What's the worst that could happen?
Using the worst ideas to see what we really should be doing
“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
- Charlie Munger
I’ve been going down a Charlie Munger rabbit hole recently. Reading Poor Charlie’s Almanack, watching lectures he’s given, and listening to podcasts about him.
And one of the mental models he frequently uses is “inversion.” Or to put it more simply - understanding what he does not want to happen and avoiding that.
“What do you mean by inversion?”
I could write out my explanation below of how I interpret it after taking in how Charlie has, but why do it that type of injustice? Instead, here’s a quick ~3 minute video of Charlie explaining it in his own words:
Fun fact: Charlie was inspired by a mathematician who solved many complex problems with the strategy of “invert, always invert” and has taken that framework + applied it to countless other contexts.
Hit more winning shots or avoid more losing shots?
There was a fascinating insight pulled from a book called Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Player by Simon Ramo that plays into this concept. Now bear with me, I know I just referenced a book about tennis, but I promise there’s a great point nested in here.
Ramo notes that there are two “groupings” of tennis players: professional tennis players and amateur tennis players. And in these groupings, a very common trend emerged between the two.
Professional tennis players win points to the tune of 80% of the time. Meaning these players are beating their competitors through skilled shots and so forth.
On the other hand, amateur tennis players lose points to the tune of 80% of the time. Meaning these players are losing to their competitors through errors of their own doing, such as hits into the net or beyond the lines of the court.
Now, although many of us are “professionals” in the sense that we get paid for the work we do for our employers, I would argue that the majority of us are playing an “amateur” game at work relative to the market and competition, not a “professional” game at work.
Why? Because the winner in the B2B space is typically the company that avoids making errors 80% of the time and beating themselves as a result.
Let’s apply this to marketing + GTM
There are hundreds of resources + examples out there of this framework in action, but for this newsletter I want to talk about it in the context of why most of you are reading this in the first place - marketing, GTM, and general B2B learnings.
Let’s get into a few examples of common problems organizations are trying to solve or improve upon.
How can we increase our revenue from marketing initiatives?
What’s the best way to attract that strategic account we’ve been trying to land for years but can’t seem to get a foot in the door?
First one is a broad use case. Second one is a focused use case. Both can be worked through with the inversion framework.
1. How can we increase our revenue from marketing initiatives?
Standard thinking:
“We need to do more!” (side note: please, just no)
“Let’s increase our pricing!”
“Let’s do a rebrand!”
But what if we flipped this question on its head - what if we inverted it and instead of asking how we can increase our revenue, we asked what would we need to do if we wanted to decrease our revenue from marketing initiatives? We’d probably say things like:
“Let’s go super broad with our targeting”
“Let’s make our messaging incredible vague and generalized”
“Let’s make the process of getting in touch with us and working with a sales rep difficult and frustrating”
Now for the fun part - invert those inversions to understand what we should actually be doing (that isn’t just “doing more”).
Should we refine our ICP further?
Do we need to fine-tune our messaging?
Is there unnecessary friction in our sales process that is causing a pipeline + revenue leak?
THESE are the questions we should be asking and THESE are the questions that, when dug into, will drive the results we actually want to have happen.
2. What’s the best way to attract that strategic account we’ve been trying to land for years but can’t seem to get a foot in the door?
Standard thinking:
“Let’s call and email them more!”
“Let’s send a sales rep to their office to meet them”
“Let’s start serving a bunch of ads to all their employees to increase their awareness of us!”
Now, let’s invert. What would be the worst things that could happen in trying to attract a strategic account?
“Let’s completely ignore them and not focus on them”
“Let’s share generalized or irrelevant information with them”
“Let’s withhold all of our ideas and solutions to their problems until they commit to talking to us”
Andddd finally, let’s invert the inversion to understand what we should actually be doing.
How much are we engaging with them? Where is this taking place? Who is it with?
Do we have content and messaging that applies to them based on their industry/size/mission/etc.? Do we have examples of how we’ve done this with companies just like theirs?
Are we giving value and demonstrating our expertise first? Do we have any credibility or trust built up with them yet?
And here lies our answers yet again. These are the things we should be focusing on in order to win these accounts over time.
“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”
Standard thinking only gets us so far. We limit ourselves by how we frame the question to ourselves. Reframing through the lens of inversion is a very powerful mental model and one that often leads to the “aha” moments that keep us from making mistakes and beating ourselves.
In case you missed these this week
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See you next Saturday,
Sam