Lon Baker, Chief Operating Officer, VirtualPBX

VirtualPBX Wins with Premonio

• 30% projected YoY revenue growth 
• 4 consecutive months of surpassed revenue goals – and counting
• Smarter planning with Premonio’s Sankey, Budget Optimization, and KPI tools

VirtualPBX is a private branch exchange provider serving both remote and in-person professional teams across a wide variety of business areas. After partnering with Premonio, they were able to turbo-charge their growth through smarter revenue planning and more targeted optimization.

Challenge: Make a Clear Plan for an Ambitious Goal

The leadership team at VirtualPBX had set an ambitious goal for year-over-year revenue growth from 2021 to 2022. But although they had a steady stream of incoming business on the strength of a powerful product suite and strong service, monthly metrics showed they weren’t growing as fast as their goal demanded. If they were to hit their target for the new year, something would need to change.

The issue had nothing to do with their team’s sales acumen or their product, but instead stemmed from a lack of early visibility into the kind of resources, time, and personnel they would need to hit their goal. During the planning stage, they had relied upon homegrown spreadsheets, but these were insufficient for handling the myriad factors and variables they would need to account for to stay on track. They had also partnered with a software vendor, but had a negative experience both with the product and with that company’s leadership.

Solution: Partner with Premonio

The team decided to leverage Premonio’s Growth Architecting system, combining the “GOALS” tool and consulting services to kick their revenue growth into a higher gear and create a comprehensive implementation blueprint toward their 2022 goal. One of the resources they leveraged was Premonio’s budget optimization tool, which projects what a team’s budget will produce under current conditions and practices, shows the maximum the budget could produce if optimized, and prescribes the specific optimizations necessary to achieve that maximum.

In the budget optimization stage, VirtualPBX discovered they could additionally increase their revenue by revamping their lead generation model – in particular, by reducing their investment in SEM and reallocating those funds to LinkedIn-based lead generation and organic inbound efforts. They used Premonio’s Sankey graphical output to map out, in detail, how much they would need to take out, or put into, each channel, and how that would impact their revenue.

Once the changes were in place, the team used Premonio’s KPI tool to ensure that if any further optimization were necessary, they would know quickly. The tool enabled the team to pull early-funnel leading indicator metrics that would illuminate specific problems, such as an underperforming lead channel or lower-than-expected conversion rates, while it was still early enough in the quarter to fix them and get back on track to hit their number.

Results: Record-Setting Growth

VirtualPBX implemented Premonio’s growth architecting system in June of 2021. In the many months since then, they have not only hit, but surpassed each of their monthly targets. In fact, in every month since June, they have set a company record for monthly revenue, through a combination of net-new business and renewals from happy customers. 

“Premonio’s experience, process, and tools helped us develop a deeper understanding of our business and develop a plan to accelerate our growth,” said Lon Baker, Chief Operating Officer at VirtualPBX. “Premonio’s team was incredibly talented and focused on helping us achieve our accelerated goals. Overall, Premonio is unlike any company I have worked with in the past and we will leverage their offering moving forward.”

So far, the company is tracking to grow more than 30% this year, and are well on their way to 50%. This shows the power of using growth architecting to back up revenue forecasts with clearer visibility, better accounting for variables, and more granular planning. 

About VirtualPBX

VirtualPBX develops powerful communication solutions for SMBs through Voice, Video, and SMS. Enjoy professional features like Auto Attendant, Ring Groups, Zapier Integration, and full-featured Web Phone with every plan. Upgrade to Video Calling, Business SMS, Call Recording, AWS External Storage, and more as needed. VirtualPBX supports office phones and personal devices in all its phone plan features. Award-winning SIP Trunking and networking services are also available from this San Jose-based business. Learn more about VirtualPBX here: https://www.virtualpbx.com

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Today’s blog is still about what can we do professionally, but with a more personal touch, as well. The last 2 or 3 weeks seem to have followed their rhythm, maybe analogous to the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, with much of the country first having started in denial until a week or two ago, which was quickly followed by widespread anxiety. Increasingly, however, it seems many of us are moving on and are accepting this new reality and settling into a “new normal.” As part of that new normal, I have been moved by the numerous spontaneous expressions of caring and concern, as well as a genuine interest in connecting with others that are not as freely expressed usually. One lighthearted example for many of us is that we are now receiving way more emailed and texted jokes than we’ve gotten in a while

Maybe it’s that all of us being in the same boat against this virus reminds us of our shared humanity. To understand whether or not what I started seeing is a broader spread trend, I spent the last few days interviewing friends and acquaintances all over the world, ranging from China to Europe to across the US. I simply asked them what they’re doing to cope with the new reality without any expectations, nor did I try to guide their answers.

