The Elephant in the BSP Growth Room

Posted on May 5, 2025May 5, 2025

Why Stacking New Value-Based Offers Is the Only Way to Avoid Growth Stall

One of the things we hear all the time from clients (and potential clients) is that their growth has stalled, flattened, and sometimes even declined.

What’s interesting about these BSPs is that they are at all sizes and levels of maturity. See if you find yourself in one of these scenarios:

Initial buildout delayed but traction good. Growth accelerated but is now slowing down.
A new competitor comes to town with deep pockets to crash prices. Churn is slowly increasing. ARPU is going down. New subscriber growth is stalling.
Stable subscriber base. ARPU is flat to slightly down.

While these three scenarios may seem totally different, they have one common theme that is universal to all businesses – the growth dilemma.

The Growth Dilemma Facing BSPs

BSPs don’t plateau because of competition or technology – they plateau because of an invisible elephant in the growth room that is always at work. That elephant is a constant threat to your business and its growth. Even if you don’t want to grow per se, this elephant will slowly cause your decline because, whether you like it or not, you’re either growing or you’re dying.

To understand how this works, you must embrace the Marketing Elephant Curve and learn how to stack new growth curves to maintain and grow your business. In order to do this, you need to leverage systems, build a mini-brand, embrace the Total Subscriber Experience (TSX), and more importantly, not feel bad about doing so.

The Marketing Elephant Curve

Growth isn’t a straight line. It’s not even a smooth curve. Instead, it looks more like a series of “elephant curves” — a growth pattern where momentum builds, peaks, flattens, and must be reignited with a new initiative.

In Jason Cohen’s theory of exponential growth, businesses don’t grow endlessly on a single trajectory. Each “elephant” represents a growth engine — and every engine, no matter how powerful, eventually runs out of steam. The key to long-term success is recognizing when a curve is flattening and proactively stacking the next one.

For BSPs, this means that the initial traction (from network buildouts, community engagement, or first-mover advantage) eventually tapers off. What separates thriving BSPs from those in slow decline is the ability to stack new growth curves—whether through new offers, brand expansion, operational improvements, or experience enhancements.

Take a look at the Marketing Elephant Curve diagram below. It’s not a warning. It’s a map. And it shows you the way forward.

Source: https://longform.asmartbear.com/exponential-growth/

The BSP Growth Stages: Mapping the Elephant Curves

The growth journey for BSPs generally follows a recognizable pattern:

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)-Driven Growth: At launch, you’re getting service to the market. Speed, coverage, and reliability are the priority. Customers sign up because they finally have a better option.
Product Market Fit (PMF)-Driven Growth: You make adjusts based on real subscriber needs: better support, clearer billing, flexible plans. You create product-market fit and expand organically.
System-Driven Growth: Sustained growth demands systems that take the ad-hoc processes folks have in their heads and build repeatable systems. Systems like CRM, billing automation, marketing ops, and efficient customer support. Without strong systems, scaling breaks down.
Mini Brand-Driven Growth: You’re not just another ISP. You’re the local brand people know and trust. Loyalty grows and word-of-mouth drives new subscribers.
New Offer-Driven Growth: This is where many BSPs stumble. You must launch new, differentiated, lifestyle-oriented offers — think home security bundles, work-from-home optimizations, smart home integration — to continue growing and prevent declining.

Each stage is necessary. Each stage is an elephant curve that you need to ride. If you miss the next stage or get the timing wrong, then your growth will plateau. Think about your own journey for a second. Can you start to map the elephant curves? Do you see why it’s important to stack growth curves to maintain your competitive advantage?

A Cautionary Tale: When You Fail to Stack Growth Curves

One of the clearest examples of a company that failed to stack new growth curves is Blockbuster Video. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Blockbuster dominated home entertainment. They had the operational systems, the brand strength, and a loyal customer base. But they missed the signals that their primary elephant curve — physical movie rentals — was peaking. Rather than proactively launching the next growth engine, they doubled down on late fees and physical stores, even as consumer behaviors shifted toward convenience, on-demand content, and subscription models.

