H1-2024: What Did We Learn?

Oof. That was rough. Most companies missed their targets in H1-2024. And if they did make targets, it often required brute force to do so.

But that is now ancient history, as they say, so we need to turn our attention to H2-2024, but also H1-2025, as the work we do now is the foundation for the next fiscal year.

As Gary likes to say …

This year's target is next year's baseline.

The consensus seems to be that what we experienced in H1 will remain the same in H2, so take a minute before you promise to "make it up in the back half."

• General "Hold" Mentality - unless it is a corporate priority, departments have widespread hesitation to new expenditures.

• Solution Saturation - with so many companies missing targets, the noise level has turned up to 10. From the Buyer's perspective, there are too many alternatives that all promise the same thing, which creates a ton of work for them to sort it out.

• Blurring Lines - Given slower (no) growth from new logo, our platform/integration partners are starting to launch complementary/competing solutions in pursuit of wallet share.

These conditions are also likely to last into at least the first half of 2025, given that projected rate cuts and the impacts of the presidential election will take some time to work through the system.

So with this reality, what should we considerations are required for H2?

Beware the Sunk Cost Fallacy

If it's not working. Stop doing it.

When we say it out loud, the immediate response is, "duh."

But you would be amazed at how many times we see marketing, sales and/or customer success teams running through motions because they believe that's what is expected, without ever stopping to look at whether or not any of it is actually having an impact.

Many times, teams continue these unproductive activities because a) everyone else is doing it (aka 'best practice') and b) there is no clear alternative.

Do not confuse motion with progress.

The biggest obstacle to making adjustments is lack of time to assess, design and implement alternatives. That lack of time is because teams can't let go of the "devil they know."

The $10 Bet

Looking for a way to get the team's focused? Try this exercise.

• Bring Marketing, Sales, CS and RevOps leaders together (ideally in-person).

• List all of the primary activities from every team on a whiteboard.

  • Campaigns

  • "Plays"

  • Motions

  • Etc.

• This is a fantastic way to see the activities that compound on each other and those that are "pushing wind."

• Provide each stakeholder $10, which they will use to place a "bet" on an activity or series of connected activities.

• No less than $3 can be applied to any one option (so no betting $1 on ten items)

• Provide a list of criteria against which each stakeholder can use to guide their bets, example, "what is our level of confidence in …"

• Ask each stakeholder to place their bets, independently from all the others

• Aggregate the results before meeting, so no one changes their bet!

• Bring the stakeholders together and ask each person to list out their bets and their rationale for each.

In our experience, it is very common for the group to be in general agreement on the choices, but for potentially very different reasons.

Regardless, this has proven to be a good tool to rationalize well-informed opinions to gain consensus on priorities and will quickly reveal those activities that you should stop doing!

(Re)Validate ICP

The other benefit of the $10 exercise is that it exposes the possibility of different perspectives on the Ideal Customer Profile.

Even if you entered 2024 with a strong, data-informed view of ICP (most ICPs are not formed this way), the macro conditions under which you formed this definition are VERY different, which means your current ICP may have actually "drifted."

• Which types of companies seem to be the most responsive to our solution?

• What internal dynamics have changed? Business priorities? Decision making process? Etc.?

Getting clarity on this "drift" will bring increased confidence in the content we need to feed our revenue engine.

The Foundation for 2025

One word of caution before you start down this path. Beware the allure of the "quick fix." There may very well be some "hacks" that we can deploy to improve performance in H2, but if we don't consider the repeatability and scalability, we have dug ourselves an even bigger hole for 2025.

If there is one initiative / program that can deliver compound value, it is an "always on" customer insights.

To start, these in-depth insights can be gleaned from the existing team, by creating a program where all members of the revenue team have 1:1 discussion with customers every week.

But so often this program falls to the "tyranny of the NOW" and we end up back on the hamster wheel.

Instead, consider making this a permanent part of the revenue org. We refer to this as the "Investigative Journalist."

In a world of too many alternatives, relevance and timeliness are the silver bullets.

See you next week!