Business Growth Insights

Here are the 5 most critical health metrics in Marketing: 1. Total HIRO Pipeline Creation by fiscal quarter (Leading Metric - Effectiveness) Not just “marketing-sourced” pipeline - ALL PIPELINE. This is a critical shift once you stop using Marketing as a cheap MQL machine. Proper demand creation efforts executed with Marketing budget will augment the performance of outbound, create more demand for Partners to capture, increase qualified hand raisers on the website, etc. Use the HIRO metric to ensure teams are optimizing for proven buyer journeys that drive revenue at high sales velocity. Not all "pipeline" is created equal. If your sales cycles are > 60 days on average, the quarterly trends on this metric will tell you what future quarters are going to look like for closed won revenue and provide an early warning signal for course correction. 2. Total Marketing Spend : HIRO Pipeline Creation by fiscal quarter (Leading Metric - Efficiency) This metric predicts future CAC and is the perfect leading metric for Marketing efficiency. Watch the trends by fiscal quarter and you’ll clearly know whether you are progressing or regressing. 3. Total Sales Velocity by fiscal quarter (Hybrid - Effectiveness) Combine 3 GTM lagging metrics (ACV, Sales Cycle Length, and Win Rate) with 1 GTM leading metric (HIRO pipeline created) as a critical hybrid metric to predict future performance. 4. Closed Won New Business by fiscal quarter (Lagging Metric - Effectiveness) Everybody tracks this one already, but generally Marketing metrics do not align to these actual outcomes. 5. Closed Won New Business : Total Marketing Spend by fiscal quarter (Lagging Metric - Efficiency) It doesn’t matter how Google ads are performing or what multi-touch attribution software says is "working" if you are getting $0.40 in new revenue for every $1 you spend on Marketing. I see lots of Marketing teams fall into this trap & lose the forest for the trees. ____ The problem is that B2B companies (and Marketing teams) get lost spending so much time in the micro trying to analyze the impact of tactics and campaigns. -What’s the ROI of that blog we posted last month? -What’s the ROI of that campaign we ran last quarter? -What’s the ROI of our weekly email newsletter? But we need to get out of the micro and elevate the conversation: -What was the impact and ROI of our entire marketing budget for the year? -Did we improve Marketing ROI every quarter (aka get more pipeline & revenue)? -Did we move the needle on Sales Velocity (aka build a more scalable, repeatable revenue machine)? __ Before we ever have a conversation about the ROI of a channel, tactic, or campaign, we need to levelset as a business about the actual top level performance of our Marketing. Start with these 5 core *business* metrics, then go deeper into channels and programs after that. #marketing #metrics #b2b #gtm #sales

One of the most underrated tools to help you focus on what really drives outcomes: driver trees.    Think about it this way: if you run a lemonade stand and want to make more money, the drivers are simple—how many cups you sell and how much money you make off of each cup.    Now, apply this to B2B marketing. I created a driver tree for *revenue growth*. The key drivers are customer acquisition, retention, expansion revenue, and marketing efficiency. Under each, you can break down even more granular factors.    Here’s the kicker: even if marketing doesn’t own all these areas, it’s critical to map out where marketing *can* make an impact. It’s also important to ask: are we missing anything? Gaps and blind spots can make or break your growth.    Here’s another example: Want more leads? The drivers could be the number of programs you’re running and how effective they are. One of those programs might be advertising. Zoom in further: how many campaigns are you running, and what’s their output? The tree keeps unfolding.    After you build your tree, analyze it with your team:    - Are we overlooking something?  - Where are the biggest opportunities?  - What’s holding us back?  - Are we investing in the right areas?  - Where should we cut resources?  - How can these drivers reinforce each other?    Driver trees give you clarity. They reveal what really moves the needle and help you course-correct in real time.    #marketing #martech #marketingoperations    PS: I'm writing more about this in tomorrow's newsletter, subscribe to stay updated, link in the comments.

