Tag: content marketing

A different metric

FabrizioLeave a comment

When you measure leads, all you are going to get is leads.

And there might be some very good reasons why you measure leads. You might know that a given amount of leads will translate into a given amount of deals. You might know that one lead has a monetary value attached to it. You might know that people feel motivated in trying to get more leads. You might have evidence and proof of these and many other things. But when you measure leads, all you are going to get is leads.

So, what happens when the team that sits in the other room, the team that gets leads as an input and needs to transform that into deals, cannot complete that transformation reliably and consistently?

Well, of course they are going to say that the leads are not good, that they are not quality leads.

And that’s exactly how the relationship between marketing, sales development, sales, and sometimes customer success, works in most B2B companies. There’s always somebody, further down the funnel, that complains because the quality of what they get is not good enough.

Because when you measure leads, all you are going to get is leads.

Quality needs a different metric.

Communication tools

FabrizioLeave a comment

It’s all great that companies have so many ways to communicate, share information, ask and answer questions nowadays. But as it’s often the case, new tools don’t fix old issues.

Like assuming that communication happened just because you have communicated something.

Like expecting an immediate answer to trivial or unimportant questions to placate your anxiety.

Like spreading information left and right with the hope that those who need it will get it and absorb it, while others will forget about it.

Communication is a skill and it needs old-fashioned training, not new tools.

Get started yesterday

FabrizioLeave a comment

Brand is not for your startup only if by brand you mean one of the following things.

A new logo.

A different color palette.

A TV ad.

A celebrity endorsement.

A brand typography.

A cutting-edge website.

If brand instead is your story, the unique point of view you are offering, thought leadership content, reputation, then you should get started with that yesterday.

Some decisions

FabrizioLeave a comment

There are some decisions you make as a company that go beyond the mere consequences of the decision.

Whether or not you will send a notification to a customer when a contract is up for auto-renewal.

Whether or not you will require a credit card to do a free trial.

Whether or not you are going to hire that talented woman who has just informed you they are pregnant.

Whether or not you will let go that nice colleague who is under-performing.

Whether or not only managers are allowed to talk at company updates.

Whether or not you are going to raise the salaries or invest in the tenth project management tool.

We are used to think of culture, values, and principles as something very abstract, something intangible, something that reads nicely on the career page of the website. But the truth is that some decisions determine what a company stands for much more strongly and definitively than any two lines crafted by the most skilled copywriter.