Lenny Rachitsky recently shared something that caught my attention: "5 questions to ask when your product stops growing". He set up the problem in a very real way, too, pointing to Jason Cohen (four-time founder, including WP Engine) and his "methodical five-step framework for diagnosing stalled growth". That framing matters because stalled growth is not usually a single bug to fix. It is a system to diagnose.

In Lenny's post, the sequence is the punchline: "logo retention, pricing, NRR, marketing channels, target market". I want to expand on that as a practical blog guide you can use the next time your dashboard flatlines and the team starts debating tactics.

Key idea I took from Lenny's post: do not jump to new acquisition until you have proved the foundation is solid.

The most common mistake: treating stalled growth like a marketing problem

When growth slows, teams often default to top-of-funnel activity: more spend, more content, more outbound, more "growth hacks". But if you are pouring new leads into a leaky bucket, you are amplifying churn and burning runway.

Lenny's conversation with Jason Cohen implies a calmer, more diagnostic posture: work through the sequence, and only move forward when the current layer is healthy. That approach also reduces internal politics because you are arguing from evidence, not opinions.

Question 1: Is logo retention actually healthy?

Before you touch pricing, positioning, or channels, ask a blunt question: are customers staying?

Logo retention is the simplest signal of whether your product is delivering ongoing value. Even if revenue is stable, poor logo retention means you are constantly replacing lost customers. That can mask deeper product value issues.

What to check:

Cohort retention by signup month, not just blended churn.
Churn reasons by segment (SMB vs mid-market vs enterprise).
Time-to-value: how long until a new customer sees the first meaningful outcome.

What to do if it is weak:

Tighten onboarding around the "first win".
Identify one or two core use cases where retention is highest and lean into them.
Fix reliability and performance issues that create silent churn.

Lenny also teased a crucial retention insight: "it’s too expensive" is almost never the real reason customers cancel. In my experience, "too expensive" is frequently a polite proxy for "I did not get enough value" or "I never built the habit".

A cancellation survey tweak worth stealing

Lenny mentioned "a small copy tweak that’ll double response rates on your cancellation surveys". The spirit of that tweak is to reduce friction and defensiveness. Instead of asking for a long explanation, ask a fast, easy question first, then optionally follow up.

For example:

First prompt: "What was the main reason you canceled?" (multiple choice)
Follow-up: "If you have 20 seconds, what should we have done differently?" (optional free text)

That second line works because it signals respect for their time and invites honesty.

Question 2: Is your pricing aligned with value and your best customers?

Once retention is acceptable, pricing becomes the next lever. Pricing cannot fix a bad product, but it can prevent under-monetizing a good one.

Here is a practical way to evaluate pricing without falling into "raise prices" as a reflex:

Compare willingness to pay across your highest-retaining cohorts.
Look for pricing that penalizes success (customers pay more when the product helps them grow, but the price jump feels arbitrary).
Validate packaging: are you gating the right features, or are you forcing customers into upgrades for things they consider table stakes?

If "too expensive" shows up in churn feedback, treat it as a diagnosis prompt, not the diagnosis. Ask: "Too expensive compared to what outcome?" If the outcome is unclear, pricing is not the primary issue - value communication and activation are.

Question 3: What is happening to NRR, and why?

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is where SaaS becomes a compounding machine, or fails to.

NRR answers: do existing customers expand enough to offset downgrades and churn?

Break it down into components:

Gross revenue retention (GRR): how much revenue you keep from the same accounts.
Expansion: upgrades, add-ons, seat growth, usage growth.
Contraction: downgrades, discounting, usage declines.

If NRR is flat or declining, you have a "value ceiling" problem. The product might solve an initial pain, but it does not grow with the customer.

Ways to increase NRR without gimmicks:

Add an expansion path that maps to real maturity stages (starter to pro to team to org).
Build habit and deeper integration so the product becomes infrastructure.
Align customer success to outcomes, not check-ins.

If your product does not expand with customers, new acquisition will always feel like pushing a boulder uphill.

Question 4: Do you have at least one channel that predictably works?

Only after retention, pricing, and NRR are in decent shape should you treat acquisition as the main constraint.

Channel analysis is not "which tactic is trendy". It is: can you reliably turn input into pipeline at an acceptable payback period?

A simple channel audit:

List your current channels (content, SEO, paid search, paid social, partnerships, outbound, integrations, marketplaces, affiliates).
For each channel, estimate CAC, payback period, lead quality, and operational complexity.
Identify the one channel with the best mix of quality and repeatability, even if the volume is small.

If none are repeatable, the issue may be earlier in the sequence. A weak product story, unclear ICP, or low retention will sabotage every channel.

Question 5: Are you targeting the right market, or the one you happened to land in?

This is where Lenny's list ends, and where many teams need to be the bravest.

Jason Cohen's framework ends with target market because changing your market is expensive and disruptive. But it is also where the biggest unlocks live.

Lenny highlighted a dramatic example: "repositioning the same product can increase revenue 8x". That is not magic. It is often the result of:

Moving from a low-willingness-to-pay segment to a high-willingness-to-pay segment.
Finding a niche where your strengths are uniquely valuable.
Packaging the product around a job-to-be-done that has urgent, budgeted demand.

A practical repositioning exercise:

Identify your "love" users: highest retention, highest NPS, lowest support load.
Map what they use you for in plain language.
Rewrite your homepage headline to match that job, not your features.
Run a small test: drive a controlled amount of traffic to the new positioning and compare conversion and activation.

This is where you can keep the same codebase but change the narrative and the buyer, and suddenly the economics make sense.

The uncomfortable question: should you even be optimizing for growth right now?

Lenny also noted "when to reconsider if growth is even the right goal for your business". That is refreshingly honest.

There are real cases where growth is not the constraint or even the objective:

You are in a cash-flow-positive lifestyle business and prefer stability.
You have a narrow but profitable niche and want depth over breadth.
Your team is at capacity and scaling would damage quality and retention.

Sometimes the best move is to optimize for profitability, customer experience, or product quality for a period, then re-enter growth mode when the system is ready.

A simple way to run this framework with your team

If you want to operationalize the five questions, run a 60 to 90 minute working session:

Define "healthy" thresholds for each layer (logo retention, GRR, NRR, CAC payback, conversion rate).
Pull the data live. Avoid opinions.
Decide one primary constraint for the next 4 to 6 weeks.
Write a short plan with owners and measurable targets.

The biggest benefit of Lenny sharing Jason Cohen's sequence is that it gives you permission to slow down and be rigorous. Stalled growth is stressful, but it is also diagnosable.

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Lenny Rachitsky, Deeply researched no-nonsense product, growth, and career advice. View the original LinkedIn post →