Alex Baker’s Post

This might be the best analogy I've ever read on how teams work together to generate demand. My favorite line? Demand Generation is FedEx. (new team slogan, Caroline L.?) 😊 The TL;DR is demand gen, product, and content all play a vital role in building success. Content and product work together to craft and package the messaging → demand gen and sales deliver it flawlessly. Big event coming? Exciting feature enhancements? New product launch? 🔄 The cycle starts again—and round and round it goes. For what it's worth, I recommend skipping straight to stage three and saving yourself the pain of learning stages one and two the hard way. 🤕 I've seen all three firsthand, and going rogue with messaging early on can not only take years to 'undo'—it can seriously damage your brand reputation. Success happens when you start with a small but mighty core marketing and sales team and build strong narratives and value propositions from day one.

3 Stages of CEO Evolution: 1. Believes that sales people generate demand, hires sales people to make money 2. Realizes demand generation generates demand, hires SDRs and demand generation to make money 3. Realizes SDRs and demand generation need a message, a value proposition, and a target audience, hires Product Marketing and Content to create messaging, value proposition, and define target audience Demand Generation is FedEx. They deliver a package to a certain group of people at a certain time. But what's in the package? That's what you have to define first. Experienced CEOs know that this whole process takes time and understand there are no short cuts TODAY that will help you hit your number TOMORROW. TOMORROW is a function of what you did 9 months ago. TODAY you can impact what you'll do in 9 months. So might as well get started.

3 Stages of CEO Evolution: 1. Believes that sales people generate demand, hires sales people to make money 2. Realizes demand generation generates demand, hires SDRs and demand generation to make money 3. Realizes SDRs and demand generation need a message, a value proposition, and a target audience, hires Product Marketing and Content to create messaging, value proposition, and define target audience Demand Generation is FedEx. They deliver a package to a certain group of people at a certain time. But what's in the package? That's what you have to define first. Experienced CEOs know that this whole process takes time and understand there are no short cuts TODAY that will help you hit your number TOMORROW. TOMORROW is a function of what you did 9 months ago. TODAY you can impact what you'll do in 9 months. So might as well get started.

Marketing takes time, we don’t have a magic wand we can wave and instantly accounts fill the pipeline….. TOMORROW is a function of what you did 9 months ago. TODAY you can impact what you'll do in 9 months.

3 Stages of CEO Evolution Companies looks for some experienced folks, but how often are experienced CEO's words, are taken into account!? Here's one!

Spot on Sam Jacobs! This insightful post resonates strongly with a common challenge we've all faced. I'm sharing it with a message to our Boards as well: CEOs & Boards, beware of short-termism! This post perfectly captures the evolution from 'just hire salespeople' to 'let's get strategic about messaging and audience.' Don't let short-sighted priorities hijack your growth strategy. Invest in your brand and positioning today, and reap the rewards tomorrow. Long-term success demands it. Let's focus on building a strong foundation for sustainable growth.

5 Mistakes I Made When Building My First Go-To-Market Playbook 1. Believing that we needed to spend a lot of money on inbound marketing to generate a healthy pipeline 2. Accepting advice from other GTM leaders who haven't sold similar products to a similar market 3. Selecting the appropriate channel to target and formulating strategies for those specific channels 4. Not truly understanding our ICP's buying behavior 5. Not sticking with a strategy for long enough After a few years of trial and error, here's what I've learned: 1. Build an effective and inexpensive outbound motion using tools like Clay, Store Leads, Apollo.io, Instantly.ai 2. Network with other sales leaders that sell a similar product to your ICP 3. Run a full analysis on every channel, set KPIs, and stick with it for a long time 4. Regularly talk with your customers to see what value they are receiving from the product and use that to refine your outbound messaging 5. Stay disciplined with the game plan; sales is a numbers game What do you wish you knew when you first started out that you now know?

⚡An URGENT and critical moment for B2B CEOs, CFOs, and GTM leaders who want to grow their top-line revenues in 2024. The year is already halfway done! 😯 You have six months to achieve your 2024 GTM goals. If your fiscal year is the calendar year, I advise having your 2025 GTM plan defined and budgeted by December 1st at the latest. If you don't accomplish these, 2024 will be a step backward, and you'll limp into 2025! I understand. Some of you have a relaxed board and culture, so it's okay if you miss your 2024 goals. But the rest of us can't see it this way. We must; Align our GTM teams to our North Star. Execute a clean GTM plan concentrating on our targeted markets and ICPs with relevant value. Tell customer success stories to prospects (earn trust faster). Stop wasting effort and money on ads and pointless events. It's not too late, but it will be soon. 💜 Your Accounts! PS. If I'm unavailable to help you, I can get you to people who can.

If you’re in any GTM role (sales, marketing or otherwise) here are three things you have to try! (no marketing budget required) Be part of a buying committee ↳ Nothing teaches you more about selling and marketing than seeing how others do it. How did it make you feel? What evasive maneuvers did you use when they tried to pin you down. Is their marketing clear? Start a customer advisory board ↳ How do you best reach your target audience? Well, you could ask your customer advisory board how they prefer to buy today. What do they need to be convinced? What breaks through the noise? What truly matters right now? Talk to industry though leaders ↳ Be part of the conversation in a genuine way. Have conversations with the intent to learn and understand, not to sell. Develop your own nuanced point of view on a topic and share it. Help solve the real problems in a meaningful way, and you’ll have customer chasing you. What else would you add? #gtm #growthstrategy

Thoughts from my couch (because I’ve been stuck on it with covid for days) for Sales Reps: Stop thinking wide & start thinking deep. The obvious answer on how to do that is using multi threading throughout accounts. But in addition to that… - What is your strategy for when leads (or contacts) open/click/engage with your activity? How often are you viewing that? Where can automation help? - What is your strategy for after the initial 30-ish days of touch points? Think beyond that first cadence/sequence. Now how does that strategy change based on if someone is an influencer versus a decision maker?