You've got a feel for the answer already. A model won't overrule that. It'll show you what has to be true for it to work.
Can I afford a second sales rep right now?
Should the next $250,000 go to sales or to marketing?
If I drop the low tier, what happens to cash?
You can usually answer the affordable version on your own. The harder question sits underneath it. Given everything else that money could do, is this the right move right now?
That's the work. I model the decision against your numbers and your constraints, then come back with what I'd do and why.
A decision like this doesn't come undone cleanly. If the hire is wrong you're carrying it for the next four quarters, and the money is gone well before you know either way.
And there's nobody to argue it through with. Your accountant closes the books. Your team wants the answer to be yes. So it sits there. You keep circling it, and another month goes by.
That isn't a gap in how you run the company. Most companies your size have nobody whose actual job is to answer this before the money moves.
Ask for finance help and you'll usually get a model. Models are useful, and that's where most of this work stops. A model tells you what happens under a set of assumptions. It doesn't tell you whether those were the right assumptions, or what to do about the answer.
Your decision goes through six questions, in order.
A model is how you work through the middle of that list. On its own it won't tell you whether you framed the right question at the start, or what should make you change your mind later.
Say you have the cash for another account executive. The obvious question is whether you can afford one. Usually you can, and that's where the conversation tends to stop.
The question I'd model is whether you should. That means tracing the economics from qualified pipeline through to cash, with your actual ramp time and win rates in it rather than round numbers.
What often comes back is that you can comfortably afford the hire, but your existing reps aren't at capacity yet. A third rep feeding off a pipeline that can't keep two busy is just cost with a ramp attached.
So the answer isn't yes or no. It's build pipeline first, then hire at the point where capacity becomes the thing actually holding you back. You go from "we can afford this" to "we should do this when a specific condition is met."
That's the difference between can we and should we.
Not a spreadsheet and a login. A recommendation you can act on, with the reasoning attached so you can argue with it.
Illustrative example, not a client engagement
One decision, modeled properly. That's the whole thing, and it's deliberately small.
The engagement
You bring the decision you're facing now. I model it end to end and come back with what I'd do and why, plus what would change my mind. You know the cost going in, and when it's done it's done. There's nothing to renew and nothing to cancel.
The fee depends on the decision and how much modeling it needs, and we cover that on the call. There's no rate card, because a single hiring question and a full operating plan aren't the same job.
I'm Brian Shaw. 10+ years in FP&A, built inside a large retail telecom business, where the job was telling operators what a decision would do to the numbers before they made it. Telecom runs on subscriptions, so tiered plans and monthly churn are familiar ground. Same mechanics as SaaS.
More about my backgroundMaybe it's a hire. Maybe it's how hard to push on growth this year. Maybe it's $500,000 and five credible ways to spend it. Tell me what you're weighing and I'll help you reach the decision that works best for you.
Discuss your decision