Growth Rate

What is Growth Rate?

Growth rate is a firmographic signal that measures the pace at which a company is expanding, typically expressed as the percentage change in key business metrics such as revenue, headcount, funding, or market presence over a specific time period. In B2B SaaS sales and marketing, growth rate serves as a critical targeting and prioritization criterion, as rapidly growing companies often have urgent needs for new solutions, larger budgets, and willingness to adopt innovative tools to support their expansion.

Growth rate signals come in multiple forms, with employee headcount growth being the most commonly tracked metric due to its accuracy and availability through platforms like LinkedIn. Revenue growth, while highly valuable, is often harder to obtain for private companies. Other growth indicators include new office locations, funding announcements, job posting volume, technology adoption patterns, and market expansion signals. Together, these signals help go-to-market teams identify companies in high-growth phases that align with their ideal customer profile.

For B2B SaaS companies, targeting high-growth accounts offers significant advantages. Growing companies typically face operational scaling challenges that technology can solve, have recently raised capital or increased budgets, are building out teams that need new tools, and are more willing to evaluate new vendors since their tech stacks are not yet entrenched. According to Gartner's research on sales prospecting, companies experiencing rapid growth (20%+ headcount increase annually) are 3-4 times more likely to purchase new software solutions compared to stable or declining organizations, making growth rate one of the most powerful targeting signals in modern go-to-market strategies.

Key Takeaways

• Predictive Buying Signal: Companies with 20%+ annual growth rates are 3-4x more likely to purchase new software compared to stable companies, making growth rate a top targeting criterion

• Multi-Dimensional Metric: Growth can be measured through headcount expansion, funding events, new locations, technology adoption, and job posting velocity—combining signals improves accuracy

• Time-Sensitive Opportunity: Growth rate identifies companies in expansion phases with immediate needs, active budgets, and openness to new solutions before their tech stacks become entrenched

• Segmentation Variable: Growth rate enables market segmentation between high-growth startups, steady-growth companies, and stable enterprises, each requiring different messaging and sales approaches

• Leading Indicator: Changes in growth trajectory often precede major purchases as companies scale operations, hire teams, and invest in infrastructure to support expansion

How It Works

Growth rate calculation varies depending on the metric being measured and the data source. The most common approach tracks employee headcount growth over rolling time periods (30, 60, 90, or 180 days), calculated as: Growth Rate = (Current Headcount - Previous Headcount) / Previous Headcount × 100

For example, a company that grew from 50 employees to 65 employees over six months shows a 30% growth rate ((65-50)/50 = 30%). This calculation can be applied to various timeframes to detect different growth patterns: 30-day growth reveals acceleration or deceleration, 90-day growth shows sustained trends, and 12-month growth provides long-term trajectory.

Revenue growth rate follows a similar formula using financial metrics: Revenue Growth Rate = (Current Period Revenue - Prior Period Revenue) / Prior Period Revenue × 100. However, revenue data is typically only available for public companies or through estimated data providers. For private companies, GTM teams rely on proxy signals like headcount growth, funding announcements, new office openings, and increased hiring velocity as indicators of underlying business expansion.

Modern data platforms aggregate growth signals from multiple sources to create comprehensive growth profiles. LinkedIn provides headcount data through company page followers and employee profile updates. Crunchbase tracks funding rounds and investment amounts. Job boards reveal hiring velocity through posting frequency. Company websites show new office locations and geographic expansion. When combined, these signals create a growth score that identifies companies in expansion phases.

Platforms like Saber provide real-time company signals including growth indicators by aggregating publicly available data and delivering it through APIs or integrations with CRMs and marketing automation platforms. This enables GTM teams to monitor target accounts for growth signals, trigger automated outreach when companies enter high-growth phases, and prioritize accounts based on expansion velocity.