In 66 months, I helped grow Gong from $200k ARR to $7.2B in valuation and worked alongside some of the planet's best sales leaders. Here's the 6 biggest lessons I learned: 1. Overinvest in great marketing early on. I’m still shocked at how few startups do this. Sales with no (effective) marketing early on to pave demand and provide air-cover is a brute-force way to build. 2. Measure twice, cut once when hiring leaders. Your first leadership hires will have cascading effects on your company that ripple through many years. Their fingerprints will weigh heavy on everything from your sales motion, to company culture, to the people they hire, whether you want it to or not. Even after they’re gone. Recruit and hire accordingly. 3. Beat the hell out of what’s working. Finding what works in growing a startup is like drilling for oil. You’re going to drill a number of "wells" and come up dry. But soon, you’ll find one to go DEEP with. Drill it for all it’s worth. Don’t screw around trying to find too many other oil wells when you haven’t even maxed out your best one. 4. Hire salespeople who thrive on ambiguity. Not just those who CAN do that, but those who LOVE to do it (because they'll be doing this for a while as your market evolves). Do this, and you’ll accelerate your learning curve to a repeatable sales motion. Hire entrepreneurial reps. 5. Inject risk into the business as you scale. As you scale, your “portfolio” of growth initiatives should contain more and more risk. It's as if you're a fund manager. Early on, find what works and cling to it. But as you grow and you’re able to rely on several well-established growth vectors, start to introduce risk into your portfolio. Examples: Experimenting with channel partnerships, international, new segments of the market or use cases. 6. Realize the "growth at scale" playbook is different than the "scale up" and "startup" playbooks. What got you to $50M or $100M will not get you to the next level by itself. The path to $100M, and going beyond that (“growth-at-scale”) are two very different situations demanding different means of growing. Early on, nothing matters but (the right) customer acquisition, controlling churn, and making your product absolutely amazing. But if you’re going to continue growing at a fast rate, several other methods have to start firing: high net dollar retention (NDR), multi-product and multiple streams of ARR, going hard and fast on international expansion, and crossing the chasm into “low tech” industries. This list is non-exhaustive. For those of you who have ridden that tornado, what would you add? P.S. Turn "open opps" into paying customers at any phase of growth with these 10 closing motion scripts: https://lnkd.in/gtxYd9Vs

The #1 growth hack for 2025? Stop selling. Start teaching. I see it everywhere. People want answers, not ads. They want tools, not pitches. If you’re still pushing offers with no value up front, you’re already behind. Education-first marketing is the new winner. Newsletters that solve a problem in 3 minutes. Templates that save someone 2 hours. Quick guides that make a new process simple. → These are what fill inboxes now. → These are what get shared. → These are what build trust (fast). I’ve spent 15+ years in growth marketing. I’ve tried every hack, every funnel, every trick. But when I started focusing on being USEFUL FIRST, everything changed. Leads came easier. Replies got warmer. People remembered my name (and my brand). Here’s why it works: • People are tired of being sold to. • They want to learn, grow, and win. • If you help them win, they stick with you. Simple as that. Want to stand out in 2025? → Build a library of resources people need. → Share your best stuff-fast and free. → Make your brand the first stop for answers. Tech will keep changing. AI will keep moving the goalposts. But being useful? That never goes out of style. What’s one educational resource you wish someone shared with you sooner? Let’s make 2025 the year of value. ♻️ Share this with someone who needs a new marketing playbook.

