Keep it simple, stupid
My not-so-"aha" moment from this past week
At the beginning of this year, I signed up for a huge initiative - plan and execute an ABM strategy across our entire organization.
Easy enough, I’ve done things like this before.
Map out our total addressable market + import it into our CRM
Tier out the accounts
Pull in the relevant contacts at each account
Assign the tiers to a 1:1, 1:few, or 1:many playbook
Track their progress from unaware —> engaged —> (hopefully) customer
5 steps. Simple, right?
Right?
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When simple becomes complicated
Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar.
You have a project/task to get done. Nothing out of the ordinary - it might be a little heavier of a lift than a normal task, or a little lighter of a project than you normally do. So you add it to your to-do list.
You go to start in on it that afternoon, but aren’t feeling it, so you push it out a day.
Next day, you start your work and see it at the top of the list, but then get a message from your manager that they need you to help them with something. A few hours later, you’ve solved what your manager needed help with and come back to the original task. But for some reason, it seems like it somehow grew larger/more difficult than when you first wrote it down. Maybe I didn’t think through this as much as I should have. Let me scope this out a little more.
You spend the rest of your day scoping out the task and have found it’s turned into a multi-step, significant task that’s going to take a lot of time to accomplish.
Or so you’ve told yourself.
This is the story of how the ABM initiative has been for me this year.
Map out our total addressable market + import it into our CRM? Easy enough.
Well, first we should probably get a clear definition of our TAM…
What about this edge case account? Should that be included?…
These accounts are similar on paper, but there’s a nuance to them that we know from practical knowledge that means one should be prioritized and the other isn’t a great fit…
How do I factor this into our tiering + scoring models in that case?…
Does this need to be done manually or can we use something like Clay?…
How will we validate it?…
What do we do about false positives?…
We don’t have many of these fields in our CRM, so how should we create and map those over?…
And welcome to the slowly spiraling cycle of working around the task I set out to do. Where’d all that confidence go that I had when I signed up for this?
And complicated becomes simple
At Loxo, we just launched a brand new product: Account-Based Prospecting. Sounds an awful lot like ABM, doesn’t it? That’s because it is.
The market we serve hasn’t historically run an ABM business development strategy, so we’re bringing this philosophy, system architecture, data, and education to them about how to do it.
I jumped on our podcast when we released it and in 30 minutes, walked through from start to end how a company that’s never done this type of work before can get started. And it wasn’t at the 30,000 foot view, it was strategic and tactical. How to approach this new strategy and how to determine your market, the approach you take, and how to get the pipeline building.
I knew there would be resistance to something new, something unproven in this market, something that’s much more complicated than what they currently do. So I simplified it and broke it down into its core parts and how to be successful with each of those. Wrote a playbook walking through each of the steps. And provided detailed inputs + an example with each step so they could easily translate it to their own business.
One simple playbook on how to get started with ABM Account-Based Prospecting.
^^ That was me, yesterday, when this reality clicked into my head. Why has this initiative been so complicated for me, yet as soon as I switch from “What do I need to do for this?” to “How can I teach someone else how to do this?” it became 100x easier?
I got out of my own head about it.
Far from novel idea here. But this is the same principle that allows you to give what seems like such obvious advice to a friend who’s struggling with something.
We tell ourselves stories about how our problem is unique to us. How it’s “not as simple as it seems.” Why we can’t just do the thing that’ll fix it. The internal blockers that are preventing or slowing us from doing it.
But innately, we know it’s not true. We’re just too in our own heads about it. We make it bigger than it really is. And as I’m typing out this last sentence, I’m laughing because it’s coming back to a topic I wrote about a few weeks back that stemmed from an idea Paul Stansik shared: Simplifiers and Complicators. I’ve been complicating this initiative because I’m the one in it. I’m in my own head about it.
But as soon as I stepped back to teach our audience how to do it, I was able to simplify it because I wasn’t carrying my baggage with it. This is for them, not me, so I could separate the two.
So now as I’m working through the 5 “simple” steps I outlined at the beginning of this essay, I’m going back to my overcomplicated tasks in Asana and simplifying them back down. I’m getting out of my head about them. I’m treating them with the same approach that I am for our market.
I can feel the weight of the initiative releasing from my chest. I can see the momentum building up again. I’ve regained the confidence that I felt slipping away.
Takeaway
Don’t skin your knees learning this lesson when I’ve just done it for you. What problem are you overthinking? What project seems to loom larger each day that passes? What task have you been avoiding on your to-do list because you’re not sure how/where to start?
Take a step back from it and pretend a friend or peer came to you asking for advice about it. What would you say? Which direction would you recommend they go?
Now go follow that same advice :)
Book quote of the week
“I always get angry when I hear someone say, ‘It’s too hard!’ when they’re faced with the choice to do something difficult in the moment that will pay off in the long run. Because I can guarantee you that no matter how hard it might be, the pain of regret after not doing it is much harder.
People who get average results persist until things get uncomfortable, then they quit. People who get good results persist until things get painful, then they quit. People who get world class results have trained themselves to be comfortable when it is painful and uncomfortable.”
- Chop Wood Carry Water, by Joshua Medcalf
Podcast episode I enjoyed this week
I think I’ve referenced this episode at least 3 times this past week to different colleagues. For any of you who feel like your to-do list is growing vs. shrinking, that you don’t seem to have the time to get to the things you know you need to get done because other items are being put on your plate, this 13-minute episode is one of the most powerful + impactful things I’ve listened to all year.
See you next Saturday,
Sam
P.S. What have you read or listened to lately that you really enjoyed? Send it my way - need some new books + podcast recs :)
This hit hard. 😅