What I heard grouped in two buckets:

• People are trying to stay busy and optimistic, partly by exercising and partly by learning from what others are doing
• And they’re starting to reach out helping others, or are planning what they’ll be offering their communities shortly

Staying Healthy and Helping Others

What struck me was the creativity and inventiveness with which people picked things to work on and help with, and how to spend their time at home. Below are more details around the types of things the folks I spoke with said they’re doing or are planning to do, grouped by the above blue, orange and green buckets:

Here are the quoted links in the table above:

1. Google info portal
2. Worldwide Virus Map
3. eHealth newsletter sample
4. COVID Wikipedia page
5. Volunteer Match COVID website
6. Sample help site on Facebook
7. SMB financial help – USA
8. SMB financial help – Germany
9. SF Chronicle article on helping

Making a Difference and Staying Involved

As we’re all spending weeks at home now, the above is a simple list of ideas for how to keep meaningfully busy ourselves – both professionally and personally – but also how we can help others. The outpouring of support and concern for each other that’s increasingly appearing now across the world has touched me deeply to the point where I today launched my own pro bono offer to help SMBs and startups quickly adapt their sales and marketing (you can see it here).

Hopefully, you’ll find these ideas for how to keep going useful or even inspiring, and maybe also (re)discover an unexpected silver lining around this entire epidemic that knows no national, ethnic or racial boundaries:

“Our shared humanity and caring for each other”

The post Coping with COVID-19: Practical Ideas from Around the World appeared first on Premonio.

Of course, being at that knee is associated with a marked increase in the public’s concern for everyone’s safety compared to a week or two ago. However, there continues to be little in the way of practical and fact-based guidance and information for marketing professionals to come up with concrete measures that probably should be undertaken now.

In last week’s blog (click here), I published a compendium of factual information sources. I suggested a) separating accurate reporting of the current public health crisis from media and political attention, and b) 8 practical planning steps for an organization. Many of those planning assumptions rest on the macroeconomic outlook, which in turn depends on an estimate of how much bigger the epidemic will become – or public perceptions of it as that also drives the economy.

How bad will it get?

In that vein of trying to publish rational, fact-based analysis, in the last section of this blog is my prediction of where we stand right now. It paints a milder picture. My review below suggests that the reproduction number (i.e., the number of new people infected by one infected person) in the US has already dropped from a high of 7 or 8 to now almost 2. If this trend continues, it would suggest we’ll be hitting the inflection point of when the epidemic’s growth will begin to decelerate reasonably soon.

One would thus hope for a moderate economic disruption, but don’t forget the economic effects of sensationalizing and fear. A lot of what companies do now depends on their expectations of how bad the economy will get. Depending on that assessment, companies then need to re-forecast Q2 and the rest of the year accordingly. So, the rest of this blog deals with some practical steps marketing and sales leaders can take to accomplish this re-forecasting quickly, as well as with an illustration of how an analyst could assess the epidemic’s likely ultimate size in the US.

A quick, practical approach to re-forecasting 2020 B2B bookings and pipeline

Here is a step-by-step process:

Marketing – Create a top-down booking and pipeline forecast:

1. Take your monthly or quarterly pipeline forecasts for 2020 and make percentage allocations to distribute them into four new, post-COVID-10 buckets:
   1. % of quarterly bookings with no change, i.e., they stay as is
   2. % price reduction needed, i.e., how much that portion of the pipeline is reduced
   3. Reduce closure rates by a %age, either by delaying lead and sales velocities to model later close dates or canceling deals altogether
2. Create high, medium, low estimates of the above, estimated % changes
   1. E.g., segment these four buckets by vertical and grow the forecasts for likely coronavirus gainers (e.g., healthcare, bidets, select tech sectors, etc.) and reduce the ones for losing verticals (e.g., hospitality, some manufacturing, travel, etc.)
3. That results in a new, top-down pipeline and bookings forecast for 2020

Sales – Create a matching, bottom-up forecast for at least the next two quarters:

1. Estimate which deals are at risk of delay, price reduction, and cancellation
2. Create four new columns next to the expected bookings for each deal, i.e., no change, price drop, delay, or cancel
3. Enter the deal amount into one of those columns.
4. And then add up the new totals for each of the four columns to create a unique, bottom-up forecast.

Compare and align bottom-up with top-down forecasts.

1. It is essential to calibrate both approaches against each other because the sales team may have an incentive to forecast low to create a safety cushion. While marketing has an incentive to forecast high to avoid the pressure of having to dramatically ramp up pipeline production to make up for anticipated reductions
2. After calibrating the two approaches against each other, it will be useful to make high, medium and low estimates of the resulting, combined forecasts to model different economic outlook assumptions (see above and bottom)

Plan and model compensatory measures to make up for likely forecast reductions:

1. Identify sales reps and territories that are most likely going to lose or delay sales and focus lead generation on them.
2. Shift marketing spend from events-based lead generation to digital sources (i.e., SEM, social media campaigns, email marketing) and teleselling
3. Ramp up content production, and in particular thought leadership content that is not self-serving in this crisis; people remember who helped them when times were tough

Rerun your forecast/revenue model and implement spend shifts

1. Model in all anticipated changes described above
2. Then layer in the budget shift to/from sales from/to marketing
3. And budget shifts within marketing (e.g., from events to digital)

Handoff to the finance department so they can rerun their company cashflow model and growth projections

As already said, the extent to which you’ll use an approach like the one outlined above to modify your forecast down (or up?) will depend on your assessment of the macroeconomic outlook. This, in turn, should be correlated with the extent of the ultimately resulting epidemic.

