Top 7 Business Acceleration Advisors You Need to Follow Now

Growth feels exciting when revenue climbs, but it can stall just as quickly when strategy, operations, and culture fall out of sync. The seven advisors profiled here help leaders keep expansion on track. 

Each one blends hard evidence with field experience, guiding founders , CEOs, and functional heads through the daily choices that raise valuation, boost cash flow, and build teams that can handle bigger markets. Whether you run an early-stage SaaS firm or a mid-market manufacturer, studying their methods will give you practical moves to apply this quarter.

1. Sanjay Bhattacharya – Strategic Growth & Revenue Acceleration Advisor

Sanjay Bhattacharya has spent more than fifteen years turning scattered marketing efforts into revenue engines. Featured by CMO Times, CTOsync, DesignRush, EarnedMedia, HubSpot, and MarketerInterview, he partners with executives to unlock new income streams, speed market entry, and sharpen competitive edge. Past roles range from Fractional CMO for high-growth startups to Head of Marketing & Business Strategy at PRIMOTECH. 

He lines up the positioning, funnel, and content so every team works on the same goal. After his audit, clients close deals faster and keep customers longer because they put money into the right channels. Founders who need a clear, numbers-based plan pick Bhattacharya for his quick feedback and steady tweaks.

2. Verne Harnish – Founder, Scaling Up

Called the “Growth Guy” by many who follow his weekly blog, Verne Harnish has guided thousands of firms through rapid expansion. He founded the Entrepreneurs' Organization, still teaches at MIT's executive program, and wrote Scaling Up, a staple on leadership bookshelves worldwide. Harnish drills four pillars – people, strategy, execution, and cash – into leadership teams, then supplies practical tools like the One-Page Strategic Plan and daily huddle agenda. 

His workshops stress data over guesswork: a handful of key metrics tracked in plain sight so everyone understands what winning looks like. By mixing coach-led sessions with well-timed peer support, Harnish helps companies remove bottlenecks that keep headcount growing while profit lags. Mid-market CEOs credit his frameworks for doubling revenue without losing culture or quality.

3. Jason Lemkin – Founder, SaaStr

Jason Lemkin took two cloud startups to nine-figure exits before founding SaaStr, now the world's largest community for B2B SaaS founders. His advice centers on getting to ten million dollars in annual recurring revenue and beyond: when to raise, how to set sales quotas, and why customer success should report straight to the top. 

Lemkin's public deal break-downs on X and his regular “Braindate” sessions at the annual SaaStr gathering operators give unfiltered benchmarks on churn, payback periods, and quota attainment. He pushes leaders to hire sales managers earlier than they think and to track net revenue retention as the ultimate health gauge. For founders wrestling with go-to-market math, Lemkin offers clear targets and a candid view of what top-quartile performance really means.

4. April Dunford – Positioning Consultant & Author

If buyers don't instantly understand why your product is valuable, growth will drag no matter how hard the sales team works. April Dunford fixes that issue by teaching companies to position with precision. After leading marketing at a string of venture-backed tech firms, she built a consulting practice that has repositioned hundreds of B2B products. 

Her book Obviously Awesome, outlines a step-by-step method to frame competitive alternatives, unique strengths, and value themes so that message-market fit clicks. Dunford's workshops pair founders with frontline sellers to test new talk tracks in live calls, turning theory into deals. Startups that adopt her approach often see higher win rates and shorter onboarding times because prospects grasp the payoff sooner and buy with less friction.

5. Patrick Campbell – Founder, ProfitWell

Pricing mistakes leak cash faster than any other growth problem, yet many teams treat price as a one-off decision. Patrick Campbell built ProfitWell (acquired by Paddle) to fix that oversight. Drawing on data from thousands of subscription companies, he shows leadership teams how willingness-to-pay varies by segment, feature use, and contract length. 

Campbell noticed a big gap. The average SaaS firm spends 99x more on getting customers than on pricing. He tackles that. His guides show value-based pricing, retention moves, and ways to grow accounts. Teams that follow them usually lift ARPU by double digits and still add users. Smart pricing works.

6. Melinda Emerson – Small Business Coach & #SmallBizLady

Most entrepreneurs fight to stay afloat in the early years. Melinda Emerson – known online as #SmallBizLady – focuses on that phase. Her book Fix Your Business offers twelve clear steps on cash, customers, and systems. Emerson combines straight-talk checklists with weekly Twitter chats that reach millions of small-business owners seeking hands-on guidance. 

She stresses steady profit over vanity growth, encouraging owners to track break-even points, build emergency funds, and design repeatable sales processes before chasing wider markets. The result is a healthier foundation that can support acceleration when the time is right. Her coaching has helped retailers, consultants, and local manufacturers move from fragile operations to stable, bankable enterprises.

7. David S. Kidder – CEO, Bionic

Large enterprises often struggle to innovate at venture speed. David Kidder addresses this gap through Bionic, a firm acquired by Accenture Song in 2024 and famous for its Growth OS methodology. Kidder teaches leaders to allocate resources like venture capitalists, running small, fast experiments outside legacy bureaucracy. The system introduces mechanisms such as growth boards, kill criteria, and funding gates that mimic the discipline of startup accelerators. 

His background as a serial entrepreneur and angel investor informs his blunt feedback: if new ideas can't show traction, they lose funding quickly, freeing capital for higher-potential bets. Fortune 500 clients credit Growth OS with launching new lines of business that now account for meaningful revenue, proving that even large firms can reclaim entrepreneurial momentum.

Common Threads Across These Advisors

Here are some common threads:

• Data before emotion. Every advisor here relies on numbers, whether it is Dunford's win-rate tracking or Campbell's price elasticity curves. Clear metrics prevent wishful thinking.
• Systems, not silver bullets. Harnish has his One-Page Plan, Kidder has Growth OS, and Lemkin has SaaStr's benchmarks. Structured routines make progress repeatable.
• Leadership alignment. Bhattacharya's workshops, Emerson's checklists, and Harnish's daily huddles all push the top team to row in the same direction.
• Learning loops. Rapid testing surfaces what works and what does not. The advisors teach faster feedback, not fixed formulas.

How to Put Their Advice to Work

Here are some tips to put this valuable advice to work:

• Pick one pillar to improve. Do you need sharper positioning, smarter pricing, or tighter execution? Choose a single focus area and assign ownership.
• Adopt a published framework. Whether it is Scaling Up's huddle rhythm or ProfitWell's retention formulas, commit to the full cycle for at least one quarter.
• Share metrics openly. Post dashboards so every employee sees the same scorecard. Transparency accelerates course correction.
• Schedule a reflection. Reserve time each month to review what changed, why it changed, and what you will test next.

Conclusion

Business acceleration is not luck – it is disciplined action backed by evidence and guided by people who have walked the path many times. Follow these seven advisors, study their playbooks, and apply one concrete idea each week. In a year, you will look back on sharper focus, steadier cash flow, and a team that knows exactly how winning feels.