

It’s the first thing I run with any founder, because it turns “we need to grow faster” into one number you can move.

What you need

• The last three to six months of deals from your CRM (HubSpot, Attio or whatever you use)
• Your billing tool’s MRR and churn report (Stripe, Chargebee or similar)
• A spreadsheet, or the free template on this page

How it works

1. 1

   Pull your four numbers

   Use monthly averages over the last three to six months. One month on its own is too noisy.

   • O, qualified opportunities a month. Buyers with the problem, the budget and the authority, who agreed to talk. Not every meeting.
   • w, your win rate. Of the qualified opportunities that reached a decision, the share you won.
   • d, new MRR per deal. The average annual value of your new deals, divided by 12.
   • c, monthly churn, net of expansion. MRR lost to cancellations and downgrades, minus MRR added by upgrades, as a share of the month’s starting MRR.

   Then write down M, your MRR today. If your exports are messy, let an AI assistant do the counting, and check its working:

   Prompt for Claude or ChatGPT

   I'm attaching two exports: my CRM's deals from the last 6 months, and my billing tool's MRR report.
   
   Work out each of these, and show your working:
   1. O: qualified opportunities created per month. Count a deal as qualified only if it reached [YOUR QUALIFIED STAGE] or later. Give the monthly average.
   2. w: of the qualified deals that reached a decision (won or lost), the share won.
   3. d: the average annual value of the deals won, divided by 12.
   4. c: monthly churn, net of expansion: MRR lost to cancellations and downgrades, minus MRR added by upgrades, as a share of each month's starting MRR. Give the monthly average.
   5. M: MRR at the end of the last full month.
   
   Then work out: what I add each month (O x w x d), what leaks (c x M), my ceiling (O x w x d / c), and how close I am (M / ceiling).
   
   If a number can't be worked out from the files, say which one and why. Don't guess.

2. 2

   Work out what you add, and what leaks

   O × w × d is the new MRR you add in a typical month. c × M is what churn takes back. The first stays flat while you grow. The second grows with you, because it’s a percentage of a bigger number.

3. 3

   Find your ceiling

   Your ceiling is the MRR where the leak eats everything you add: O × w × d ÷ c. Put your numbers in a sheet like this one:

   Google Sheets: paste into A1

   Qualified opportunities a month (O)	12
   Win rate (w)	25%
   New MRR per deal (d)	1667
   Monthly churn, net of expansion (c)	2%
   MRR today (M)	60000
   Added each month	=B1*B2*B3
   Leaks each month	=B4*B5
   Net new MRR a month	=B6-B7
   Ceiling	=B6/B4
   How close you are	=B5/B9

   If expansion outgrows churn, c is negative and there’s no ceiling. Then your job is scaling what works, not finding a letter to fix.

4. 4

   See how close you are

   Divide M by your ceiling. That share is also how much of what you add the leak takes back. Halfway to your ceiling, you keep half of what you add. At 90%, you keep a tenth. That’s why growth slows down when nothing seems to have changed.

5. 5

   Pick the number to move first

   The letters multiply, so lifting O, w or d by a tenth lifts your ceiling by a tenth. Cutting churn by a tenth lifts it a little more, about 11%. So the question isn’t which letter matters most. It’s which one you can move cheapest and fastest.

   • O moves with better aim, signals and reach. See find the revenue already in your CRM for deals you already have, and buying signals for new ones.
   • w moves with a written sales process and faster follow-up. Start with your sales process.
   • d moves with price and who you aim at. See price from expected value.
   • c moves with who you sell to. Segments that churn early usually show up in your won and lost deals.
6. 6

   Write it down, then re-run it

   Put one line at the top of your weekly numbers: “At today’s pace we stall at $X MRR, and we’re Y% of the way there.” Re-run it every quarter, or whenever a letter moves.

What good looks like

You can say it in one breath: “At today’s pace we stall at $250K MRR, we’re about a quarter of the way there, and we’re moving win rate first.” And every growth idea that crosses your desk gets one question: which letter does it move?

Mistakes to skip

• Counting every meeting as a qualified opportunity. O looks big, w looks small, and you fix the wrong letter.
• Mixing yearly and monthly numbers. d is a deal’s annual value divided by 12, and c is churn a month, not a year.
• Using gross churn when upgrades are a big part of your revenue. Net them off, or your ceiling looks lower than it is.
• Running it once. The ceiling moves every time a letter does, so re-run it every quarter.