However, this raises an interesting dilemma: If you listen to some media coverage and watch stock markets plunge, the world economy may well crater, and we should all prepare for a recession. Which would suggest cutting your forecast to the bone (indeed, one of my pro-bono client’s head of sales just proposed a 90% cut; talk about cya). However, with that comes to the inevitable budget cuts or, worse, layoffs. Once those are executed, it will take months to turn the demand generation machine back on.

Now, what if the epidemic will be milder than it’s hyped up to be (as I’m suggesting in the following section based on China’s precedence and some virus propagation modeling)? If your marketing and sales budgets are cut to the bone, you’d be handing market share to your deeper-pocketed competition if they can hit the ground running faster than you can since they didn’t cut back as deeply.

So, the emotional knee-jerk reaction to the coronavirus of cutting way back risks being a massive over-reaction that would cost you market share. On the other hand, if the economy does indeed falter and you didn’t cut back budgets, you’ll risk making painful losses.

How you square that dilemma all depends on what you think the economic impact will be, and in the sea of contradictory, unclear, and sensationalized information, that’s hard to do. Hence, I’m concluding this post with a description of how I created my estimated outlook of the epidemic’s likely course in the US for the next one or two months as a way to calibrate and ground my thinking in all the noise.

The Estimated Epidemic Spread in the US

Please note that I am not an epidemiologist nor otherwise an expert of pandemics, and I am not a trained medical professional, nor am I trying to render an official prediction here. I am, however, illustrating a reasonably straightforward process a trained analyst could go through to form his/her own opinion, which is needed right now. Your management or board will want your advice on where this is all headed because they need to decide how to adjust the 2020 budgets and growth expectations. This blog aims at helping with the formulation of a well-reasoned response that can be replicated. Vs. Simply reacting from the gut or, worse, from a place of fear.

With that said, my estimation of the pandemic in the US suggests that the inferred reproduction rates underlying the daily infection statistics do not paint a doomsday scenario. I had used the same model with the Chinese infection statistics back in January and February, which predicted a stabilizing of their crisis by the end of March. This is indeed what has been happening there since late February.

Now, applying the same model to the current US data (as of March 15, 2020) suggests that the number of additional patients that a new patient infects has dropped from initially almost 8 to now near 2 (this number is called the “reproduction number” or R₀; for an explanation refer to this Wikipedia link). Once R₀ drops below 1, then more patients exit the infected pool than enter it and the epidemic will begin to die out. Here is the graph of my estimated R₀ for the US for the first 15 days in March:

In China, the similarly estimated R₀ had dropped below two by the end of January when about 8K to 10K patients were infected, and the epidemic peaked out a month later at 81K infected. I.e., an 8X to 10X multiple compared to the number of infected when R₀ had reached 2 for the first time.

Now, assuming that the voluntary quarantining in the US works as well as the government-imposed quarantine worked in China (in either method, the virus runs out of other people to infect), and assuming that similar social contact rates and discipline apply, this would suggest that the US’ total patient count would peak at between 30K and 40K infected (i.e., 8X to 10X over the 3,800 on March 15).

March 27, 2020 Update

Since we published the above estimate, it has become apparent that the number of undiagnosed cases was much more significant than had been published. With an acceleration of the growth of reported infections having additionally come from wider spread testing, not just the underlying spread of the epidemic. You can see the resulting update to the US’ reproduction rate estimate R₀ in the new graphic below.

There is good news and bad news: The good news is that R₀ is falling again in the US (of course, subject to the availability of accurate infection data), and is now again around 1.5. Still, an R₀ of 1.0 or below needs to be reached for the epidemic’s growth to be reversed. The bad news is that two weeks since the last estimate went by without consistently implementing the needed quarantining measures, and between the higher discovery rate due to wider spread testing now and the lack of social distancing (i.e. continued travel, the Miami beach episode, etc.), the virus continued its course mostly unperturbed.

Thus we now have over 100K infected, and assuming by now infection data is accurate and quarantining measures hold consistently (two big ifs, admittedly), and applying the above 8X multiple again would now suggest that the number of infected people in the US should peak out at around 800,000 people.

In these two weeks, the cost of inaction and indecision is these 760K people increase in the size of the ultimately infected population; that’s unfortunately how epidemics work. Second, it has made a damaging economic impact a self-fulfilling prophecy. Dealing with 40K infected and a roughly 4 to 6-week quarantine would have been one problem, coping with 800K+ infected, unprecedented layoffs, and economic contraction is now another. Funny what a difference two weeks make ?

