Are you setting expectations properly?
The final installment of the Getting Leadership Buy-In series
Welcome back for the final installment of the three-part series on getting leadership buy-in as a marketer. In case you haven’t read the first two, here are the links to catch up on them - part 1 and part 2.
You’ve now successfully helped your leadership team understand how buyers buy in today’s world and shown them the data supporting the shift in strategy + execution you’re going to make. You have the attention of your leadership team, and I bet the next two questions they’re going to ask you are:
What will it look like to make this shift?
When should we expect to see these new + improved results?
[Enter stage left] The most critical piece of this entire process…
Setting expectations
The best thing you can do for yourself and this new direction is to CLEARLY set expectations with leadership. AKA what to expect, when to expect it, and how to validate if we are on/off track. I like to do this in two ways.
Timeline
The first way is by giving an overview of the timeline for this shift, but still in an easy-to-understand way for non-marketers.
Getting started (days 1-30)
In this stage, we’re getting the foundation in place to successfully make the shift. That means building audiences, creating content, setting processes in place, building reports + dashboards, etc.
Experiment (days 31-90)
In this stage, we’re finally getting off the ground with our new strategy + tactics. One of the key things to note here is that this will occur from days 31-90 and that this will take you through the rest of the first quarter of making this transition. You will want to stop + reiterate this point to leadership that we’re talking in QUARTERS, not days/weeks. More on this further down in the post…
Validate + Iterate (days 91-180)
Once we reach this stage, we will have some initial data that we can begin to analyze and use to validate what is/isn’t working and pull some initial insights to inform how we’ll want to iterate as we head into the final stage. This will take us through the end of the second quarter of this new strategy.
Scale + Iterate (days 181+)
We’re officially starting our third quarter of the new strategy and should have a strong sense of what is and isn’t working for you. This means it’s time to scale the things that are working.
While you’re going to be most excited about getting to this stage, your leadership team will likely be looking at this and saying to you, “We can’t wait that long to grow our results!”
And to that, my recommendation is that you simply reply with “Well, what happens if we keep doing what we’ve been doing?” The only levers at your disposal are to spend more or expand into other markets. Not exactly the best path to scaling sustainably.
So you educate them that aside from those two levers, with this new strategy we’re being smarter and more efficient with our current spend and resources.
We’re going to stop playing at the 5-10% Lead > SQO rate and get that up to 40-60%
We’re going to stop playing at the 15-20% SQO > win rate and get that up to 25-33%
THIS is how we build a scalable, sustainable revenue-driving marketing engine. And this is what brings us to the second way of setting expectations with leadership…
What to watch
The second way to successfully set expectations with your leadership team is to tell them EXACTLY what we will be watching to understand if things are working and when we will be watching for those signals.
The first thing you’ll notice is that we’re aligning these KPIs with the 4 stages of the timeline we walked through moments ago. The second thing to notice is that we are calling these KPIs (key performance indicators), not goals. Our goal is to increase revenue from marketing. Like the name states, KPIs are indicators that we’re on track to hitting our desired goal.
Getting started (days 1-30)
In this stage, historical performance will continue (remember: we’re getting things in place here, not executing).
Experiment (days 31-90)
In this stage, we’ll be watching:
Number of new users (direct + branded) to website
Number of visits to high-intent pages
ICP engagement rate on social channels you’re active on
Number of “leads” from paid search + paid social* (if previous strategy was lead gen, this will decrease)
Cost per lead* (if previous strategy was lead gen, this will increase)
*Note: It is ok and EXPECTED if the above two go that direction - we’re focusing on downfunnel impact
Validate + Iterate (days 91-180)
In this stage, we’ll be watching:
Number of high-intent handraisers
“How did you hear about us?” responses referencing the new tactics/mediums you’re using
BDR/AE feedback on if ICP has heard of your company before (will change from “Who are you and where are you calling from?” to “Ohh yeah, I’ve heard of your company before, I love your content!”
Number of discovery calls completed
Conversion rate of handraiser > discovery call completed
Conversion rate of discovery call completed > qualified opportunity
Scale + Iterate (days 181+)
And finally in this stage, we’ll be watching:
Number of qualified opportunities
Amount of qualified pipeline
Win rate
HDYHAU responses referencing word of mouth
Sales cycle length
Amount of revenue
Advertising customer acquisition costs (CAC)
Advertising CAC payback period
Note: tying back to the Experiment stage, although we have higher CPLs and a lower volume of “leads”, we should see a HIGHER volume of pipeline and revenue + getting those at lower costs than before.
Fast forward two weeks into the experiment…
Leadership: “Where are the leads????”
[Takes deep breath]
Yes, this question will come up at least once after you’ve made the switch.
Yes, you’ve beautifully mapped out exactly what will happen and even called out that leads would decrease.
No, you aren’t crazy.
Simply go back to the timeline you shared and point that everything is going exactly as expected.
Pro tip: turn the KPI bullets at each stage into checkboxes so you can show them the exact progress you’re making as you move along the new journey.
And there you have it. Part 3 of 3 in the getting leadership buy-in as a marketer series is in the books. If you follow these steps, you will be well on your way to successfully helping your organization shift to this better, more sustainable, and more scalable way of growing into the future.
One LinkedIn post I bookmarked this week
I loved this post from Kyle Poyar. And apparently so have over 8500 other people, so it clearly tells you he’s found something with this.
Managing customer retention is no easy task. Add a product-led growth (PLG) motion to the sign up + cancellation side of things, and it can either become a blessing or a curse.
Blessing if you have the right process, automation, and experience in place.
Curse if it’s manual, difficult, and a poor experience for the customer.
That’s why I loved this post from Kyle as he walks through what would normally be a revenue-losing experience and shows how it’s actually a strong customer retention play. And bonus points for being without any human intervention.
One podcast episode I enjoyed this week
Not B2B related at all. Not going to try and draw any parallels to it either. Just a good, wholesome podcast episode that I thoroughly enjoyed.
This 45-second clip alone is worth watching every. single. second.
It comes from The Rich Roll Podcast as he interviews Jesse Itzler. The discussion is around the concept of time + what matters to you.
Many of us look at the future and think something like, “I have 40 years left to live, that’s plenty of time!” But what I love about this conversation is how Jesse completely reframed that concept of time into a much harder-hitting way.
In this conversation, Jesse uses the example of spending time with your parents. He asks Rich how old his parents are (74 and 76). So Jesse replies back saying if the average age is 80, you think you have 5 years left with them.
Then he takes it a step further by asking, “How many times per year do you see them?” Rich replies 2x per year.
And this is where it hits home. Jesse says you don’t have 5 years left with them. You will see them 10 more times.
This can go beyond parents to anyone or anything that you truly value and how often you are able to have that experience.
And for anyone interested, here’s a playlist I add to each week with some of my favorite podcast episodes:
See you next week,
Sam