How Hannon Hill grew revenue 79% by learning to sell enterprise.

Hannon Hill had an enterprise-grade product and an SMB sales motion. Average deal size sat at $40K and only 4% of deals cleared $100K, so every dollar of growth required more logos, more onboarding, and more strain on a customer success team that was already reactive.

Client: Hannon Hill — Higher Education Software, Bootstrapped. Engagement: 17 months.

Results

• Revenue growth: 79% YoY
• Average deal size: +220%
• Deals $100K+: 4% to 57%
• Pipeline coverage: 1.25 to 3.68

The Gap: Enterprise product, SMB motion

Hannon Hill was not losing because the product could not carry enterprise deals. It was losing because nothing in the sales motion was built to sell one. Pricing, qualification, and reporting all assumed a small deal, so that is what the team produced.

• Deal size capped itself — Average deal size was $40K and only 4% of deals cleared $100K. Pricing and qualification both defaulted to the smaller deal, so larger opportunities got sized down before they ever reached a proposal.
• No qualification standard — Every deal was qualified by feel. Without shared criteria there was no way to tell a real opportunity from a hopeful one, and the forecast was a guess dressed up as a number.
• Reporting could not see the funnel — The team was working off standard out-of-the-box reports that did not match how deals actually moved. Pipeline reviews became conversations about opinions instead of stages.
• Pipeline stages had no exit criteria — Deals moved forward because someone felt good about a call. Nothing had to be true for a deal to advance, so stage-level conversion data was meaningless.
• One seller carrying new business — A single AE owned all new business with no hunting background and no sales mentorship in the building. Every enterprise deal ran through one person's calendar and one person's judgment.

The Fix: Four installs: qualification, pricing, reporting, documentation

We rebuilt the motion in sequence rather than in parallel: qualification first, because pricing and reporting are both meaningless on top of deals nobody agreed were real.

• Rebuild the pipeline with exit criteria: Standardized every stage with explicit entry and exit criteria, so a deal advances on evidence instead of sentiment. Why: Deals were moving forward on feel, which made stage conversion data useless and pipeline reviews unfalsifiable.
• Install SPICED as the qualification standard: Put one qualification framework in front of every deal and held reviews against it. Why: With no shared definition of qualified, the forecast could not be trusted and small deals were indistinguishable from enterprise ones early enough to sell differently.
• Reprice for enterprise and align commission to it: Rebuilt the pricing strategy for larger deals and moved commission so the seller was paid to chase them. Why: Pricing assumed a $40K deal. Until the number on the page and the number on the comp plan both pointed upmarket, the motion would snap back.
• Replace standard reports with real dashboards: Built custom reporting and added confidence scoring to the forecast. Why: Standard reports did not match how deals moved, so leadership had no way to see the funnel or defend a forecast to itself.
• Document the motion so it survives handoff: Delivered playbooks, battlecards, and SOPs covering the rebuilt process end to end. Why: With new business concentrated in one seller, the process had to live in documentation rather than in that person's head.

Cost of inaction

Every quarter spent selling $40K deals was a quarter of adding logos instead of adding revenue. That math compounds in the wrong direction: more customers at the same revenue means more onboarding, more support, and more pressure on a customer success function that was already reactive. Growth would have made retention worse before it made the number better. And with the entire base in higher education, the small-deal motion left no margin to absorb a bad enrollment cycle.

90-day outcome

Revenue grew 79% year over year. Average deal size climbed 220%, and deals over $100K went from 4% of the book to 57% of it, with deal velocity holding flat despite the added complexity. Pipeline coverage stabilized at 3.5x the quarterly run rate. The team now runs its own data-driven pipeline reviews against documented stage criteria, and the playbooks, battlecards, and SOPs are theirs to operate. We closed out with a 90-day priority framework naming the three risks that could undo it: RevOps ownership, customer success structure, and new business concentrated in a single seller.