Last week I talked about how the greatest things take a lot of time, and consistent, good work to be great. You can see that newsletter here if you missed it.
You can’t only work on these projects though…we report to a CEO and a board after all.
You have to hit existing goals, while you build longer time-scale projects to bear fruit in the future. AND you will have to justify these long-term projects for a while before they “work.” People might be critical, and it’s your job to stave off doubt
Last week I talked about how the greatest things take a lot of time, and consistent, good work to be great. You can see that newsletter here if you missed it.
You can’t only work on these projects though…we report to a CEO and a board after all.
You have to hit existing goals, while you build longer time-scale projects to bear fruit in the future. AND you will have to justify these long-term projects for a while before they “work.” People might be critical, and it’s your job to stave off doubt.
When you have a big number to hit NOW, it’s tempting to look at your whole budget/team as the way you’ll get there. And certainly much of your budget (incl. headcount) needs to be earmarked for driving immediate results.
But, every quarter, make sure some program spend/employee time is allocated to things that will pay off in the future. It might be helpful to come up with a ratio for yourself as a starting point, and iterate over time, i.e. 80% pipe for this and next quarter, 20% brand/future projects (if you’re doing something like this please respond to this email with how you break it down, curious to learn!)
This should not be hard to convince your company of… the growth multiples in SaaS are so insane that if you don’t do this, and you focus every dollar on “the now,” you probably won’t be able to hit your goal even next year.
The CEO and CFO would rather have the marketing leader in place who invests in future momentum today - the business won’t run out of steam mid-year, and CAC will remain reasonable.
The best way to build trust is to create a rock solid plan, deliver on that plan, and hit your goals. That’s the baseline.
I've talked about this before - the marketing plan itself should support the most important things to the business at any give time (usually new ARR).
If your strategy will make the business win, and you constantly share how you/your team are following through on plans and promises, that’s a great start.
Great communicators start with the end in mind - here’s the end goal, here’s our plan to get there, here’s how we’re pacing.