Tag: growth

Your own thing

FabrizioLeave a comment

It is no longer enough to be able to do your own thing.

Writing a blog post, setting up a campaign, giving an inspirational presentation, writing sequences that sell, hosting an insightful podcast. 99% of us can no longer thrive off of only mastering one of those things.

The two things we need to add to the picture are:

  1. Doing your own thing at scale – e.g., coordinating the writing and distribution of 100 blog post in one year.
  2. Doing your own thing in a way that serves other people that work with you – e.g., coordinating the writing and distribution of a series of blog posts that present the product uniquely and faithfully, while at the same time increases the win rate of prospects in a customer segment.

Art is for the 1%.

For the rest of us, it’s business.

A different metric

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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.

More than a higher salary

FabrizioLeave a comment

If your team complains about something, it’s not because they are spoiled, naive, or junior. If they complain often, that’s even more true.

There’s probably some deeper issues behind their behaviour. They might not feel motivated, or they might have the impression they are not free to make their own decisions, or they might just be disoriented by the continuously moving targets.

It’s your responsibility as a team lead to figure that out, because you can’t really start talking about performance, goals, development, until you clear the air and tackle the complaints.

And “tackle” is not about blindly accepting all request, but rather managing them.

“Here is how we are going to do this”.

“Here is why we can’t do that.”

“Here is who is going to be responsible for the other thing.”

And so on.

Being a manager is more than a higher salary.

What’s keeping your team?

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What’s keeping you from achieving more, being more motivated, completing that task or project?

Each one of us will have their own answer, but in an organisation, the most common answer must be meetings.

Meetings without an agenda and a list of actions to follow up with.

Meetings that are updates.

Meetings that should have been an email or a Slack message.

Meetings to give feedback on a piece of work you have never seen before.

Meetings that are workshops that aim at fixing a problem with participants who have no idea what the problem is, let alone the skill set to fix it.

If you are a manager of people, your first responsibility should be to rid their calendars of meetings.

Polling employees

FabrizioLeave a comment

Making decisions using employee polls is about one of two things.

One – Management and leadership think the decision is not important enough to deserve their time.

Two – Management and leadership don’t want to have that specific responsibility.

One way or the other, it’s a bad idea. Instead, find somebody who is competent and talented, and put them in charge of figuring that particular thing out. Help them collect the opinion of those who have something to contribute, and make it clear that it’s eventually up to them to decide on the course of action. Support the final decision, measure success, and help them improve.

Polls don’t motivate, but this approach might do just that.