By the time Netflix introduced mail-order DVDs and later streaming, Blockbuster’s systems and brand, once assets, became liabilities. They couldn’t pivot quickly enough. Their operational complexity weighed them down and their brand loyalty evaporated almost overnight. In a market where they could have stacked a new curve — leveraging their subscriber base and brand trust into a digital model — they failed to adapt. Blockbuster’s story is a stark reminder that winning one growth curve doesn’t guarantee future survival. You must always be building the next one, even if you don’t think you need to.

The great irony of the Blockbuster story is that they could have bought Netflix for a fraction of what it would later be worth — but they failed to see that the gravy train they were riding was about to derail.

The Elephant in the BSP Growth Room: The Missing New Value-Based Offers

If you recognize how Blockbuster fell, then you already understand the silent danger most BSPs are facing: the missing new value-based offer.

When BSPs plateau, it’s rarely because their product suddenly got worse or because competitors outspent them. It’s because they didn’t stack the next growth curve in time. They continued to ride the momentum of their initial success — speed, price, reliability — without creating the next reason for subscribers to choose them and remain loyal.

The modern subscriber isn’t just buying “fast internet” anymore. They’re buying experiences that include:

The ability to work from home seamlessly
Protecting their families online
Streaming without frustration
Controlling smart devices effortlessly
Feeling connected to their communities

If all you’re selling is speed and price, you’re selling a commodity. And in a commodity market, the cheapest option eventually wins — even if it’s not you. More importantly, commodity goods and services usually get consolidated into a few conglomerates that leverage economies of scale to crush competition.

Without launching new, value-based offers that connect to evolving subscriber needs, BSPs lose their differentiation. ARPU flattens. Churn ticks up. Customer acquisition costs rise. And eventually, the entire system grinds down under its own weight.

The elephant in the BSP growth room is this:

You can’t grow — or even maintain — unless you keep giving your subscribers new reasons to stay and new value to experience.

The way you do that isn’t by throwing more discounts towards a race to the bottom. It’s by building offers that truly matter to the lives your subscribers are living today — and the lives they want to live in the future.

The Missing Link: Systems and Mini-Brand Leverage

Value-based offers don’t sell themselves.

They require two things working in tandem: operational systems that can scale and a mini-brand that subscribers trust.

Why Systems Matter

Without the right systems, even the best new offers collapse under their own weight.

Systems are the engine that delivers a consistent, seamless experience as you grow.

They do the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting:

CRM and marketing automation that deliver the right message to the right subscriber at the right time
Billing and account management platforms that make upgrading frictionless
Support and fulfillment systems that ensure subscribers actually get what they signed up for
Measurement tools like NPS, usage analytics, and support ticket tracking that show where the experience is strong — and where it’s slipping

Good systems create consistency.

Great systems create capacity — the ability to stack growth curves without drowning your teams in complexity.

Why Mini-Brand Matters

Mini-brand isn’t just marketing. It’s trust at scale.

Subscribers don’t stay loyal because of a coupon. They stay loyal because they feel an emotional connection to your brand — especially in regional markets where relationships still matter.

When your mini-brand is strong:

Word-of-mouth becomes your best acquisition channel
ARPU grows because subscribers believe in your value-adds
Churn drops because loyalty isn’t tied to price alone

But word-of-mouth is fragile:

Building it takes years.
Losing it can take one bad billing cycle or a single unaddressed service outage

That’s why measuring and monitoring Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t optional — it’s mission-critical.

NPS tells you whether your subscribers are ready to recommend you — and if they aren’t, it’s an early warning that your next growth curve may already be in jeopardy.

Systems + Mini-Brand = Scalable Value-Based Offers

When systems and mini-brand strength come together, you create a platform for launching and sustaining value-based offers:

New bundles roll out smoothly
Subscribers believe in the new offers — and spread the word
Operational teams stay efficient and focused, not overwhelmed and reactive

What happens if you don’t have them both?

Even the best-crafted offers stall out. Worse, they risk damaging the very loyalty you’re trying to build.In short: offers alone don’t drive growth — execution and trust do.

So what can you do about this and how do you start thinking about stacking elephants?

How Total Subscriber Experience (TSX) Solves the Elephant Problem

If systems create capacity and mini-brand builds trust, then the Total Subscriber Experience (TSX) is what tells you whether you’re truly ready to stack the next growth curve.

TSX is the lens through which you evaluate, diagnose, and improve every part of your subscriber’s journey — not just once, but continuously.

