Key takeaways: Present a unified goal aligned across GTM teams. Achieve buy-in on your customer acquisition model and responsibilities by team. Create clarity on actions that drive goal achievement.
It was nearly two decades ago, but some experiences stick with you.
I was sitting in my first quarterly business review (QBR) as a new Sales Director, but this was not your normal QBR. Examples were being made of the unprepared in a room with 100 of my peers. I felt like Eminem in the movie 8 Mile, “his palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. There’s vomit on his sweater already, Mom’s spaghetti” (okay, it wasn’t quite that bad). The good news, I had prepared. The bad news, I had prepared to an extreme, graph after graph on pipeline, performance, my team. Overwhelming volumes of data to prove I knew my business.
After a few hours of painful reviews across other parts of the business, it was my turn at the pulpit. I started my spiel ready to refer to one of my 50 graphs or tables to answer any question that was thrown at me and back that answer up with data. 10 minutes in, disaster struck. Our CEO stopped me and said “Paul, don’t read me the news. Tell me your plan for the rest of this year.” In all my preparation to be ready for any question about how we performed and how we were trending, I hadn’t done the simple task of laying out my plan for the future in clear articulate terms. Eminem, mic in hand, but no words came out.
As frustrating and embarrassing as that experience was, I wouldn’t change it. It taught me that I needed to look at the data through a different lens, leveraging it to help predict (not report) and inform decisions when faced with ambiguity and there isn’t always a clear solution. Almost 20 years, two kids, a successful startup, and a side hustle consulting business later, ‘planning’ has become a daily part of my life. In fact, I’ve spent nearly my entire career at this point planning in one respect or another with a heavy emphasis on go-to-market strategy combined with revenue operations.
Why share this story? Because we have all either been there or at some point will be faced with a similar situation. Now, with experience as a guide, the steps below outline how I would have prepared to effectively communicate my plan for the business. I tell this story so that when it’s your turn to step up to the mic, you can “lose yourself” in the plan…and I promise, no more Eminem references.
When we talk about goals in sales and marketing, we almost always reflect them as bookings or revenue. However, our goals are more than a number and mean something greater to the business. For example, a new product launch, entry into a new geography, or expansion into a new market are all reflected as a number but have greater significance to the business. As a sales or marketing leader, you need to be able to articulate not only the number, but also what it means to the business.
I have been a part of sales teams (and have been guilty of this myself) where the mantra was to achieve our goals at any cost. But that’s not reality. Resources are finite which is why metrics like customer acquisition cost matter. Knowing the resources allocated to your goals is directly correlated to how likely they are to be achieved. You need to demonstrate a clear understanding of the importance of the goal beyond the number and the resources you plan to allocate in support of achieving it. Leading us to our last point on goals.
Depending on the complexity of your business, the number of products you bring to market, or the size and number of teams you are responsible for, it may require breaking your goals down across teams, geographies, product specialties, customer segments, and more. Take each goal and break it down by how you plan to go-to-market. Define which teams will own their share of the number, what products/services make up those numbers, and the resources you need across departments (sales, marketing, product, etc.) to achieve your goal for each GTM team. Draw a clear line. How you allocate your goals and the required investments will be the basis of everything from hiring plans to coverage models to prioritizing spend.
I wish I would have had the education, understanding, and tools of today before that first QBR. I had the data, just not enough experience to use it effectively. In most organizations the customer acquisition journey is reflected in how marketing and sales stages are defined. There is a ton of great content out there on how to enhance customer experiences and drive a more efficient buyer’s journey. As it relates to how to communicate your ‘plan’, think about the incremental or marginal gains you could achieve through small changes.
Your customer acquisition model is your roadmap for how you will get to your number. Having a true understanding can help you identify gaps in execution, determine if the pipeline is strong enough to meet your target or if lead quality is impacting conversions, and so much more. If you ask the right questions of your data and look for incremental gains through small changes, you can drive exponential performance improvements and be able to better focus on your model for delivering predictable results.
97% of organizations report marketing and sales are misaligned from strategy to execution (source: LinkedIn Moments of Trust). Combine that with the fact that 83% of marketing leaders indicate their innovation initiatives are not meeting expectations (Source: Gartner) and it’s clear that our plans need consistent buy-in across GTM teams. Use your plan to drive alignment across GTM teams. Without alignment, you risk wasted resources, missed targets, and ultimately, employee and customer churn. How? Pull your GTM teams together--at minimum including key sales, marketing, and product/service offering counterparts--and follow these three steps. Good news, you’ve already laid the groundwork.
We started with our goals, how they are broken down, and their importance beyond the number. Agreement across sales, marketing, and product/service teams on what achieving the number means to the business is paramount. Chasing a number is fine, but real motivation is created when we can put our combined efforts behind something bigger with meaning.
The key to getting teams aligned is a time-phased view of your customer acquisition model allowing planning activity to become tangible. It gives each stakeholder something to plan against. Walking your funnel from bottom (your goal) to top (the interest/leads that need to be generated) by stage clearly defines the quantities required allowing each responsible team to understand “how much” and “by when” so that everyone operates from a common, codified playbook.
The last step in getting to an aligned execution plan is to use your customer acquisition model, with stage-by-stage time-phased lead and opportunity quantities identified, as your guide to define the activities and actions each team will undertake to achieve your goal. Full circle. Your goal translated into your customer acquisition model with a unified plan for achieving it.
Your model tells you how much and by when, and your plan identifies what needs to be done across teams. Marketing operates in unison with sales, identifying campaigns and programs. Product/services have clear insight into how offerings will translate into revenue including what content will be needed by marketing and, for revenue-dependent releases or launches, how release or launch dates impact the timing of achieving our goal. Finally, Sales can execute with confidence knowing the entire organization is 100% aligned on expectations, responsibilities, and the actions required to achieve your goal.
If I had understood and leveraged this process before that first QBR, the outcome would have been very different. I would have been able to tie together my goal, how I acquire customers, and the actions planned across revenue teams. Even better, using this framework allows you to adapt to changing conditions, model alternate scenarios as environments shift, and proactively plan in the context of a variable ever-evolving landscape.
Clarity in my goal. Confidence in my model. Certainty in my plan. Turning that painful learning experience into a mic-drop moment.
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