Dave Powers is CEO of an $18B company. They own HOKA and UGG - both highly desirable brands each doing hundreds of millions of profit annually, while growing 60% and 30% respectively. Those are crazy numbers. It’s a rarity to have people like this share their mistakes. But when they do, we should listen, because the intel is gold. Here is his biggest mistake, the 2 ways the problem manifested, and the 3 lessons you can apply to your business today as you think about how to invest in Brand and Direct Response in 2024. ** His biggest mistake? ** Chasing a revenue growth number. ** The 2 ways the problem manifested? ** Price and Perception 1) Price Powers says, “I’ve learned from my mistakes here... “You start chasing a number versus healthy, sustainable growth. “And so we actually went through a period early on where we had a lot of markdown inventory in the channel. “We were selling off price to people “and it was because we were trying to chase a growth number. “So fortunately, we recognized that early on and we pulled back inventory, we closed accounts that we didn't want to be in, “and we had to reset it. “ 2) Perception “You want to grow faster, you want to use word of mouth, you want to use distribution. “But if you overdo it too soon...it becomes this brand that 'used to be' versus a brand that 'could be.'” ** the 3 lessons you can apply to your business today ** 1) Revenue growth is not the thing to focus on. It is an output. His lesson is that focusing on it as the direct goal is what led to problems historically. 2) Powers teaches us is that what we want more than revenue growth is price insensitivity and a perception that the brand's best days are in front of it. Sometimes, this is in opposition to revenue growth. Sometimes it is not. In the times where strengthening price and perception are in conflict with revenue growth, his lesson is to choose price strength and perception because the revenue growth will come. Choosing revenue growth when in conflict with price strength and perception necessarily means reduced revenue growth in the future. So the choice becomes a) the potential for revenue growth b) 100% certainty for reduced revenue growth in the near future a) becomes the obvious choice 3) As we navigate 2024 marketing investments in "Brand" and "Direct Response", we can use his guidance here. The objective of our direct response investments is to hit a short term revenue growth number. The objective of our 'brand' investments is to strengthen price insensitivity and perception that we are the brand that 'could be'. If you are a brand investing the vast majority of your marketing resources into direct response, given the above, it becomes resoundingly clear that continuing to invest dollars to with short term revenue growth as the primary goal is the strategically incorrect move ...wish i would have seen this video 12 years ago would have been verrrrrrry helpful

I interviewed a former top enterprise seller at a $300M+ ARR company who helped take them from $0 to IPO. I wanted to understand the startup's growth blueprint. Here are the top 5 takeaways: LESSON (1): Focus on one vertical The company (Olo) was born in 2005 with the vision that consumers would use their phones as remote controls for the world. That could have led them down many paths... But after finding a market fit, they decided to focus their full attention on becoming the gold standard for online commerce for the restaurant industry. That maniacal focus paid off. LESSON (2): Be enterprise-first When I was selling in the restaurant tech space, I was on a small enterprise team for a product that focused on SMBs but was trying to scale up to the enterprise space. This is a mistake I see from a lot of late-stage startups (and sellers who try to sell into the enterprise space). Olo instead, focused on enterprise brands first. Building there makes it easy to trickle down to the SMB market, should the company want to. LESSON (3): Run a top-down play Olo did an effective job establishing strong relationships at the Private Equity level (a lot of restaurant brands are owned by PE firms). Educating these influential leaders about the emerging trends of commerce (and the efficiencies of an intelligent commerce tech stack) was a productive way to scale their impact. This established credibility and spurred introductions directly with CEOs of their portfolio companies. LESSON (4): Stay capital efficient During all 3 chapters, they stayed lean. Because they knew their Ideal Customer Profile (the enterprise restaurant brand), they could do more with less. It became about hiring smart, capable people who can be experts in this category and run a large geography focused on long sales cycles. LESSON (5): Scale w/ emerging brands Companies, leaders, and individual contributors all want to work with the “cool kids on the block.” These are the high-growth, future enterprise brands of tomorrow. By being the gold standard, you can take on a more advisory type of position with these brands and build long-term stickiness as they grow. 🐝