Here is my most current R₀ estimate:

Now, this model’s purpose is to illustrate a simple estimation technique that a marketing forecaster can run to visualize R₀, a critical leading indicator that one should watch if one wants to have a sense of where the epidemic is trending. This model is not an official forecast.

However, if you are interested in a serious simulation of the epidemic, a MUST WATCH for anyone seeking to understand how COVID-19 spreads and what to do to minimize its impact is Grant Sanderson’s “3blue1brown” (deserves a huge Shout-Out). He has produced THE most coherent, yet easy to grasp video of how this epidemic grows and how to contain it. It’s 23 well narrated minutes and can be found here (link).

Important Caveats

1. As mentioned, this is not an official prediction; it is merely my modeling, which only has predicted well once thus far (China). I am not guaranteeing this outcome, and I instead want to illustrate a rational estimation process a business planner could go through.
2. Given the irrationality in the market right now as no one has a good feeling for how big the pandemic will get, the markets’ fears may well make a recession a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can’t model that.
3. And, most importantly, this more optimistic picture should not be taken as a suggestion to not self-quarantine; quite the opposite: The only way to keep R₀ low enough is precisely for everyone to stay home; probably for about the next four weeks if the Chinese experience is any guide (note that four weeks also is roughly the sum of the incubation period plus the probable outer limit of the time one is sick with coronavirus, i.e. it is the outer limit of the time an infected person can pass on the virus).
4. Last, this estimation is only as good as the officially available data. If the hidden number of infections in the US is much higher than what is being reported, the ultimate size of the epidemic would have to be adjusted upward accordingly, but not its principal behavior and timing if the self-quarantining holds.

So, what’s your choice: Hoist more sails, stay your current course, or turn into port?

The post Weathering the COVID-19 storm – How to Quickly Reforecast to not Get Blown Off Course appeared first on Premonio.

And it will mean both challenges as well as opportunities for marketing departments as they will most likely be the ones on the visible frontline of most organizations’ external (and internal) responses to this growing epidemic. Our research suggests that there is little in the way of available guidance out there for marketers, and thus we decided to publish a list of planning steps and information resources grouped around eight key questions you will probably be asked. We homed in on sources of practical information and advice for marketing practitioners so they can stay ahead as this evolves.

1) How bad is it really?

As you’re being asked to craft your organization’s response to COVID-19, it is important to separate the ongoing media event, sadly served up with too much sensationalizing and fake news, from the facts around this epidemic, as well as from personal / employee health risks and estimates of likely business and economic impact. Here are some useful resources grouped in those four categories of information:

• Public health data: This Wikipedia page contains daily information and further links.
• Personal / employee health risks: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers guidance for communications and precautions for employees.
• Economic / business impact: McKinsey & Company is maintaining a regularly updated analysis of the virus’s economic implications and the likely business impact.
• News and media fact-checking: A good source is FactCheck.org; enter “coronavirus” here.

2) How bad will it get?

To put the volume of media coverage in perspective, it’s useful to know a bit about how epidemics like the Coronavirus go viral, so to speak. For that, it helps to understand the mathematical propagation models that are quite good at forecasting growth rates, and that also allows modeling the impact of various containment techniques (e.g., quarantine, isolating infected folks, hygiene, etc.).

The links below lead to some beneficial models that you can peruse to deepen your understanding in 30 mins or less, which will help when you’ll be asked the inevitable question of “how bad will it get?”:

• A really useful, 8-minute video about the rate at which viruses propagate to help you intuitively understand the underlying science and modeling.
• The best, up-to-date expansion map for the US and elsewhere is at this propagation map.
• If you’re planning to travel, this interactive map shows airports with the highest risk of spreading the virus; click on “USA” and look for the high-risk airports.
• Coronaviruses: An overview of their replication and pathogenesis.
• And for you geeks, a model of the coronavirus epidemic in a city using Python.

3) What about us? – Revise your growth forecasts to estimate business impact

Now that you know more about how bad the virus epidemic already is and likely will still get, and you have your hands on the pulse of a few, fact-based sources of information, you should partner with sales to see what changes there might need to be made to your short- and medium-term forecast for Q2 and 2020. Here are some considerations:

• Model delayed sales velocity
  Past economic data from similar crises have shown that demand doesn’t necessarily go away and can rebound later. Now, that’s of course not the case for, say. Service industries (an unsold airline ticket can never be sold again), but for software purchases, for example, this crisis may only spell a delay in sales, not a complete cancellation.
• Not attending events
  Events are getting canceled, or attendees are choosing to stay away. It’s prudent to model the compensatory lead generation activities you should launch to make up for lost events leads. For example, how can you make up the difference using, say, online ads, a stronger social media presence, free promotions, or an increase in email marketing?
• Model supply constraints
  Even if you are not producing hardware and you might not be directly impacted (e.g., your team can work from home without loss of productivity), business models that require people to gather will most likely be impacted, some severely (like the travel and hospitality industries). So, if your vendors might be impacted, you should take that into consideration in your updated forecasts, as well.

