I'm Jehan or Jay, if you've known me a while.
After 15 years of customer research and hands-on growth work, I've learned that some of the biggest revenue opportunities exist in the middle of the funnel—after a prospect becomes a lead. My work focuses on helping leads and free trials gain the confidence to move forward and become loyal customers.
I've led product marketing at Ninety, brightwheel, Udacity, 15Five. Trained at LinkedIn, eBay, Amazon, and Carnegie Mellon.
✨ Read my articles on Forbes and Entrepreneur
I've worked with...
First reaction: "We need more leads"
A few years ago, I was talking with the founder of a SaaS company about his growth goals for the year. Like many leaders, he assumed the answer was more leads.
It's a reasonable conclusion. When revenue growth slows, most companies look to the top of the funnel. They invest in more advertising, more content, more events, more outbound prospecting, and more lead generation campaigns. If revenue isn't where you want it to be, the instinct is to create more opportunities.
So we pulled up his funnel and worked backward from his revenue target. We estimated what it would take to reach that goal through lead generation alone. The numbers added up quickly. Depending on the channels he chose, he would need to spend tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands, of additional dollars every month to generate enough new opportunities.
Then we looked at the problem from a different angle.
Instead of asking how to attract more leads, we asked how many more customers he could create from the leads he already had. What would happen if trial-to-paid conversion improved by a few points? What if onboarding helped buyers gain confidence more quickly, or follow-up became a little more consistent?
None of the improvements were dramatic. We were talking about small, actionable wins across the buying journey.
The result surprised him. The same revenue target that looked expensive and difficult through lead generation suddenly appeared much more achievable. Instead of spending heavily to fill the funnel, he could create meaningful growth by improving what happened inside it.
I've had some version of that conversation dozens of times over the years.
Most companies think they have a lead generation problem. More often, they have a lead conversion problem.
After more than fifteen years leading product marketing and growth across both product-led and sales-led SaaS companies, I've found that revenue growth is rarely constrained by a lack of demand. The bigger challenge is what happens after someone raises their hand.
Buyers lose momentum. Free trials stall. Opportunities go quiet. Marketing, sales, product, and customer success each work hard to improve their portion of the journey, yet the gaps between those functions often go unowned. Prospects fall into those gaps every day.
I focus on lead-to-revenue conversion
Today, I serve as VP of Product Marketing at Ninety, where I spend much of my time helping more prospects become customers and helping more customers realize value from the platform.
I've run product marketing at B2B SaaS companies trying to solve some version of the same problem: a top of funnel that looks fine, a middle of funnel that leaks revenue, and a team that can't quite agree on whose job it is to fix it.
Across all of it, the pattern is almost always the same. Most B2B SaaS companies sit 5–15 points below benchmark on trial-to-paid. The gap isn't a messaging problem, an onboarding problem, a lifecycle email problem, a product problem, or a pricing problem. It's all of them at once, told as one disconnected story. Fix the story across all four, and the number moves, usually within a quarter.
A recurring pattern
I've led customer research programs, interviewed hundreds of buyers, prospects, and customers, and worked closely with revenue teams to understand why people move forward and why they sometimes don't.
Those conversations have taught me something that many companies miss. Buyers rarely abandon a purchasing decision for the reasons we assume. They leave because they haven't developed enough confidence to take the next step.
They need confidence that their problem is understood. Confidence that they're exploring a vendor with expertise and that the solution fits their situation. Confidence that the company can deliver the outcome they're hoping for.
When that confidence is missing, progress slows. When it grows, decisions become much easier.
My work centers on finding and removing those confidence gaps. Through customer research, funnel analysis, messaging, onboarding optimization, lifecycle programs, sales enablement, and conversion-focused growth initiatives, I help companies turn more of the demand they already generate into revenue.
Because before spending another dollar to acquire more leads, it is worth asking a different question: Why aren't more of your existing leads becoming customers?
A few things I believe, in case they help you decide whether we'd work well together:
- Own the number, not the deliverable. I'd rather move trial-to-paid by three points than ship a beautiful, overly analyzed messaging framework that sits in Notion.
- Diagnose before prescribing. I always start with measuring and understanding the human reasons behind the gap.
- I don't sweat the week-to-week fluctuations. Instead, I focus on year-over-year growth and seeing longer-term trends.