Most marketing reports only focus on easy-to-get metrics. Not those that measure growth + profitability. Metrics like... - ROAS from ad platforms - Traffic & CVR from Google Analytics - Revenue (Net Sales) from Shopify They're simple to pull. Your team checks them daily. Copy/paste into the report. But these metrics don't give you the real picture. Instead, we need metrics that tell us: - Are we growing? - Are we efficient (profitable)? ===== Here's some (better) metrics that actually reflect your business health: 1. Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) Calculate: Total Revenue / Total Marketing Spend (not just ad spend) Shows true marketing productivity regardless of attribution. --- 2. New Customer Rate Calculate: New customers ÷ Total active customers (eg. L12 mo) If this drops, you're not growing your customer base. You need to continually replenish your churned or lapsed customers. Note, Also good to look at the % of revenue coming from new customers. --- 3. Customer Acquisition Payback Period Calculate: Months to recover fully-loaded CAC from contribution margin *Note this is challenging to calc. at the customer-level as the majority of your customers won't "pay back". You'll want to look at aggregate curves here. Depends on the business model, but typically 3-6 months = healthy. 12+ months = you might be over-estimating your LTV, and never get payback. --- 4. Contribution Margin per Customer (First 90 Days) This is actually just "90-day LTV:CAC" but when most people say "LTV" they really mean "Lifetime Revenue" or "Lifetime Net Sales". Calculate: (Revenue - COGS - fulfillment - returns - marketing) / New customers in that period Shows actual profitability per acquisition. --- 5. Monthly Cohort Retention (90-day) Calculate: % of Month X customers who purchase again within 60 days Predicts long-term health better than any other metric. --- 6. (Bonus) Customer Concentration Risk Calculate: % of revenue from the top 10% of customers High concentration = fragile business model. The customers you think are the most loyal actually have some of the highest chance of brand-switching. ===== It's all about efficient growth. These metrics answer: "Are we acquiring good customers profitably and retaining them?" Everything else is noise. What else would you add? #marketinganalytics #ecommerce #profitability

What do your *HR practices* and *market share* have in common? More than your CFO might think... Here's the data that's changing how boards view HR. Our research at Top Employers Institute shows that strategic *people practices* can be effective levers for business growth, with some correlated to market share gains of up to 15%. We measure 2,400+ employers on 300+ HR best practices annually. Here are 5 HR practices that we find are most correlated to fast-growing market share: 1) Aligning with purpose: consistently using a purpose scorecard to align actions with your company's "why" is correlated to 12% higher market share growth. When you lead with purpose, growth follows. 2) Leveraging recruitment analytics & obsessing over candidate experience: using data to optimize your talent attraction strategy can boost market share is correlated to 15% market share growth. Analytics-driven recruitment is a serious competitive advantage while measuring and optimizing every touchpoint in the candidate journey (pre, during, and post) is correlated to 12% higher market share. How you treat candidates is a reflection of your brand. 3) Empowering internal influencers: when business leaders actively promote your employer brand on internal social platforms, it correlates to 11% higher market share growth vs orgs that don’t. Employees are your most powerful brand ambassadors. 4) Building talent communities: Cultivating candidate communities both *internally* and *externally* leads to 9% higher market share. Proactively building talent pipelines gives you a head start on growth. 5) Prioritizing leadership development: Defining and tracking leadership development KPIs is correlated to 11% higher market share growth. Investing in leadership bench strength prepares you for growth. The most stunning insight here is the *range* of people practices that can drive market share, from employer branding to people analytics to agile performance. It's an important reminder that in today's economy, your people-practices can make or break your ability to grow (especially if you’re at a large multinational organization). So if *market share* matters to you, you may want to consider doubling down on these people practices. At Top Employers Institute we exist to build a better world of work. We certify HR excellence for 2,400+ global multinational employers representing every industry and 124 countries helping them do 3 things exceptionally well: 1) Benchmark, measure, and track progress on their HR practices year-over-year; 2) Enhance their employer brand in key markets; 3) Improve HR Leader’s relationship with the board by correlating HR practice improvements to key business outcomes (like rev growth, profitability, & shareholder value gain). Question for you: which of these 5 practices do you find most or least surprising? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