4) How should we respond externally?

• We’ve been watching the number of COVID-19 related ads and offers increase. The good ones provide advice, and many additional discounts or offer to accommodate delayed closes in anticipation of their customers wanting to conserve cash during the anticipated economic slowdown.
• However, there is a fine line between well-intentioned advertisements, esp. those with meaningful offers, and “ambulance chasing.” This is a difficult time for many, esp. those who caught the virus and being seen as trying to profit from these problems can backfire. As can overt callousness, which now also seems to be on public display.
• Offer to help: People remember those that helped them when times were hard, and so if it’d be meaningful to your organization or those you support to offer assistance, now is the time to do it. Be that shipping needed goods like masks or sanitizer, volunteering, or donating money to worthwhile initiatives, the recipients of your support will be grateful, and one day may even reciprocate or tell others about your generous support.
• Provide guidance to PR about your internal and external response to COVID-19. For some ideas on how to steer your PR team, this link contains useful suggestions. This also means including your PR Crisis Communications team in any external communications about the company, e.g., about the impact of canceling (or not) of live events.
• You might need to replace team members that have to stay home or, worse, are infected, and so it’s useful to line up replacement resources, e.g., contractors that can pinch-hit, as needed.

5) What are liabilities and legal issues we should be aware of?

• Partner with HR and the executive team on consistent communications regarding employee travel, the need or the ability to work from home, or if any quarantine might be needed. Marketing and sales tend to be the teams in an organization traveling the most, and thus having clear and agreed to answers is essential to manage legal risks and potential exposures.
• Liaise with your employment counsel and HR to review employee protections and employer rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) as it relates to COVID-19 (i.e., actual or suspected diagnosis)
• Also include your privacy counsel, as well, to be sure you are in compliance with national and regional employee privacy laws as far as what you can ask or reveal about the situation within the workforce.
• Conduct a review of key contracts in your department to ensure each parties’ ability to meet obligations/timelines (e.g. support, product & service delivery, etc.). What are related termination rights? Find out if COVID-19 can fall under Force Majeure clauses.
  • Ensure communication with customers to let them plan and mitigate potential liability on their end
  • Touch base with vendors to see if their ability to provide you services or products will be impacted
• Check your corporate liability insurance; many carriers are dropping coverage of COVID-19, and you want to avoid counting on the coverage when none is available.

(A big shoutout to the Adaptive Legal Group for their contribution to this section)

6) What are our HR and IT policies?

• You should ask HR to publish guidance similar to this link if they have not already done so regarding travel, large meetings, working from home guidelines, and the availability of remote working infrastructure.
• Publish and set up a real-time newsfeed, esp. maps of areas with many outbreaks.
• If your teams are working remotely, ask IT to set up VPNs for your team so you can share sensitive information.

7) Who is most at risk?

• Large teams, large office settings: The more people that work in physical proximity either at the office or at an event, the higher the likelihood they can be infected or, if they already are infected, can pass on their infection. A 3-person company runs a lower risk of passing on the virus than a campus where thousands of employees intermingle. So, the larger your company, the more urgent the need to manage the potential risk of spreading the infection.
• Mortality risk goes up for persons over 50, esp. if they have other health issues such as weakened immune systems and can’t accommodate a risk of infection. The mortality risk of people over 80 is 100 times higher than for kids below ten years of age.
• Facts around mortality rates are at this Slate article “COVID-19 Isn’t As Deadly As We Think.”

8) What personal conduct and precautions should we suggest to our teams?

Don’t just think about avoiding your infection, also think about not passing it on (e.g., avoid passing around cash, don’t touch surfaces, don’t shake hands).

And, of course, advise staff to take the much-published precautions: Hygiene, don’t shake hands, maintain a distance, avoid crowds – “What You Can Do Right Now About the Coronavirus.”

And finally…

Some say that COVID-19 is nothing more than another flu and that it is being hyped by the media. We beg to differ (not to say that much coverage doesn’t do much more than adding to the collective anxieties): Any epidemic that can cost thousands of people’s lives should be taken seriously, and even if the eventual spread can be contained soon, the economic damage that will be done will likely be significant.

Most importantly: The more we do now in the way of prevention, the shorter the outbreak will be. Part of what can and should be done in the form of external communications can and should fall on the shoulders of marketing. Hence this outline of concrete steps marketers can initiate.

Hopefully, you will find this helpful.

The post Practical Marketing Responses to 8 Likely Questions about COVID-19 appeared first on Premonio.

Most people think of January as the time of change and the time of new beginnings, but for B2B organizations, the New Year begins much earlier. Why? Because Q3 and Q4 opportunities not only make the numbers for that year but by landing them, companies avoid having to cut cost or headcount, painful changes that would impact growth in the following year.

Many B2B companies are getting into the thick of planning for the next year in Q4 and are also still closing the current year. The dreaded fourth quarter is the time when it all has to come together so companies can deliver the results they promised to the board. This is when most firms try to pull out all stops and execute their way to success for this year and lay the groundwork for continued growth next year.

