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The Chief Outsider
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Recent Posts
Why the CEO-Led Growth Model Breaks at Scale
Series Overview
As companies grow, GTM breakdowns rarely show up as sudden failures. They emerge as friction. Progress slows, pipelines become less predictable, and confidence in forecasts declines, even as teams work harder and act with good intent. Written from both the marketing and sales lens, this six-part series, Building a Unified GTM Operating Model, explores why scale exposes weaknesses in informal GTM systems and how an intentional operating model restores clarity, alignment, and scalable growth.
| Executive Takeaways |
| CEO-led, informal GTM models break predictably as scale introduces complexity. |
Lead Incubation Has a New Shape: The Marketing Hourglass Has Supplanted the Sales Funnel
Tue, Jun 21, 2022 — You spend countless hours, and endless resources, to encourage your sales team to dump leads into the top of your sales funnel, with the hopes of squeezing them through the tiny orifice at the bottom. Once those precious few fall out the bottom and onto your client rolls, now what? With an overheated market, dogged competition, and an enlightened consumer that is more fickle than ever, how can you make sure all of that effort is worth it? How can you ensure that you keep what is rightfully yours?
The Current Case to Hire a Fractional CMO
Mon, Jun 20, 2022 — There’s a perfect storm brewing for CEOs right now: increased competitive pressure, inflation, and the “Great Resignation,” all alongside the need for organic growth. These are all conspiring to make the balance of 2022 even more challenging than usual. Marketing and selling your products or services in this environment is not for the faint of heart – which is why a battle-proven Chief Marketing Officer can make all the difference when it comes to navigating steadily during this difficult consumer climate.
Why CPG Managers Might Miss the ‘90s…
Tue, Jun 14, 2022 — Seasoned consumer packaged goods (CPG) executives—with more than 25 years of experience—probably think of the 1990s, or earlier, as “the good old days.” Why? Because for them, life was much simpler. There were far fewer outlets for advertising and distribution. Think about it. From an advertising standpoint, the three broadcast networks still ruled. The handful of cable channels available did not even carry ads. There were newspapers and magazines in which to advertise and place coupons. On radio, there were a handful of local stations from which to choose. Websites were nascent. And direct mail was alive and well.
How to Achieve Double-Digit Annual Growth
Tue, May 24, 2022 — For CEOs everywhere, the pressure is on. With an overheated economy creating outsized results – and enhanced expectations, “thrive” has replaced “survive” as the mantra in boardrooms across the country. As a result of the “go-go” market conditions, a new benchmark has been established: If your company can't show a minimum Compound Annual Growth Rate of 10 percent, you are putting yourself and your company at risk. As never before, the key to a business's health, high corporate valuations – and CEO job security -- is revenue growth.
Tuning Your Growth Engine: How Insights Power Market Success
Wed, Apr 20, 2022 — “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.” ― Peter Drucker Why is it that the best run companies often have the hardest time growing? I recently had the pleasure of exploring this issue while speaking at the Intelligence Leadership Forum (ILF), led by Liam Fahey — who literally wrote the book (well, actually, eight books) on the subject of insights. What we realized is this: Operational excellence – no matter how good it is – can never be sufficient to win in the long term.
Driving Revenue, Part 2: Death of the MQL
Tue, Apr 5, 2022 — Thank you for joining me today for the eulogy of the marketing qualified lead, or MQL. Once hailed as the best way to affix a value to a prospective sale in the digital age, we are here to toll the bell to its early demise. What led to the hastened death of the MQL? A series of innocent crimes, perpetrated by humans who have become too smart and savvy – or simply too absent-minded -- to play the MQL game. Since these leads are typically derived from “mechanical” interactions between human and machine, humans have unintentionally thwarted the system – for example, blindly tapping away on the TouchPad, or leaving a finger or cursor atop an open email, can accidentally score you as a hot lead.
Driving Revenue with Marketing: How to Reap the Rewards of a Mutually Beneficial Plan
Wed, Feb 16, 2022 — (Blog 1) Step Zero: The Dark Funnel If your sales funnel is lurking in the shadows, it may be because it’s filled with people who are trying to avoid the spotlight. Sure, if you’re like most companies, you have the digital tools you need to generate marketing-qualified leads, or MQLs, by the scads and buckets – casting a broad net through newsletters, promotional emails, social media mentions, website interactions – you know, the entire digital gamut. They make your metrics charts look happy but your sales teams – not so much.
What Does it Take to Innovate? Part 6: The Product Launch
Tue, Feb 8, 2022 — By Ahmet Abaci and Beth Somplatsky-Martori Ready for ignition? If you’ve stuck with us for this entire blog series, it’s all come to this moment: Butterflies be damned and dreams and hopes aside – it’s time to launch our new product into the public consciousness. We’ve been on quite a journey through our previous blogs. At the outset, we started off with a discussion about fostering a culture of innovation within a company. And then we introduced what we called our “Stage Gate Lite” approach to fostering and accelerating new product and service ideas, leading you through the four gates in the process: Concept development, the business case, product development, and testing methodology.
An Inward Focus: How One Company Redefined Itself for Success
Mon, Feb 7, 2022 — It’s always interesting to me when the proverbial emperor is in search of new clothes. Like the time-honored fable, Cask – an innovative company that lives and works in the ServiceNow ecosystem – had done an outstanding job of enabling digital transformation for its clients. But when it came to telling their story and harnessing digital marketing tools to promote itself, it wasn’t quite as masterful. The story of how Cask evolved its brand and turned digital marketing into a dominant force in the ServiceNow space – leading to 40 percent year-over-year growth for four consecutive years – is an object lesson that is worth studying for any B2B leader.