At its core, TSX focuses on four key areas:

Customer Experience: How subscribers feel about your service and support
User Experience: How easy it is to navigate, manage, and upgrade services
Multi-Experience: How consistent and seamless your brand is across every channel
Employee Empowerment: How well your frontline teams are enabled to deliver on your brand promise

Each of these areas isn’t just about making subscribers happy.They’re about building the emotional and operational foundations required to successfully launch, and sustain, new value-based offers.

Why TSX Matters for Stacking Growth Curves

You can’t stack new growth curves if your current subscriber experience is shaky.You can’t introduce premium bundles, lifestyle add-ons, or upsells if your website is confusing, your support team is burned out, or your brand experience feels disjointed.

TSX acts as both a diagnostic tool and a growth engine:

It helps you spot weak points before they derail a new offer
It prioritizes investments where they matter most, not in what’s flashy, but in what’s foundational
It builds loyalty and trust so that new offers are met with excitement, not skepticism

How TSX Directly Fuels Value-Based Offer Success

When you invest in Total Subscriber Experience:

Customer Experience ensures subscribers are happy enough to stay and curious enough to try new services
User Experience removes friction when subscribers want to explore or add value-based bundles
Multi-Experience ensures every touchpoint reinforces the value story you’re telling
Employee Empowerment makes sure your people are not just “selling” new offers, but authentically guiding subscribers to better experiences

TSX isn’t just about making your current subscribers happier. It’s about building the growth runway for every new elephant curve you want to stack in the future.

Stacking Elephant Curves: Practical Steps for BSPs

Understanding the elephant curve is one thing. Actually stacking new elephants — on purpose, with discipline — is another.

Here’s how BSPs can start building the next growth curve before the current one flattens:

1. Honestly Assess Your Current Situation

Before you can plan your next move, you need brutal clarity about where you really are.

Use the Total Subscriber Experience (TSX) lens to evaluate your:

Customer satisfaction (NPS, churn rate)
Operational readiness (systems health, automation levels)
Brand strength (awareness, reputation, word-of-mouth velocity)
Subscriber engagement (upgrade rates, bundle adoption)

If you’re still fixing basic systems or brand issues, launching new offers might do more harm than good. Fix the foundation first.

2. Fortify Your Systems

If you’re confident in your base experience, the next step is strengthening systems for scale:

Invest in CRM and marketing automation that supports personalized offers
Streamline billing and account management for frictionless upgrades
Set up analytics and feedback loops to track offer adoption and subscriber sentiment in real-time

Good systems don’t just support growth — they enable it.

3. Build and Protect Your Mini-Brand

Your mini-brand is your trust bank. Before you ask subscribers to buy more from you, make sure your brand is strong enough to carry that ask:

Monitor NPS and act fast on detractor feedback
Celebrate and amplify subscriber success stories
Make sure every customer touchpoint — marketing, support, billing, tech visits — reinforces your value story

You can’t grow if you can’t be trusted.

4. Launch Differentiated, Lifestyle-Driven Offers

When the foundation is ready, you can start stacking new elephants:

Build offers around subscriber experiences, not just speeds and feeds
Focus on outcomes subscribers care about: security, convenience, entertainment, community
Bundle thoughtfully — don’t just throw services together. Make it easy for subscribers to say “yes” because the value is obvious

The goal: create offers that make your subscribers’ lives better, not just faster.

5. Monitor, Learn, and Stack Again

Stacking elephants isn’t a one-time play. It’s a cycle:

Monitor adoption rates, NPS, ARPU changes, and churn impact
Listen for new subscriber needs emerging in your community
Learn what’s working — and what’s not
Start planning the next curve before the current one flattens

Growth Isn’t Luck. It’s Elephants All the Way Up.

If you want your BSP to thrive, not just survive, you have to get serious about stacking growth curves before the current one flattens.

That means investing in your systems, building your mini-brand, improving your Total Subscriber Experience, and launching value-based offers that connect with how your subscribers live, work, and play.

Most companies only realize they missed their next curve when it’s too late. But you don’t have to be one of them. Even if you see the curve flattening now it’s never too late to build and ride the next elephant. It’s kinda like planting a tree. The best time was ten years ago but the second best time is today.

Want help finding and stacking your next elephant? Let’s talk.