How many of you have gotten 5 minutes into the super-detailed presentation that you spent DAYS building for the board/executive team…
...only to find that the majority of attendees have zoned out or are no longer paying attention?
🙋♂️ that was me, for years.
The problem
The truth? We overthink it. This should be one of the shortest + simplest recaps you share in the company.
We feel like we have to build out this incredibly long, detailed, data-filled presentation to show what's going on with every facet of marketing.
But here's the truth: the majority of the people in the room for this presentation are NOT marketers. So all of the great data + tactical marketing insights you're showing don't mean much to them because…they don't understand them.
So that all too familiar slow blinking/eye glazed looks you’re seeing in the audience? That’s your sign.
But there’s hope, and it’s actually quite simple because you know what they do understand and care about? Is marketing helping the business grow in the right direction.
The solution
I shared our Q1 recap with the leadership team last month.
And it was only 3 slides:
Slide 1: Goals vs. Actuals - Summary
What was our quarterly goal?
What did we come in at?
How did this compare to last quarter's numbers?
This goes back to the core question this group cares about - are we helping the company grow in the right direction
Use colors (green/yellow/red) to make it even easier for them to understand if you surpassed/hit/missed targets
Slide 2: Goals vs. Actuals - Details
This one's for the data-savvy members of the board/exec team (looking at you, CFO). They often want to see higher up the funnel to look at conversion rates, pipeline, and more as they have forecasting + planning always in the back of their mind.
This typically maps back to a bottoms-up revenue model so you can identify areas of strength + weakness in your funnel that inform what is shared on slide 3.
Slide 3: Insights + Actions
Data is great, but what did we learn + how are we using that moving forward? This is what that slide is answering for them and this is the slide you should be spending the most time on.
3-5 key insights at the business results/strategy level AND what you’re doing about those as we move into the next quarter.
That’s it
If they're interested in the details or tactics or have further questions, they'll ask those during/after the conversation. Appendix slides are great to have if you can anticipate other items they might be interested in, but more often than not, you can either speak to these live or say, “That’s a great question. Let me look into that further after this meeting and I’ll follow up with an answer to that for you.”
One LinkedIn post I bookmarked this week
Good reminder that the challenge of continuous customer education spans across all companies and is a natural part of how businesses evolve (both the provider and the customer).
One podcast episode I enjoyed this week
And I told people, if you were blind and you came to ZoomInfo, what would you hear that you would know, like, "Oh, this is a company that takes being an expert and being an entrepreneur as a serious principle?” And then we wrote those down for our employees. And I want people to go, this is who we are. You come to ZoomInfo, you give me more of your waking hours than just about anything else in your life, almost certainly more than everything else in your life. More than you give your family. More than you give your friends. More than you give yourself. And you should understand who we are as a company. So I want people to know what those things are because they can either align to them or go like, “That’s not really me.” Great, there’s lots of companies where that’s not a cultural principle. If that’s you, you shouldn’t come to ZoomInfo. And making sure people understand those things helps us get the right group of people who are aligned cultually to do the work.
And for anyone interested, here’s a playlist I add to each week with some of my favorite podcast episodes:
See you next Saturday,
Sam