Businesses don't fail because they lack a great idea. They fail because they can't get enough forward airspeed to soar. 𝗜 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻: - Founders have a great idea for changing the world. - They bootstrap to work with innovators. - Everyone is a potential customer. - Early success is mistaken for market demand. - The end of the runway comes before sustained flight. -------------------------------------------------------- How to transform a struggling business toward sustainable growth and lasting impact. --------------------------------------------------------  1. 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 - I will guide you in identifying problems that customers will pay you to address.  2. 𝗕𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 - We will work together to create messaging and stories that drive buyers to contact you.  3. 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗜𝗖𝗣 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 - I'll help you bring clarity to your ideal customer profile and we'll identify your total relevant market.  4. 𝗗𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗶𝗻 -  We'll develop a playbook to engage your ICP and provide them with valuable experiences at each touchpoint with your company.  5. 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗹𝘆 - I default to being action-oriented. We will build consensus using the best available insights and move quickly.  Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.  6. 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 - We won't do everything, just the right things. You have precious few resources. We will use them wisely.  7. 𝗣𝗶𝘃𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘀 - When headwinds and crosswinds threaten your safety, we'll pivot the course while maintaining your long-term destination in sight.  8. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗳𝗹𝘆𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗲𝗹 - Sustainable growth comes from building effective and efficient processes. We'll build cross-functional workflows that create value and profits.  9. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹—As we gain traction, it is crucial to expand our thinking about leveraging our success to benefit others. This is the path to sustainable growth and lasting impact. 10. 𝗡𝘂𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 - Running a business can be exhausting. When it's time to delegate, we'll build processes to sustain your vision and effectiveness through others. I'd like to talk with you if you're looking to add a growth advisor to your startup or scaleup. Let's talk about your vision and what's keeping you from growing.  Send me a DM to arrange a call. #fractionalcmo #gtm #businessgrowth  

The most common mistake I see among founders of 7 & 8-figure consumer businesses is simply focusing on the wrong long-term KPI's. Here are my 10 north-star indicators of sustainable business growth: 🚀 ✦ Brand’s EBITDA (net-profit) is growing year on year (even if revenue is flat or has slow growth). ✦ Brand has a long-term business strategy tied to storing cash reserves and being an attractive acquisition prospect within their market (or going public) (and has been communicated to their internal team at large). ✦ Brand has a tight grip on its MER (marketing efficiency ratio) with a nuanced framework—to deploy a 7, 8 or 9-figure marketing budget across many verticals. ✦ Brand’s CLTV (customer lifetime value) is improving YoY. ✦ Brand has a dialed-in organic social strategy that helps across the entire funnel from awareness to conversion to nurturing loyal customers — and has major mindshare of the idea customer profile in their market. ✦ Brand has a thorough understanding of how each paid advertising platform historically performs for them and are spending/monitoring across all channels (even if spending very little on an individual channel). ✦ Brand is selling across multiple sales channels, with DTC being an above average % of sales. (Why? Because margins are better at scale, brand experience is controlled, and first-party data is more available). ✦ Brand is able to rely on a plethora of first-party data to drive intelligent decisions across the entire business. ✦ Brand’s product development is vertically integrated (to the extent it can be) and the product catalog has achieved a breadth of “functional integration.” ✦ Brand sentiment is positive and improving over time amongst ICP of each age/stage range (both younger and older generations), as well as internal employees and the job market. ✦ There is a positive correlation between the brand’s reputation and their gross margin (capital 'B' Brand). ✦ Brand is financially able to engage in strategic M&A as a part of business growth and marketing, if the opportunity should arise and make sense. ——— These are things to strive for. A brand with even half of these characteristics is in a good place. The problem is that it's easy to be myopic in carrying out operations and lose sight of the big picture.