Here are three initiatives for CEOs to launch and complete in Q3 already to ensure a successful fourth quarter that helps both, this year and next:

Analyze marketing and sales pipeline

Many organizations simply use their sales automation software to track deals, and their marketing automation software to send out email blasts. Best practice, however, is to set aside time now to extract the treasure troves of data hidden in those tools. Use that data to objectively diagnose the sales and marketing processes and get meaningful insights into why opportunity pipelines are growing in some places and not growing fast enough in others.

The third quarter usually already contains the signs of things to come, and now is the time to interpret those signs. For example, the sales pipeline might not be growing fast enough or the close rates not arcing up as business model projections demand. Or it’s important to understand which marketing campaigns and events worked, which sales pitches and sales reps performed better than others, and why. Where are the segments where prospects have a higher likelihood of buying, and why?

Typically, there will be board meetings in September and in January where the above questions about this year’s performance and what’s needed to continue or recover growth next year will be discussed. Pulling together a data-driven strategy of where the company did well and where it needs to do better, and what the root causes were for both require time and keen analyses.

The strategic CEOs start now to diagnose what worked and what didn’t and develop the plans for Q4 and the new year that can be credibly presented at the next board meetings. For that, crawling through both the marketing funnels as well as the sales opportunity pipelines and extracting meaningful insights are key to having a success-prone growth strategy.

Reach out to customers

The fourth quarter often is the time for some last-minute changes in prospects’ or customers’ environments as residual budgets for the fiscal year must be spent. Especially if their current year is leaving certain tasks undone or issues need to be corrected, they are often willing to try a few different things to make their fourth-quarter a success or have their ducks in a row for hitting the ground running on January 2.

Striking those irons while hot can help close last-minute deals or launch new relationships that can be harnessed later. Active CEOs willing to pick up the phone or even travel during these last weeks of the year can help open or land those types of deals. And staying in close touch with both, the sales force but also their own newsfeeds of what’s going on in their marketplaces is crucial to have a sense of the market.

Prospective customers love that kind of attention, and especially if they’re uncertain about the viability or reliability of a new vendor, seeing that type of initiative and interest can often sway the votes in favor of a deal. And, of course, the fourth quarter is also the time of last-minute deals, and having the CEO in the room to approve price concessions or special contractual terms on the spot is a sales rep’s dream.

Roll out needed process or organizational changes

When CEOs take the time to do both, deeply analyze the data underlying their marketing and sales pipelines, as well as go into the field to meet with prospects and customers, they will get a very detailed view of what’s working and what not in their sales and marketing organizations. Nothing beats collecting your own data and impressions and hearing from the market firsthand how your company and your team stack up.

Sometimes this leads to painful realizations. From a top-down perspective, there is the need to make sure sales and marketing cost structures are matched to the incoming revenues, and if those are soft, the inevitable cuts need to occur. Unfortunately, most organizations in that situation decide to cut marketing first, and sales later under that theory that if I’m on a deserted island, I’ll cut out the food first, then water, and last the oxygen.

The problem with that approach is that it simply borrows from the future, and when the lead generation activities stop because those teams are gone, then sales might still close some opportunities in the upcoming quarter, but the following quarter is now lead starved, and in a few months those chickens will come home to roost in terms of more missed revenue targets.

Conversely, we have also seen when marketing leads started growing, but sales hiring did not keep pace. When marketing started overproducing leads relative to the sales organization’s capacity to absorb and land those deals, there was an opportunity cost of revenue that could have been generated had the staff been available to close available opportunities.

So, smart CEOs don’t do department-wide, blanket cuts, or grow sales over marketing or vice versa, producing capacity imbalances that hamper growth (the organization will only grow at the rate of the smaller of those two departments). Instead, they add or delete headcount and programs as their proven results and impact warrant it.

Knowing your market and your pipelines intimately will make decisions much clearer, and the likelihood of your team producing positive results become much higher when compared to blanket hiring or layoff decisions.

Summary

These are all tough things to do, especially when just closing the fourth quarter absorbs everyone’s full-time attention. If that’s the case, then that’s when external help can work to produce faster, unbiased insights or provide data-driven insights into where customers are buying and why and where not.

Whether external help is involved or it’s all done in-house, pulling together well-thought-out analyses of what’s working this year and what needs to improve next year requires the willingness to have honest and productive conversations between sales and marketing, so everyone can work together to get to the bottom of issues that might be plaguing your go-to-market machinery.

Both, revenue performance this and next year will benefit when that happens, and the inevitable board meetings in Q4 and Q1 will go much more smoothly.

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Regardless of what we might tell ourselves, our businesses, jobs and teams are not immune to self-induced fear. Our fears and anxieties affect both our individual well-being as well as the businesses we are a part of, often resulting in poor decisions and strategies.

In leadership, figuring out how to drive growth isn’t only about MBA-school topics such as go-to-market strategies or pipeline management. It’s about managing fear too—fear and anxieties in your own mind and the minds of your friends and colleagues.