Key Features

• Multiple Measurement Dimensions: Tracks growth across headcount, revenue, funding, locations, hiring velocity, and technology adoption

• Temporal Flexibility: Supports various timeframes (30-day, 90-day, annual) to identify different growth patterns and inflection points

• Comparative Benchmarking: Enables comparison of growth rates across industries, company stages, and competitive sets to identify outliers

• Actionable Timing Signal: Identifies companies in active expansion phases with immediate needs and available budgets for new solutions

• Combinable with Other Firmographics: Works alongside industry, company size, and funding stage to create precise targeting segments

Use Cases

Account-Based Marketing Prioritization

Marketing teams use growth rate to prioritize which accounts receive high-touch ABM campaigns versus automated nurture programs. A technology company might create an "emerging enterprise" segment targeting companies with 100-500 employees showing 30%+ headcount growth over the past year. These accounts receive personalized campaigns highlighting how the solution supports scaling operations, while slower-growth accounts receive standard content marketing. This segmentation ensures expensive ABM resources focus on accounts with the highest propensity to buy.

Sales Territory and Opportunity Scoring

Sales development teams incorporate growth rate into lead scoring and account prioritization frameworks. When an inbound lead comes from a company showing 40% headcount growth and recent Series B funding, the lead receives elevated priority and faster follow-up compared to leads from stable companies. Territory managers also use growth signals to identify expansion opportunities within their book of business, reaching out proactively when existing customers enter high-growth phases with messages about scaling their usage to match their expansion.

Market Segmentation and ICP Refinement

Revenue operations teams analyze closed-won deals to identify growth rate patterns among best customers. If analysis reveals that 70% of deals come from companies with 25%+ annual growth, RevOps can refine the ICP definition to emphasize growth as a qualification criterion. This informs lead scoring models, account list building, and messaging strategies. Marketing creates content specifically for high-growth companies addressing scaling challenges, while sales develops specialized discovery questions about growth plans and expansion needs.

Implementation Example

Here's a comprehensive growth rate targeting and scoring framework for B2B SaaS GTM teams:

Growth Rate Segmentation Model

Growth Signal Scoring Framework

Account Growth Score Calculation
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Signal Component                          Points    Max Points
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Headcount Growth:
  50%+ annual growth                       30        30
  25-50% annual growth                     20
  10-25% annual growth                     10
  0-10% annual growth                      5

Funding Signals:
  Funding round in last 6 months           20        20
  Funding round in last 12 months          10

Hiring Velocity:
  10+ active job postings                  15        15
  5-9 active job postings                  10
  1-4 active job postings                  5

Expansion Indicators:
  New office location (6 months)           10        10
  New geographic market entry              10

Technology Adoption:
  Recently adopted complementary tools      10        10
  Active tech stack expansion signals       5

Leadership Changes:
  New C-level executive (6 months)         5         5
  New VP-level roles created               5

                            Total Score:    /90 points

Growth Score Tiers:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
70-90 points:  Hyper-Growth (Priority 1 - Immediate outreach)
50-69 points:  High-Growth (Priority 2 - Active engagement)
30-49 points:  Moderate-Growth (Priority 3 - Standard nurture)
0-29 points:   Stable/Low-Growth (Priority 4 - Automated only)

Growth Rate Monitoring Workflow

This framework enables GTM teams to identify growth signals systematically, score accounts based on expansion velocity, and trigger appropriate engagement based on growth stage. The multi-dimensional approach combining headcount, funding, hiring, and expansion signals provides a comprehensive view of company growth trajectory.

Related Terms

• Firmographic Data: The broader category of company-level attributes including industry, size, location, and growth metrics used for segmentation

• Ideal Customer Profile: The description of companies that are the best fit for your solution, often incorporating growth rate as a key criterion

• Account Prioritization: The process of ranking target accounts by likelihood to buy, where growth rate serves as a primary scoring factor

• Technographic Data: Technology adoption and usage patterns that often correlate with growth rate as companies expand their tech stacks

• Buying Signals: Observable indicators of purchase intent, with growth rate serving as one of the strongest organizational buying signals

• Account-Based Marketing: Targeted marketing strategy that uses growth rate to identify and prioritize high-value accounts for personalized campaigns

• Lead Scoring: Quantitative ranking system that incorporates company growth rate alongside individual engagement signals

Frequently Asked Questions

What is growth rate in B2B sales?

