When I run a 90-day growth sprint, my north star is simple: get measurable impact fast. That doesn't mean chasing short-lived spikes — it means prioritizing experiments and activities that move revenue, conversion or retention this quarter, not vanity metrics that look good in a dashboard but don't change outcomes. Over the years I’ve run these sprints with startups and midsize teams across Europe and the UK, and the pattern that works is repeatable: focus, speed, clear ownership, and ruthless prioritization.
What a 90-day growth sprint is (and what it isn't)
A 90-day growth sprint is a concentrated program where cross-functional teams run a small portfolio of experiments and operational changes designed to produce measurable business impact within three months. It's not a long strategic roadmap or an endless A/B testing backlog. It's tactical, time-boxed and outcome-oriented.
Think of it as a short season: set a few specific goals, run a set of prioritized experiments, measure daily/weekly, and iterate fast. At the end of 90 days you either ship the wins into standard operating procedures and systems — or you kill what's not working and learn quickly.
How I pick priorities: quick wins over vanity metrics
The trick is choosing what counts as a "quick win." I filter opportunities through these questions:
- Will this move revenue, activation or retention in 90 days? If no, deprioritize.
- Is the impact measurable with existing data? Avoid experiments that require months of instrumentation.
- Can it be implemented with existing product and marketing resources? If it needs a full rebuild, it’s not a quick win.
- Does it target a real user friction point? Small fixes to real pain often beat flashy feature launches.
Examples of quick-win categories I love:
- Conversion funnel fixes: headline copy, form length, CTA clarity.
- Pricing and packaging experiments: simplified tiers, limited-time offers for high-intent segments.
- Email and nurture optimizations: re-engagement flows, win-back sequences.
- Sales ops improvements: lead routing, playbooks, call cadences.
- Onboarding tweaks: checklist, in-product messaging, reduction of first-success time.
Setting outcomes and KPIs
Start with one primary outcome metric (the KPI that defines success for the sprint) and a small set of supporting metrics. Examples:
- Primary outcome: Increase MRR from new customers by 15% in 90 days.
- Supporting metrics: New trial-to-paid conversion rate, demo-to-close rate, average deal size.
Other outcome-first examples:
- Reduce time-to-first-value by 30% leading to higher retention at 30 days.
- Increase demo booking rate by 25% from paid ad traffic.
Vanity metrics I avoid as primary outcomes: total website sessions, impressions, social followers. They can be supporting metrics but never the sprint's success metric.
90-day sprint structure I use
My default sprint structure looks like this:
- Week 0: Alignment and prioritization session — pick 3 experiments max.
- Weeks 1–6: Rapid experiment execution (2-week cycles) — launch and learn.
- Weeks 7–10: Scale winners — double down on what’s working.
- Weeks 11–12: Operationalize and handover — embed changes in workflows and roll out documentation.
| Phase | Objective | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Align | Set outcome, prioritize experiments, assign owners | 1 week |
| Run | Execute experiments in short cycles with clear hypotheses | 6 weeks |
| Scale | Invest in winners, increase reach/automation | 4 weeks |
| Handover | Document playbooks, update OKRs, close learnings | 1 week |
How I design an experiment (the template I use)
Every experiment gets a one-pager with:
- Hypothesis: If we do X for Y segment, then Z will improve by N% because of reason R.
- Primary metric & baseline: The exact metric and the current value.
- Minimum detectable effect & target: What success looks like after 30/60 days.
- Owner: Who runs it end-to-end.
- Steps & timeline: Implementation checklist and roll-out date.
- Rollback criteria: When to stop or reverse changes.
Example: "Hypothesis: Adding a 15% off first-month coupon in our demo follow-up email will increase demo-to-paid conversion from 12% to 18% in 60 days because price anxiety is the key friction. Owner: Head of Growth. Primary metric: demo-to-paid conversion. Rollback if CTR increases but paid conversions don't within 30 days."
Rituals and cadence
Discipline matters. My sprint cadence includes:
- Weekly 30-minute stand-up: each owner reports a single metric and next action.
- Fortnightly review (45–60 minutes): review experiment results, decide which to scale.
- End-of-sprint show-and-tell: a short session where teams present wins, failures, and playbooks.
I track a single "scoreboard" spreadsheet or a simple dashboard in Looker Studio or Metabase. It shows the primary outcome metric and the active experiments with status: running, scaling, killed, handed over.
Common quick wins I've executed
Here are a few real examples from projects I ran:
- Reduced demo booking friction by replacing a 6-field form with a 2-field form and a Calendly embed — demo bookings increased 28% and demo show rate improved.
- Implemented lead scoring and simple routing rules in HubSpot — sales response time dropped from 36 to 4 hours, win rate on hot leads rose by 18%.
- Launched a two-email win-back series targeted at churn-risk customers — reactivation rate of 9% in 30 days, with an immediate uplift in weekly revenue.
- Created a “first 7 days” in-app checklist that cut time-to-first-value by 40% and improved 30-day retention by 12%.
How to avoid common pitfalls
Be careful of these traps:
- Too many experiments: You want focus. I rarely run more than three parallel tests that require cross-functional work.
- Poor instrumentation: If you can’t measure the effect reliably, don’t run the experiment.
- Analysis paralysis: Set clear stopping rules and commit to short, learn-fast cycles.
- Confusing correlation with causation: Use control groups or clear before/after windows where possible.
How I hand over wins
When an experiment is a success, I don’t leave it as a one-off. The handover checklist includes:
- Documenting the playbook with step-by-step implementation and assets.
- Updating product/backlog tickets to make changes permanent.
- Automating processes (email flows, lead routing) and creating monitoring alerts.
- Setting a 30/60/90-day check-in to ensure the lift persists.
A 90-day sprint is a disciplined way to get traction fast. It forces you to choose impact over activity, prove assumptions quickly, and build repeatable processes that move the business. If you want, I can share a ready-to-use experiment one-pager template or a sprint kickoff checklist you can copy into Notion or Google Docs.