Strategic Thinking Derailed by Fear

Many organizations continue to treat marketing as if it’s a tactical, short-term solution to generating immediate leads for their sales teams. A study performed by Accenture found that 37% of the 535 global-company CEOs who responded to the survey said that their CMOs would be the first fired if corporate growth targets weren’t met.

This type of short-term thinking kills the creativity required for marketing to deliver results.

“I blame it more on a business culture,” says Peter Field, author of an IPA report that analyzes marketing campaign effectiveness. “Marketers often [understand the need for long-term thinking] but their problem is they cannot convince the CFO, who is saying ‘I don’t give a damn about the long term, I just want a good quarter’. It is unreasonable to expect marketers to address the long term when their jobs and livelihoods are on the line.”

Instead, business leaders need to understand that marketing is more a marathon than a sprint. It takes strategic thinking and long-term planning. It doesn’t always produce overnight success, especially for startups who do not have brand recognition or more than a handful of customers. Getting people to hear your message and talk about your brand takes time.

Understanding Fear as an Inhibitor to Growth

Nurturing a culture where long term strategic thinking is encouraged and employees feel empowered, are essential traits of a healthy organization. But leaders can’t do that if they haven’t mastered their own negative, fear-driven thoughts.

In our age of rationality, many of us believe that reason is the only viable method of making decisions. Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist and author of Descartes’ Error, disagrees. Through a series of tests, Damasio has shown that using reason alone is inadequate. He works with patients who had damaged the part of their brain where emotions are generated. It made them unable to make simple decisions—should I have turkey or chicken for dinner?

Emotions play a huge role in our everyday lives. One day we might get into an argument with a colleague and tomorrow feel ashamed for the way we spoke. Psychologists have found that much of our thinking happens outside the realm of conscious reason and it’s beyond its control.

“Sometimes when we’re afraid of something,” Christopher Bader, a Chapman sociology professor told the New York Times, “even if our fears are irrational, that can lead us to make choices that will actually cause the thing that we are avoiding.” The concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy—how your perception of reality can make the very thing you dread become true—isn’t new. Emotions such as fear trigger negative thoughts that affect our brains.

Anxiety can become a habit—your comfort zone. If that’s where you are, you can’t lead effectively.

Self-Awareness is Key to Confident Leadership

Psychologists, Dan Joseph and Daniel Newman, recently did a comprehensive study that examined the link between emotional intelligence and job performance. They discovered that in jobs that required extensive attention to emotions, higher emotional intelligence translated into better performance. Marketing and sales fall into these categories.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ or EI) is a term popularized by Dan Goleman in his book, which was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half. Goleman shares that although the qualities commonly associated with leadership are intelligence, decisiveness, determination and vision, they are not enough. The most effective leaders have a solid degree of emotional intelligence. In fact, he reveals direct links between a leader’s emotional intelligence and measurable business results.

Self-awareness, a key aspect of Emotional Intelligence, is a subtle force that is easily missed by those who lack it, but it is an essential quality of great leaders.

Being self-aware means that you are in touch with your own truth. When you lack self-awareness, you are more likely to take an authoritative and fear-driven approach to management. You often don’t have an accurate read on a situation, might behave in ways that demoralizes your employees and you might lack empathy. Your behavior could cause employees to operate from a position of fear—they won’t speak up, take risks, be creative or cooperate.

With a high degree of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, leaders can disarm anxieties that ultimately reduce productivity and create conflict.

One way to start this process of changing your own thinking is to keep repeating positive thoughts often. Whenever an anxious thought enters your mind, don’t give it the focus it’s craving, observe it without judging it, and then either focus on something else (such as your breath) or replace it with a positive thought. Doing so reshapes your brain over time to make pathways to new ideas and habits. It’s a concept called neuroplasticity, based on neuroscience.

With time, you will experience changes in the way you think and how you interact with others, improving your own life and the life of others.

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However, over time, it became clear that the finance and efficiency-dominated mental frameworks that still seem to guide managerial instincts and decision making in Manhattan, have slowed down its pace of innovation. This was especially true when compared to the growth and innovative leadership styles that have, in the meantime, emerged in Silicon Valley.

There were tangible differences from the start. First of all, it was difficult finding employees with the right skillset to use modern, cloud-based business management tools. Secondly, there was a lack of familiarity with new lead generation methods including nurture marketing or account based marketing across the organization. There were other differences too—more subtle perhaps, but still very important. In Silicon Valley, there is emphasis on independence of employees and their empowerment to be problem solvers, whereas in New York, I realized that there seems to be a structured top-down approach with employees following tightly defined management directives.

I’m not trying to position this blog into a mouthpiece for political ideologies. But these trends are worth pointing out because emerging marketing technologies are outpacing outdated management models. This is analogous to what happened with the manufacturing quality revolution that returned to the USA from Japan in the 1980s. It resulted in a necessary overhaul of motivational management styles to encourage employees to not just perform tasks but do them well.