Quick Answer: Growth rate measures how quickly a company is expanding, typically tracked through headcount, revenue, or funding changes—rapidly growing companies (20%+ annually) are prime targets for B2B sales as they actively need new solutions.

In B2B sales and marketing, growth rate serves as a targeting and prioritization signal that identifies companies in expansion phases. These organizations are scaling operations, building teams, facing infrastructure challenges, and actively seeking solutions to support their growth. GTM teams track growth rate to focus outreach on companies with immediate needs and available budgets rather than stable organizations with entrenched solutions.

How do you calculate company growth rate?

Quick Answer: The most common method is headcount growth: (Current Employees - Previous Employees) / Previous Employees × 100, typically measured over 6-12 month periods using LinkedIn or company website data.

For example, a company growing from 100 to 130 employees over one year has a 30% growth rate ((130-100)/100 = 30%). Revenue growth uses the same formula with financial data, though this is harder to obtain for private companies. Modern GTM teams aggregate multiple growth signals—headcount changes, funding announcements, new locations, hiring velocity, and technology adoption—to create comprehensive growth profiles that indicate expansion velocity.

Why does growth rate matter for B2B targeting?

Quick Answer: Growing companies have urgent scaling needs, recently raised budgets, are building new teams requiring tools, and haven't locked into entrenched tech stacks—making them 3-4x more likely to purchase new software.

Growth rate identifies companies at inflection points where they're actively investing in infrastructure, people, and technology to support expansion. According to research, these companies have larger budgets (often from recent funding), face operational challenges that technology solves, are hiring decision-makers and end-users who need tools, and are open to evaluating new vendors since their processes aren't yet standardized. This combination makes growth rate one of the highest-predictive targeting signals for B2B SaaS sales.

What's a good growth rate for B2B targeting?

For B2B SaaS targeting, companies showing 20%+ annual headcount growth are considered high-priority targets, with 30-50% growth indicating hyper-growth companies facing acute scaling challenges. Growth rates below 10% annually suggest stable, mature companies with established processes and limited openness to new solutions. However, ideal growth rates vary by industry—technology companies often grow faster than traditional industries, so benchmarking against industry averages provides better targeting thresholds.

How do you track growth rate for private companies?

Since private companies don't report revenue publicly, GTM teams track proxy signals: LinkedIn headcount through employee profile updates and company page data, job board postings indicating hiring velocity, Crunchbase funding announcements, company website changes showing new locations or services, and technology adoption patterns from data providers. Platforms like Saber aggregate these public signals into growth scores, enabling teams to monitor thousands of accounts for growth indicators without manual research.

Conclusion

Growth rate represents one of the most powerful firmographic signals for B2B SaaS targeting and prioritization, identifying companies at critical inflection points when they're actively seeking solutions to support expansion. For marketing teams, growth rate enables precise segmentation between high-growth accounts requiring personalized ABM programs and stable companies suitable for standard nurture campaigns. Sales development organizations incorporate growth signals into lead scoring and territory prioritization, ensuring reps focus on accounts with the highest propensity to buy due to active expansion needs and available budgets.

Revenue operations teams should analyze closed-won deals to understand growth rate patterns among best customers, using this insight to refine Ideal Customer Profile definitions and improve targeting precision. When combined with other firmographic and technographic signals, growth rate becomes even more powerful—a Series B SaaS company with 40% headcount growth and recent technology platform adoption represents a dramatically better target than any single signal alone would indicate.

Modern go-to-market strategies increasingly rely on real-time growth signals to trigger timely outreach. Rather than static annual target account lists, leading teams monitor accounts continuously for growth inflection points, engaging immediately when companies enter high-growth phases. Platforms like Saber provide these company signals through API integrations with marketing automation and CRM systems, enabling automated workflows that respond to growth indicators with relevant messaging about scaling challenges, expansion infrastructure, and team growth support. As B2B buying becomes more complex and competitive, growth rate will remain a critical signal for identifying companies with urgent needs, active budgets, and willingness to engage with new solutions—making it essential for any sophisticated Account-Based Marketing or revenue operations strategy.

Last Updated: January 18, 2026