Modern marketing methods like account based marketing rely on employees entering data accurately, reporting outcomes transparently and truthfully, and constantly tuning marketing campaigns to optimize their performance. However, in a top down approach where employees are worried about getting laid off or not receiving approval from their managers, they will often not provide the data necessary to make the right decisions. In these environments, employees are often hesitant to share ideas that could help optimize marketing campaigns and associated analytics, which contribute to a high velocity, rapidly growing opportunity pipeline.

If you see employees as sources of innovation and the providers of new solutions to problems, you will give them access to all data and tools needed and tap into their technical expertise and instincts for what marketing techniques work in the market place.

If your management style is more top down, then you’ll run the risk that they won’t tell you what you need to hear because they’re concerned that you might not want to hear the truth or that they could get in trouble. In the latter mindset, the company is more likely to view employees as cost centers that need to be managed and kept in check, because their sole contribution is to execute tasks, but not be consulted for their intellectual contribution and innovative thoughts.

Whether employees are seen as cost centers or as sources of growth has massive implications:

Empower autonomous decision making vs. enforcing directive management

• More brain power: In the empowered model, all the employees’ are thinking and coming up with solutions vs. just the executive staff. What’s the impact? More Bottom-up ideation and faster resolution of problems. With technologies like cloud based management systems or social media networks, the younger, more junior employees will be the ones knowing how to leverage them. If they keep silent, the organization loses out.
• Upside down pyramid: In the empowered model, management sets the overall goals and budgets, then asks the employees to put the plans together to achieve those goals. Management’s role then shifts to deliver needed resources and remove obstacles, and counsels as needed to accommodate budgetary or political realities.
• CEO commitment: If the CEO does not value analytics and transparency then modern, analytical marketing techniques are doomed to fail. The CEO needs to step up to this responsibility to leverage all the dashboards, analytics and real-time data the new marketing systems provide.

Drive needed cultural changes

• Celebrate corrective action: In a a complex lead generation environment that depends on leads coming through a multitude of channels like social, email, events, web traffic, or advertising, and that hinges on timely and accurate analytics, failure must be tolerated. At the onset of a new marketing initiative, no one will know what messaging, formats or channels will work, and thus everyone should be willing to shut down non-performing campaigns in favor of the ones that do perform. To that effect, management needs to define and fund the tools with which the employees can measure and improve their own department’s performance.
• Encourage risk taking: The entire system depends on trying new ideas. We used to rent latte machines for our events to drive traffic to our booth; even though the expense was significant, we tripled our lead volume through the booth from one year to the next. The same is true for new content pieces, messaging, or campaigns. Employees worried about getting tainted by failure will not initiate this needed experimentation.
• High ego vs. low ego: In a data-driven, fact-based organization there is no room for “because I said so” behaviors. The entire system depends on collecting data and accurately reporting on the conclusions that data drives. If politics or egos get in the way of accurate reporting, management will operate blind to the facts of what goes on at the frontline because data is withheld from them.

New kinds of employees:

• Hire self-motivated, self-starters: The entire philosophy of giving employees the tools to monitor their own work and their department’s performance only works if they can report bad news, as we described above, but they also need to be motivated to proactively find their own problems and improvement opportunities. Management needs to provide the tools and the culture for that to happen, but the employees need to seize the moment and truthfully drive the needed actions and analyses.
• Non-political problem solvers: We have written about the challenges of getting sales and marketing to work together, and especially during the ramp-up phases when marketing spends lots of money and no leads are flowing, the same can apply to marketing and finance. In a data-driven, transparent culture, management needs to constantly strive to eliminate political or manipulative behaviors because they are anathema to truth in reporting.
• Need to be detoxed from earlier experiences: I have always been amazed at how long it takes to get employees to trust that they will not be punished for reporting their mistakes, or for identifying improvement opportunities. Or for not supporting their management’s ideas, even if those ideas are outdated or bad. If someone has had past, bad management experiences, they may well be reluctant to contribute proactively and openly to the kinds of transparent analytics machine we have been talking about. If that’s the case, their trust needs to be earned so they begin to share the facts needed to optimize the lead machine.

Modern marketing machines with the associated real-time analytics are works of art. The upsides are motivated employees, high productivity, and faster and better innovation in the pursuit of rapidly growing pipelines.

There are no alternatives to efficiently and effectively leveraging these modern marketing and analytics approaches. We believe that the above dynamic is a contributor to the relative lack of innovation in certain sectors of the US economy: Distrust between management / investors and employees result in modern analytics tools and marketing methods to remain underutilized. As with the quality revolution of the 1980s, today’s innovation requires empowered employees who can be sources of growth. Autocratic or non-empowering management styles fail to leverage those technologies.

For some more reading, here are two relevant blogs on a related phenomenon, “Digital Taylorism”:

• New Taylorism: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21664190-modern-version-scientific-management-threatens-dehumanise-workplace-digital
• Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Taylorism

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